161 - Working Memory of Society 💭🏢
Hey there, !
A stream of consciousness rant, because I’m tired. Hopefully I get around to editing this before I publish it.
There’s some pretty intense shit going on the world, don’t know if you’ve noticed. There’s climate change, floods in Pakistan, warheads in North Korea, trans rights issues, womens rights in Iran, food prices are going up and how come my petrol’s so goddamn expensive?
The old refrain in response - the 24 hour news cycle - wheedles that we get overwhelmed with information as it washes over us incessantly like a tide, and we are inundated with the next most outrageous thing to care about.
We forget things quickly, because they’re washed away before we can really appreciate the problem.
Most of us retreat from the news channels, the bad news, the mean news, the outrage, the same old shit with the same old shit, and burrow ourselves in comforting bubbles, and entertainment. It’s just easier.
Don’t worry, I’m not judging - I do exactly the same thing.
More randomly, I remember when ‘We are the World‘ came out the first time around - it meant something big, and real, and took over the public consciousness. The second time round? Haiti, but we don’t really remember that one, do we?
Why?
Why do we forget, so easily?
I’m not even talking about just personal forgetfulness (of which I am notorious for). I’m talking about how difficult it seems to be to be able to hold something in our collective memory unless it’s personally important to us.
There’s a concept in psychology of the working memory vs long-term memory - the short term stuff you can hold in your mind at once, vs the longer term memories or facts you can store in your brain.
…Kind of like how you can hold a bunch of apples in your hands while you move them from one place to another vs being able to stack them in a basket and bring them around.
Traditionally, when I learnt it at school, we have 5 plus-minus 2 slots of working memory that we can work with - essentially, how many ‘things’ you can hold in your mind at any one time.
I wondered whether we have a similar thing with societal issues. We hold in our collective brain, at any one time, a number of the most recent, or outrageous things that the news has told us about. We’re shown a bunch of things they think you’ll think is important, and those issues will dominate the news cycle…for a while. Paradoxically, those things are given importance because they’re in the news, and so we care about them, so they’re important, so they’re in the news, so they’re important…
Then, it moves on. And as people react to the next thing, it pushes something out of the working memory of our society. We forget why we cared, why the issue was so important at the time, or we hear small little updates from it here and there, as a bit of a callback.
But I don’t think those things are ever committed to the long-term memory of society.
From this model, two further thinking things dropped out for me:
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How could we train our societal working memories so that we can hold more information at once? It seems nigh impossible - there’s so much to care about, there’s just not enough time to sift through it all.
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How does society choose what goes into the collective national consciousness? It seems that the personal affect is really important, and probably the scale. COVID-19 is something that has affected literally everyone in the world, even if you haven’t caught it, and is one of those major things that has had an effect on society. Does it come from history? Historians? Twitter threads? How do we make sure we slow down, study, and encode these into long term memory? Again, I’m not sure. I wonder if there are papers on this…
One last thing I realised - I found a lot more respect for people who do stick around in different eddies and pools of caring about things, dedicating their energy and working memories to solving those problems. Even while ignored by society’s fickle mind, they’re just chipping away at the work, and getting things done.
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Panda Hot Pot - the ‘production’ of this hot pot place is fantastic - it looks great, the food is pretty good, and there was this massive golden Chinese throne that we took a crap ton of pictures at (this was at the Carnegie one, and the Carlton one has a big dragon!). There’s also a face-changing performance which honestly was kinda weird but everyone was into it, so I guess they know their audience? Comparing it to Haidilao - they’re about the same in terms of cost and gimmicks - so it’s nice to see good competition. Recommended!
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Barry - written by, and starring Bill Hader - I haven’t watched this in a while but I thought it would still be a great recommend as I saw it pop up on BINGE with the new season. Tells the story of an assassin who’s trying to get out of the business, and joins an acting class…all the while hiding his identity and trying to kill his way out of problems. FANTASTIC acting and has one of my favourite characters ever (NoHo Hank). Highly recommended!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Google Employees Alarmed That the Company Suddenly Expects Them to Do Work - a funny headline, a funny article. Looks like tech companies are maturing, settling down, getting a dog, and judging anyone who tries to have fun.
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Someone is pretending to be me - a FANTASTIC investigative article about a web developer whose identity was being copied, and so he dove deep into who was doing it, and was able to join an actual interview to confront the person who had taken his identity! A gripping read.
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Why are game-makers creating new Game Boy games in 2021? - this is cute - the passion for old technology and keeping it alive :D