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Dear Peter, At first, thanks for the beautiful , intelligent and poetic comment. I decide to bite your virtual madeleine and ... Perhaps in the future, instead of writing: "...and the church and all Combray and its surroundings, all this that takes form and solidity, city and gardens, left from my cup of tea." (1) We that are living this experience should write: ...and the digital life and all Internet and its surroundings, all this that takes form and solidity, favorite sites, urls and lists, left from our cup of ... ******************************************* Also your associative web surfing reminds me this Bergson's thought: "At first we can say that memory is a survival of the old images, these images will go to mix themselves constantly to our perception of the present and also they can replace it. Because they are stored only to become useful: every minute they complete the present experience enriching it with the acquired experience." (2) Is not this what happens when one surfes through the Internet links? ******************************************* Quotations: (Portuguese version - Unfortunatelly I did the translation into English) (1) ...e a igreja e toda Combray e seus arredores, tudo isso que toma forma e solidez, saiu, cidade e jardins, da minha taça de chá. / PROUST, Marcel. Em busca do tempo perdido, no caminho de Swann.. Porto Alegre, Editora Globo, 1981. (2) Digamos inicialmente que a memória é, uma sobrevivência das imagens passadas, estas imagens irão misturar-se constantemente à nossa percepção do presente e poderão inclusive substituí-la. Pois elas só se conservam para tornarem-se úteis: a todo instante completam a experiência presente enriquecendo-a com a experiência adquirida. / BERGSON, Henri. Matéria e memória. São Paulo, Martins Fontes,1990. Best regards, Regina Célia Pinto http://arteonline.arq.br http://arteonline.arq.br/library.htm http://bigsheep.blogspot.com New Work: http://arteonline.arq.br/eva/ ----- Original Message ----- From: "Peter Ciccariello" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 2:18 AM Subject: Re: [WDL] The attic and the topic how will digital life affect human memory Regina and all, I always wonder about the forensics of computer memory. It is said that you can never completely erase a hard drive, short of physically destroying it, that the police/FBI/CIA can retrieve any information that was ever entered, even if the hard drive is reformatted. I wonder if one ever really loses physical memory. And what of involuntary memory? What about associative web surfing in a manner that transcends deliberate recollection/searching, a web search that explodes like a flood of involuntary memory from a bite of a virtual petite Madeleine? I like the idea of the ATTIC, of memory being stored on old, discarded computers. Memory that does not die, but fades, bit by bit, byte by byte, or just sits suspended in the ether until someone powers up with the old software. -Peter Ciccariello ********** * Visit the Writing and the Digital Life blog http://writing.typepad.com * To alter your subscription settings on this list, log on to Subscriber's Corner at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/writing-and-the-digital-life.html * To unsubscribe from the list, email [log in to unmask] with a blank subject line and the following text in the body of the message: SIGNOFF WRITING-AND-THE-DIGITAL-LIFE