We are absolutely nothing without our memory. Without memory, we are reduced to a vegetative state. Memory is the key to our sense of self, our aspirations, the depth of our thinking. Void of memory, we are repetitive and soulless. Empty.

That said: the computer was conceived as an extension of memory, the amplification of the mind’s ability to track, filter, process the world around us. The computer, in that sense, is vital to our being. In recent years, as information technology has become increasingly embedded in our everyday lives, the systems of digital connections have become as essential to our sense of purpose and identity as the mind’s own network of neurological pathways. For the computer has entered our mind, lodged itself in our mental processing, such that it is virtually inseparable from the brain that controls it. For all the talk of prying ourselves free from the tyranny of the machine, technology in fact, has become the basis of thought, the very catalyst for thinking, the repository of ideas.

To forsake the power of this amplification is to deny our essence. To erase these trails of data is to erase cells from the body: for that data is a living force that has multiplied from its human origins. This may all sound impossibly post-human or even symptomatic of certain digital narcosis. It is in fact the post reality in which we operate. Once we organize our mental capacities according to the feedback mechanisms of digital relations, we have crossed a line in which there is no return. We are no longer purely flesh, but rather, data has entered our blood stream and we thrive on the ingestion of the electrical transmission. Information is nourishment, food, a life force that is the essence of who we are.

The message: never forsake the memory machine as a creative means of recording life’s experience and knowledge, particularly when it rears itself in the collective illumination of the global network.