William Gibson, Book Expo America 2010 Luncheon Talk (via kenyatta)
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this is so bigtime I don’t even know how to digest it, let alone add to it. Suffice to say that Gibson gets it in such a major way.
The notion of prosthetic memory alludes to cyborg theory and that offshoot of feminism that addresses the Barbie / cyborg phenom, but it also brings up some of the most salient points from Alison Landsberg’s brilliant book. Rather than compartmentalizing American experience, she basically says that technologies of mass culture allow us to assimilate experiences and events — even ones that we havent ourselves lived through. So there’s potential here to have a range of memories some privately (or actually felt) and some public (collective) memories but they all still impact us the same. Result being that a new kind of public cultural memory—a zeitgeist that is made into a metaphorical “prosthetic” memory—that awakens a spirit of alliance in us. Perhaps stimulating an increased social responsibility or a depth of unity or simulation thereof.
It’s kind of like that feeling you get from discussing trending topics on twitter — we’re all in this together and time is something that we experience as a vast collective as the events occur vs. alone in our own subjective lives.
(via slavin)
