THREE WORLDS OF MEMORY

The Information Age and memory

You keep a memory in three competing worlds.

Digital:
     Scientists in white lab coats
     engineered a world
     that flawlessly remembers all your inputs,
     your memory outsourced to a secure location,
     like what a child thinks heaven is like,
     where you ask God every question you ever wanted.
     Until one day,
     the server crashes,
     or power is lost,
     and the screen goes dark.

Paper:
     Since the time of the Han
     the sheets have been there
     reliable, tangible, unfiltered,
     open to the page,
     and the words are the same
     as yesterday,
     the same as today,
     and will be the same tomorrow.
     A dense treatise, today's newspaper, a 3x5 card;
     you carry paper memory like a security blanket.
     until one day
     you misplace it
     and it gathers dust on a shelf.

Biological:
     You and your synapses are
     the ever present device.
     You could be naked on a desert island
     and it would be there with you
     all you need to do
     is exercise its muscles--
     no external source
     no object to hold
     nothing to lose
     till one day
     you forget.

Reviews

[Tam Warink]

The bells of truth ring clearly here, Rutherford. We might add the memory of space and time and dimensions beyond normal, waking perception. The rules may be different there and it's a place(s) I find myself often drawn to explore. Slice the loaf in any direction and new vistas, new memories appear for the reliving; memories frequently that are most certainly not my own - at least in this lifetime.

[rutherford]

Tam, I find your reviews poems in themselves. I keep circling back to themes of time, memory and place.

[Kelly A. Brown]

Very true and thought-provoking poem.