HOW MEMORY-STORING TECHNOLOGY BENEFITS PEOPLE 1

How Memory-Storing Technology Benefits People

Leo Lu

University of California, Santa Barbara

LING W 12: UNIV WRIT FOR MLING

Professor Andreea Corona

May.22, 2022
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Abstract

Inspired by Ted Chiang’s (2020) article “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, this passage

analyzes and discuss the benefits of technology that helps people store memory (also called

memory-storing technology) in the aspect of the ability of forgetting and emotion-related

memory. By stressing the positive outcome of forgetting and the importance of facing

subconscious emotion-related memory, this passage concludes that memory-storing technology

itself can help people store accurate, and more memories, and it also can raise people’s emotion

by photos or others and thus recall precious memories.

Keywords: Memory, technology, forgetting, emotion

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In the article “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, the author Ted Chiang (2020)

describes a technology that can record and remember every detail in our daily life. Although it

seems that this technology is impossible, people already use these kinds of technology – like

phones, cameras, laptops, and so on, to help restore memories. However, this raises the question

of whether people really need technologies to help us store memories. If the answer is yes, then

do these kinds of technologies really benefit us? Supported by several reasons that will be

discussed, technologies not only help us remember more things but also remember more precious

and accurate things. Then, memory-storing technology does benefit us a lot in our daily life.

Ted Chiang gave us an interesting example in his talk, “UCSB Reads 2022 Author Talk:

Ted Chiang”, that a boy who asked his mom whether she remembered she had beat him when the

boy was younger. Although the fact is his mom did hit her son, his mom cannot recall and

believes that she could not have beat her son. This example shows how our memories have been

edited by our mind and the flaw of our memory is to edit the fact and then create a memory

according to our will. Humans will easily forget and edit memories not intended, and this can

answer the question that do we need technologies to help us store memories – the answer is yes.

However, this is not the whole thing. People often treat “forgetting” as a vice rather than a virtue,

but a famous psychologist William James (1890) wrote in his article “The Principles of

Psychology, Vol I.” that “If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill

off as if we remembered nothing” (pp. 680). Indeed, people cannot recall memories that people

want if we can remember every single detailed thing. Also, stated in the article “The Benefit of

Forgetting in Thinking and Remembering” by Benjamin C. Storm (2011), the mechanism of

thinking and remembering is relying on parts of the process of forgetting. In another word,

efficient and effective memory would not be possible without forgetting. So, in this case, does
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the benefit of forgetting to mean that we do not need technologies to help us to store memory?

Think in another way, when we want to get to know some things, we will customarily search on

google instead of our own mind. Also, people nowadays hardly can remember all of their

friends’ or coworkers’ phone numbers – they are stored on phones. Consequently, technologies

themselves can help people store memories, but for the human being, technologies help us to

forget more. Then, we need something to help us to store memories because we will and need to

forget.

According to the conclusion above, if we need technologies to help us to store memories,

can these memories be our own memories? In accordance with Oxford Languages, here are two

separate definitions of the word “memory”: one is “the faculty by which the mind stores and

remembers information”, and the other one is “the part of a computer in which data or program

instructions can be stored for retrieval”. These definitions indicate that technologies’ memories

are not ourselves’ unless they can arouse the information in our own minds, and most parts of

information that can be aroused are related to emotions. For instance, by looking at a picture of

our childhood, what in our mind will be the feeling and emotions at that time, instead of what

really happened. Ted Chiang (2020) also provided an example that we tend to remember the

sweet memories with our grandma and then imagine what happened at that time based on our

emotion – happiness, but we don’t know what really happened. In the research related to

emotion, Adam Waude (2016) concluded that emotion will highly affect our ability to remember

information. The author offers ample evidence of the role of emotions on our memory to show

that emotions like anxiety, horror, sadness and so on will deepen our memories at that time and

will deepen our sense of things related to this mood by the Mood Congruence Effect. By using

technologies, we are able to recall our emotions again and again, and thus can even deepen our
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memories instead of weakening people’s ability of memories as stated by those who oppose

using technologies. Speaking of emotions, forgetting isn’t always a good thing. Adam Waude

(2016) presents an important point regarding Sigmund Freud’s studies that our mind tries to

prevent recalling the memories which make us feel bad, guilty, or shamed. People try to forget

these memories and emotions, but they remain in the unconscious mind and will affect people in

some ways. Technology that stores memories and can help us recall emotions might be effective

ways for people to be brought back into the conscious mind and thus people are more possible to

accept them and solve these problems.

