I recently watched a video by UK novelist Tom McCarthy, in which he imagines an extremely technological future where everything has already been written, all information recorded. What was most interesting to me was how he discussed thinking and memory in comparison to algorithm and buffering. First, he describes buffering as “hordes of bits and bytes and megabytes all beavering away to get the requisite data to [us].” Then he talks about the experience of watching a video online. Specifically "when the red part of the line under the video catches up with the gray part and buffering sets in." McCarthy compares this to memory: “This is how time and memory work: we need experience to stay ahead if only by a nose of our consciousness of experience so that the latter can interpret, narrate, the former. When the narrating cursor catches right up with the rendering one, we find ourselves jammed, stuck in limbo. Everything becomes buffering and buffering becomes everything.” I thought this was a really interesting and cool analogy when thinking about how the digital processes memory and ways of thinking. I recommend checking out the video:
That's really interesting, especially considering all of our complex psychologies around buffering. I recently had a discussion with my students about ads, which are similar to buffering in that they are color marked in the time span of the video and interrupt our viewing experience. Some people consider them to be a "break," allowing them to take that time to be distracted, while more people expressed frustration at their inability to get back to their content. I wonder what exactly happens in real life though, when the "narrating cursor catches up with the rendering one." What would be an example of a moment when our memory catches up with our experience? I wonder if we would also experience different psychologies when confronted by such an interruption....
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing! The notion of everything already having been recorded obliquely makes me think of Finn's inclusion of "imagination" as methodological tool for understanding algorithms. It is through imagination that we must grapple with the complexity of algorithms that exceed our cognitive capacities. The imagination approximates a preexisting process that simply can't be grasped by reason. McCarthy's future, where all information is already recorded, would seem to imply something similar: an excess of knowledge. The time of buffering might be visualized as the time of imagination.
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