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Researchers have developed the first memory prosthetic device—a neural implant that, in rats, restored lost brain function and improved short-term memory retention. While human testing is still a distant goal, the implant provides evidence that the brain’s complex neural code can be interpreted and reproduced to enhance cognitive function. The device, which consists of a tiny chip and a set of 32 electrodes, marries math and neuroscience. At its heart is an algorithm that deciphers and replicates the neural code that one layer of the brain sends to another. The function restored by the implant is limited—rats were able to remember which of two levers they had pressed. But its creators believe that a device on the same principle could one day be used to improve recall in people suffering from stroke, dementia, or other brain damage.

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The first memory-enhancing devices could be implanted within four years. DARPA’s first contracts under its Restoring Active Memory (RAM) program challenge two research groups to construct implants for veterans with traumatic brain injuries that have impaired their memories. Over 270,000 U.S. military service members have suffered such injuries since 2000, according to DARPA, and there are no truly effective drug treatments. This program builds on an earlier DARPA initiative focused on building a memory prosthesis, under which a different group of researchers had dramatic success in improving recall in mice and monkeys.

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How To Fix The World

Adapted from psychologist A.R. Luria’s research in Uzbekistan in the 1930s, “How to Fix the World” brings to life Luria's conversations with Central Asian farmers learning how to read and write under the unfamiliar principles of Socialism.

Colorful digital animations play against a backdrop of images shot in Andijian (where Soviet-era President Karimov's supression of Islam lead to violence in May 2005.) At once conflicting, humorous, and revelatory, these conversations between Luria and his “subjects” illustrate an attempt by one culture to transform another in the name of education and modernization.

- Video inspiration for myself

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Thesis Paper

The Design of Mnemonics for Forgetting Introduction: Throughout history, people have used memory aids and strategies to help them remember long strings of words or features that aren’t inherently memorable. As early as in ancient Rome and Greece, people used the Method of loci(also known as memory palace) to mentally associate information with specific physical locations. Eastern Orthodox monks use the knots on the prayer rope to count the number of times they prayed. With the advent of technology, especially superhuman digital programmability and the creation of sophisticated algorithms that mimic human neural network, memory aids have moved from the traditional mnemonics and visual association methods into more complex systems that not only work as passive memory assistive systems but an augmentation of user’s memory. The meaning of human memory is clearly altered by the symbiotic relationship between us and the computation. In 1960, Licklider pointed out that there was an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers that he termed “Man-Computer Symbiosis”. Licklider envisioned this tightly coupling relationship between human and the computing machines would prove to complement each other's strengths to a high degree. With this notion of Man-Computer Symbiosis, instead of the more extreme biological approach of neural implants and neuroprosthetics as memory extensions, computers are now being seen as “devices capable of ‘memorizing’ vast quantities of information, and performing difficult-to-memorize sequences of operations on our belief”. Much research has been done on this notion of the extended mind. In 1945, Bush proposed a hypothetical proto-hypertext system called the Memex(a portmanteau of "memory" and "extender") that suggested the user together with the machinery forms a dynamic collective knowledge base. Lamming and Flynn’s “forget-me-not” memory aid suggests a broader paradigm that personal computing should not only provide users with access to its own working context but to the user’s real context. All these devices are designed to compensate for our fallible memory and claim to be unobtrusive companions that extend the users’ abilities to recall. However, due to their limited smartness and the unpredictable nature of users’ cognitive behaviors, the design of current human memory prostheses are not too much different than a portable version of the Memex. These devices mainly focus on making remembering easier for users, but not addressing the fact that human memory is degenerative and erasable- the “forgetful” factor in the design of memory aids. They operate by using mobile technologies, wireless networks, ubiquitous computing and artificial intelligence with hundreds of embedded sensors. By constructing a landscape of networks, those memory prostheses that are sensitive to the environment and able to record a user’s life events automatically— transferring their activities into information that can be later retrieved. They document detailed and persona information about us as to issue reminders for things that we might forget in the future. Nevertheless, the current indexing methods make it harder for the predications to be legible and truly relevant to user’s real context. The way memory prostheses work speaks to the notion of Intimate Computing, which demands a more intimate relationship between the user and the computation—more precisely, “a cognitive and emotional closeness with technology, where the technology may be aware of, and responsive to, our intentions, actions and feelings”. Therefore the traditional approach in HCI that focuses on observation of what is objective and measurable need to be adjusted. Current research and methodologies that have been done on the designing of memory aids cannot be fully adapted to the networks of smart computing devices that address people’s memory issues in an everyday setting. In this paper, I examine the traditional approach and methodologies of mnemonic devices, and look at a series of memory prosthetics designed to be usable and improve memory based on the conventional approach of information indexing. I argue that the subjective, volatile and ephemeral aspect of the human memory can be addressed, if we shift our focus from the design of mnemonics for remembering on a system based context to a user based context, acknowledging the act of forgetting in terms of the malleability of the human mind and the enduring ephemerality of the digital media. 1. Licklider, J. C. R. "Man-Computer Symbiosis." IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1.1 (1960): 4-11. Web. 2. Lamming, M.,Flynn, M.: “Forget-me-not” : Intimate computing in support of human memory. IN: FREIND21, International Symposium on Next Generation Human Interface, Meguro Gajoen, Japan (1994) 3. Bush, Vannevar. "As We May Think." ACM SIGPC Notes 1.4 (1979): 36-44. Web 4. Bell, Genevieve, Tim Brooke, Elizabeth F. Churchill, and Eric Paulos. "Intimate Ubiquitous Computing." (n.d.): n. pag. FX Palo Alto Laboratory, 94304, Palo Alto, CA, Jan. 2003. Web. Jan. 2003.

