How SenseCam’s External Memories Screw With Your Own Perception
Ever recalled “facts” about an event in your personal life that simply were not true?
Sometimes termed False Memory Syndrome, it has come to public consciousness mostly because of sexual abuse victims that were never abused. Instead, the alleged victims were lead to believe false memories created by a psychotherapist.
This can also happen to you, when your recollection of certain facts, or details of an event, are swayed by a professional witness or authority figure, such as a police officer or other public official.
I had my very own “false memory” incident on Monday morning, when I mentioned in an article I wrote about being sat in the Cow’s End Coffee Shop on Venice Beach. I was dressed in my Classic Gaming Expo shirt, ripped jeans, and my Rocket Dog sandals, as I pounded away at the keyboard.
The only problem was, I was not.
On Saturday, I went to the Novel Cafe in Venice, wore a blue polo shirt, reasonably tidy jeans, with Rocket Dog sandals, and the sky was overcast for the better part of the day.
The SenseCam pictures I browsed from that day, whilst putting the final touches on the article, were actually from a Saturday the year previous, late in July, when I did sit in the Cow’s End and write. I had just bought this particular pair of sandals so they were brand new, and I threw out the ripped jeans sometime between September 1st and September 5th, 2008. I could not have worn part of the clothing items I thought I did, because I do not even own them anymore.
I was looking at SenseCam pictures for the wrong date, and was sure that I went to the Cow’s End on Saturday, 16th of May, 2009. I even wrote it in to the article, and it was not until I was chatting with my friend who I met at the cafe, that they mentioned they had actually met me at the Novel Cafe approximately two miles away. Go figure.
When we all wear a SenseCam, and put our thoughts and memories onto external devices, how long before our “world view” of what we know to be “true” is distorted by misapplied dates, over-written files, and tampering?
This event reminds me of the time I could not find my hotel, whilst living and working near Seattle, on a contract job for a local video game company.
One late night I came out of the office, after having pulled a near all-nighter on a critical deadline for the next day, the sky was overcast and cloudy, it was just beginning to rain, the parking lot and office were now both deserted. I jump in my Land Rover, flip on the GPS navigation system, and… no GPS signal. Nothing. I sit there for a few minutes more, still nothing.
Okay, this should not be a problem. It was a cheap Motel 6 conveniently close to the office, somewhere along Interstate 5, not more than seven miles away. I have driven this route every day, twice a day, for the past two weeks or so, how hard can it be?
About 40 minutes of humiliating driving up and down I-5, trying every exit ramp that had a Motel 6 (there were three of them) I eventually found the right one.
I did not memorise the address, I did not memorise the route, I did not need to. Why bother? The GPS navigation system has it all done for me.
My cell phone remembers all of the names, telephone numbers and addresses of people and places I visit. My laptop contains my collected thoughts and ideas for the past three decades. My SenseCam captures what I see and hear and where I have been. Why do I need to remember any of it?
Right up until the system fails and my “external memory” goes offline.
I have been observing this same phenomenon in education too, especially in software development. In the 1970’s, 1980’s, and early 1990’s programmers had to build up and memorise a “world map” of the source code, where certain functions existed in which source files, how the entire source code of an application or video game was organised and structured, and in many source files, down to particular line numbers too. Programmers had to remember API (Application Programming Interface) function calls, the parameters required, and many other details. All of this, in a body of source code, that is constantly changing and developing on a daily basis.
Now, with IntelliSense technology built-in to Visual Studio, and Whole Tomato’s add-in that extends the functionality even further, all of the memorising is taken care of. IntelliSense is an auto-complete technology, operating on similar principles to the auto-correct grammar and word correction in Microsoft Word or the auto complete of Google search, but ten times smarter. Type the first few letters of a function or class name and IntelliSense will fill in the a list box of possible names and remind you of which parameters to enter and in what order they go. If you type the same piece of code frequently, it will make suggestions for you. Variables or function names in the local vicinity are pulled in to populate a list of possible words as you type.
With the ability to jump straight to a function definition, a map that gets populated automatically every time there is a change in the source code, programmers are freed up from the necessity of learning and remembering everything they write and figuring out what everybody else wrote too.
Great programmers had a magical knack for figuring out a system very quickly, now it is a skill on its death bed. Mediocre programmers have the same tools that great programmers now have. Having great tools that boost you up is a “good thing,” but it makes it difficult to separate the merely mediocre from the truly great.
Anticipation of what you want and automatic prediction of what you are about to need, is a great addition to any tool, but it makes you dumb and lazy. Programmers are forgetting the location of the function or the name of the variable that they wrote not more than two minutes ago. They do not remember, because they do not have to. It is happening now in software development, it is happening in the written word, I am sure it is happening in subtle ways in other industries too, we just cannot see it yet.
I am all for enabling tools, I am all for freeing people up from the minutiae of a job[1], but I worry that these technologies are at the expense of our intelligence and our own memory.
Often, knowing where to look for the answer, is more important than knowing the answer. Similarly, knowing the question to ask is more important than having the knowledge to fix the problem.
But, sometimes, just sometimes, it pays to know.
[1] Like the ability to spell minutiae without having to use the auto-suggest feature of Microsoft Word.