My phone chimed with an automated “memory” slideshow from an old trip, set to gentle music, the skies impossibly blue, the faces so bright. I watched it twice before realising what bothered me: I hadn’t chosen the photos, the order, or the mood. Something else had decreed what my holiday felt like. If the machine had the sky wrong, would I know? Is a memory still mine once something else has contrived it?
But how reliable are our memories anyway? Elizabeth Loftus, a pioneer in false memory research, proved decades ago that a single leading question can rewrite our recollections. Today, experts know that memory is actively rebuilt every time we remember.
The act of offloading memory onto external tools – like a simple notebook – blurs the line between the mind and the environment. This phenomenon, described as the “extended mind” by philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers, finds a modern parallel in media theory through the concepts of mediatisation and mediation, where historical reality is consumed in a pre-edited format.
The collective memory of the September 11 attacks serves as a prime example. Decades of media broadcasts and movies have systematically replaced firsthand recollections. Empirical studies on this topic reveal that even direct survivors...