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The new age's censorship

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How do we remember to forget?

The digital medium is all about "perfect remembering", the trends of externalising human memory promoted by life-loggers(or YOU!) accelerate the demise of forgetting. In the age of Internet, people voluntarily disclose information about themselves, or say ignorantly/ unconsciously leaving traces of information on the digital medium. Those digital surrogate extends the life span of human memory from the length of our life time to infinite(might be finite as hardwares also wears off, that's the notion of enduring ephemerality proposed by Chun), what does the extension of time brings to us? Well, here we are talking about the virtue of forgetting. There is no such thing as “perfect remembering” to a human being. However, it is happening all around us in the context of digital media. As its default setting is about remembering, which might make us unforgiving to ourselves. On the other hand, everyone is aware of the big brother, the unescapable web of search engines. This leads to Jeremy Bentham’s notion of “Panopticon”. A conceptual model that based on extreme surveillance through dictatorship. The “Panopticon” model is to allow a single watchman to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) inmates of an institution without the inmates being able to tell whether or not they are being watched. To Translate this situation in a digital context would be “I act as if I am watched even if I am not. ” The doomed destiny of us being recorded and documented, fossilised into digital media thousands of years after we die. As past is always about the future. And yes, you don't have a choice because you cannot live without your smart phone. Do not underestimate the power of imposed digital remembrance. Stories like "Drunken Pirate", sad people got fired because of Facebook,Canadian psychotherapist got barred from US because of online search results and you can always dive into the web for more stories alike.The digital archive remembered what those people wanted to have forgotten. And if those things happened to happen to you, don't hide, otherwise you will become world famous like Streisand's Malibu house. And sure, digital media might help us remember better to a certain degree(Thank God, all those productivity apps). The things is- How do we deal with a future that is unforgiving because it's unforgetting? Nightmare might occur exactly as what is shown in Black Mirror, or they might not. How do we disentangle ourselves from those "haunted past" in our thinking and decision making? or maybe we cannot? Just the fact that Google remembers more about us that we can remember by ourselves, it pushed us to a corner and thinking about the idea of self-erasing as a protection/ protest/(or just the result of not having a choice?) The age of self-censorship might have come. The societal capacity to remember is not as important as its ability to forget. No one would want to live their life like Funes(from Luis Borges' story Funes, the Memorius). No one wants to be lost in the details of our past. (btw, some people don't have the gift of forgetting, see Hyperthymesia) The incapablity of abstract thoughts, seems like the surprising curse of remembering How do we remember to forget? This seems like the right question to ask. The shift from remembering to forgetting is monumental. However, we need to be clear that technology doesn't force us to remember, but it does facilitate the demise of forgetting- ONLY IF we want to. The fact is we are also part of the game. It's ourselves who causes the demise of forgetting, and also it's up to us to choose to reverse it or not. And all this leads to the creation of Unforgetful Interfaces Inspired by "Delete" - The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital AgeBy Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