By understanding the potential benefits of technologies that help us store memories,

drawbacks of these technologies like weaken people’s memory ability are worth to discuss.

Carolyn Gregoire (2013) claimed in her article “How Technology Is Warping Your Memory”

that “information overload makes it harder to retain information” (paras. 8). She claims that a

large load of information will appear with the technologies, and it is hard for people to deal with

and understand such huge loads of information. Consequently, people will feel overwhelmed and

tired. However, personally speaking, those technologies that help people store memories can

exactly help people deal with a large load of information but not create this information and let

people exhausted. The large load of information is the product of social media and the internet

but not technologies that help people store memories. Gregoire (2013) also uses what Daniel M.

Wegner and Adrian F. Ward (2013) state that when people face some difficulties, people prefer

search on smartphone than calling friends (paras. 2) to conclude that technologies are replacing

our own minds. On the contrary, what Wegner and Ward said is not strong support her idea,

because they try to say that networks and social media are changing the way we treat problems,

but not the flaw of technologies that can help people store memories. Colleen Walsh (2021) talks
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about how Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter treats the influence of technologies on our

memories in the article “Are Google and Smartphones Degrading our Memories?” although

technology may distract people and further influence our memories, how serious technology will

impact our memories has been exaggerated. This idea is supported by related research on how

GPS negatively affects our spatial memory, which shows it is baseless to conclude GPS

influences other kinds of recall. Therefore, even though technologies that help people store

memories may let people forget more and harm the ability of memory to a certain extent, this

impact is not that serious, and these technologies cannot be completely denied. What’s more, if

the ability to memory to a certain extent been harmed, people might forget more and learn more

new things, which also refers to the benefits of forgetting that been discussed in former passage.

In conclusion, people need technologies to help restore accurate and more memories. At

the same time, these technologies may help people face up to their emotions that let them feel

guilty and shamed, thus may deal with related issues and problems. Also, these technologies

might cause a weakening in the ability of memory and let people forget more things. In contrast,

forgetting more may not be completely a negative thing. By forgetting, people have the ability to

remember new things and recall truly precious memories. Consequently, assume a world

contains memory-storing technologies, people may forget more and have weaken ability to store

memories. But this doesn’t mean these memories that people forget have truly been forget –

these memories are transformed into technologies’ memories. People remember what people

should and want to remember, and technologies remember what people forget.

(Word Count: 1430)

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References

Chiang, T. (2020). The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling. In Exhalation (pp. 185–230). chapter,

Vintage Books.

Gregoire, C. (2017, December 7). How technology is Warping your memory. HuffPost.

Retrieved May 22, 2022, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/technology-changes-

memory_n_4414778

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology, vol I (pp.680). Henry Holt and Co, Inc.

Storm, B. C. (2011). The benefit of forgetting in thinking and remembering. Current Directions

in Psychological Science, 20(5), 291–295. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411418469

Walsh, C. (2021, October 22). Are Google and smartphones degrading our memories? Harvard

Gazette. Retrieved May 22, 2022, from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/10/are-

google-and-smartphones-degrading-our-memories/

Waude, A. (2016, February 23). Emotion and memory: How do your emotions affect your ability

to remember information and recall past memories? Psychologist World. Retrieved May

22, 2022, from https://www.psychologistworld.com/emotion/emotion-memory-psychology

Wegner, D. M. (2013, December 1). The internet has become the external hard drive for our

memories. Scientific American. Retrieved May 22, 2022, from

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-internet-has-become-the-external-hard-

drive-for-our-memories/