Here’s a spectrum of “memory” genres 1. Autobiography 2. Family history 3. Personal memoir 4. Subcultural history 5. Public life memoir 6. Participant history Prediction: All of it is in trouble. Our cultural memory processes are breaking.
-
-
Simplest example I can think of: accounts of Obama administration at all these levels will harmonize (including the hostile ones) in a way the equivalent Trump corpus won’t. It’s a fundamentally higher entropy story. Smaller ‘sum > parts’ narrative surplus to form grand narrative
Show this thread -
Basically there won’t be a way to adopt a point of view that could call default or canonical. Only a bunch of alts. There will be nothing it is like to be a “spectator from nowhere” of history. If you try to write for this point of view there will be no readers for it.
Show this thread -
All history will be revisionist history basically, with the role of default being taken over by a data ubiquity that tells no story, but undermines all of them.
Show this thread -
-
Collective memory is a form of identity creation. A way to create a point of view that can be adopted by others in the future. That’s how you engineer read/write/append access to it. This is now becoming untenable except as solipsism.
Show this thread -
To quote myself: narratives tell archetypes how to evolve, archetypes tell narratives how to curve. Narratives become indexical to self perpetuate by enabling identities with rewrite permission. Soon: all history is revisionist, all integration of memory is appropriation
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
If you write an autobiography, call it "Life on a Tangent."
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