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1. A new Forget button in Firefox to help keep your browsing history private, adding DuckDuckGo as a search option. 2.Pebble Smartwatch's forget a bluetooth pairing settings

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A neuralyzer, sometimes spelled as neuralizer, is a device seen in the Men in Black franchise. It is one of the signature tools and considered standard issue employed by the Men in Black. It is a device about the size of an average cigar tube that gives a bright flash which erases the memories of the past hours, days, weeks, months or years, depending on the chosen settings. It first appeared in the first issue of the comic book series, and has appeared in all three films, as well as the animated TV series. A deneuralyzer is a special chamber room that serves as a program to reverse the effects of a neuralyzer. While neuralyzer is a small object and works in a single flash, it takes a huge room for a deneuralyzer and the memory scan lasts for around 5–10 minutes, depending on the memory needed to be recovered. Deneuralyzer is a chamber with a single seat, a huge computer and metal fittings put on a person's head to recover the memory.

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My ex is mad at me for not taking him back

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Memories for Life is a unique project, funded by the EPSRC, bringing together a diverse range of academics in a bid to understand how memory works and to develop the technologies to enhance it.

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A wireless transmitter could give paralyzed people a practical way to control TVs, computers, or wheelchairs with their thoughts.

Mental remote control

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An interdisciplinary team including digital artists and makers, learning researchers, computer scientists, social historians, older people themselves and those who work with them we are co-producing a set of new digital tools that will address some of the key societal challenges concerning the care and well-being of older people and the legacy of the memories and stories that they leave for future generations.

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A Pensieve is a stone basin used to store and review memories. Covered in mystic runes, it contains memories whose physical form is neither gas nor liquid. A witch or wizard can extract their own or another's memories, store them in the Pensieve, and review them later. It also relieves the mind when it becomes cluttered with information.

Anyone can examine the memories in the Pensieve, which also allows viewers to fully immerse themselves in the memories stored within, much like a magical form of virtual reality. Users of these devices view the memories from a third-person-point-of-view, providing a near-omniscient perspective of the events preserved.

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Sensory Memory- information is brought in and retained by the senses.The effects are extremely short term with this information forgotten within a few seconds. It is also known as the first level of memory.

The two most studied types of sensory memory are iconic memory (visual) and echoic memory (sound).

Iconic Memory is relate to the memory of sight only.

Various experiments have shown that once an image is viewed, the brain scarcely has time to process it and the visual memory is stored for less than half a second.

The idea of iconic memory came about because of George Sperling's experiments in the 1960s. He used a tachistoscope to show letters to his test subjects. There were 12 letters in all, arranged in a box shape of three rows of four.

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Tachistoscope

"This is a form of short-exposure apparatus. The essential idea is to furnish a field upon which the subject may for a moment fasten his attention, and then to substitute for this field another containing certain prepared test-material. This last field is exposed for but a brief instant and removed, and the subject is then called upon to report all that he has seen during the last exposure. Tests of this kind have demonstrated that the range of visual attention is a comparatively constant quantity with each individual, having but little relation to general ability or intelligence and being but little affected by practice." -DRIVING POWER OF THOUGHT By WARREN HILTON, A.B., L.L.B. FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY(1920),Page 107 source

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Mind fatigue before the review

Memory is ephemeral and enduring, Memory is about relationships.