The technology of forgetting

//

It was interesting to listen to Bernard Stiegler’s talk, he has been inspiring to some parts of my works, acting as bridges through which I can jump in between different concepts. Technics for Stiegler constitutes the tertiary memory, which he takes from Husserl. This third memory, which is different from the notion of german [memory of species] and soma[memory of individual] by Weissman, it is what Stiegler calls epiphylogenetic memory which is constituted by techne.

Technics also constitute the “already there”, a term used by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, but I think the “already there” for Heidegger is broader, since the already there is not only technical, it is the setting of Dasein’s falleness. But there is side of technics, plays a major part in the “already there”.

Stiegler also explores from Plato, the myth of the titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus, the forgetting of Epimetheus (his fault in forgetting distributing skills to the mortals) which set the default of origin of human. In this sense, the default of human beings, is their necessity to produce technics.

The Platonic idea of hypomnesis plays an important part in Stiegler’s theory, the necessity to remember the truth which ever lost in the reincarnations, as Plato shows in Socrates’s dialogue with Meno, is also the necessity of production of differance, as a process of deferral, of temporality, as well as death in Heidegger’s thoughts.

Then we may witness the necessity of forgetting in our age, the over population of the mnenotechnology, which not able leaves traces of our being, but also narrow down the possibility of deferral, which is to say make differences.

I remember last month, when I was in a W3C workshop on the future of social networking, Julien Pye from Vodafone, compares hyperthymesia with social networking, and points out the necessity of forgetting. If we follow the logic of Stiegler, especially his take on Plato’s pharmakon nature of technicity, it is easy to claim that hypomnesis is itself a pharmakon, which is both able to cure and poison. But I think we need to further differentiate the idea of pharmakon in this case. Firstly technics as the tertiary memory, refers to the trace of a past which belongs to me but I never live; secondly the content/products of technics, which constitute a past which belong to me and I still have to live with. So technics, in this sense, is not about remembering, but there is a necessity of forgetting, in the sense, is that I demand such a forgetting.

This necessity of forgetting, is at the same time, ethical, also therapeutic. Ethical in the sense that forgetting is an important part of social, to be social you have to forget things. It is also therapeutic, since firstly it is also a necessity of remembering, secondly, active forgetting as Nietzsche says can be something positive. I am taking this therapeutic idea from Foucault’s technology of the self.

I think, technics, as the third memory has to be rethought in this context, in which, we also demand forgetting.

Latest from Blog

Chinese translation of ChatGPT, or the Eschatology of Machines (Voices of Photography, issue 35)

ChatGPT自2022年11月推出以來,便引發了狂熱與恐懼。它對不同語言的語義及語法的嫻熟掌握(但尚未精通內容),令只是期待普通聊天機器人的使用者感到驚訝。有些大學院校立即禁止學生使用ChatGPT來寫論文,因為它的表現優於多數人類學生。報紙上的專欄文章則宣布了教育的終結──不僅因為學生可以用它來做作業,還因為ChatGPT比很多老師能提供更多的資訊。人工智慧似乎已征服了另一個根據古典哲學來定義人性的領域:邏各斯(logos)。恐慌隨著存在領域(existential territory)1的進一步喪失而加劇。當氣候的崩壞和機器人的反叛召喚出了末世,人類歷史的世界末日想像變得更加強烈。 末日對於現代人來說從來都不陌生。事實上,哲學家卡爾.洛維特(Karl Löwith)在1949年出版的《歷史的意義》(Meaning in History)一書即指出,現代歷史哲學──從黑格爾(Hegel)到布克哈特(Burckhardt)──就是末世論的世俗化2。歷史的終極目標便是使超越的變成內在(makes the transcendent immanent),不論是耶穌基督的第二次降臨或只是成為神人(Homo deus)。更廣泛地說,這種對歷史時期的聖經式或亞伯拉罕式想像,為人類的存在提供了許多深刻反思,卻也阻礙了對於我們的未來之理解。 more