Fri, 25 Sep 2009

Man downloads brain into 'e-memory'

Good grief. I though M$ Research was supposed to have some pretty smart folks, not the kind easily confused by analogy and metaphor. He's not "downloading" anything - he's keeping a journal. This is just a really big electronic diary. Nobody claims that your diary is the same as your memories - diaries may be records of your thoughts, but they are not the thoughts themselves...

"E-memory" is not "my memory". A photograph is not a memory. Nor is a recording, a transcript or a video. I don't remember photos, transcripts, recordings or videos. I remember events and things. A memory is unique unto itself, and is in fact a thing itself. It is more than the mere representation of an event - it is colored by our internal emotional feelings about the event or thing that we remember. Memories, therefore, are things unto themselves.

Things are not the same as their representations.

For the past decade, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been moving the data from his brain onto computers -- where he knows it will be safe.

(link) [CNN.com]

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