The essay titled “Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age” was written by Charles Baxter, Baxter uses rhetorical strategies such as style, diction, and knowledge ability to enlighten the audiences, who live in the information age, faces the information-inflation and have a particular space for memory, memory can both apply to computer and own minds. About how we remember, what we remember, and why we remember. The purpose for this essay is to point out that in the information age, face to the information-inflation the abilities of memorize and forgetting things, people needs to have the ability of resistance for it, and be able to filtrate out what are important and erasure others.
Baxter quote “We have transformed information into a form of garbage” by Nell Postman (p.141) at the very beginning of his essay. This is a clue for audiences, the information here include and imply memory, the “form of garbage” a metaphor for forgetting. At the same time implied that erasure is inevitably, in other words, forgetting is inevitably, we do not have to always feel shame because of forgetting. Then Baxter divided the essay into five parts, at first sight, those five parts are not relative to each other, and each part could be an independent unit, but in fact they are all about memory and forgetting and have close connection with the purpose of the essay. The title of his article and title of each part are completely informed the reader to what the article is going to be about.
The first part was the story about Baxter’s brother Tom who died at 1998, “Tom was an outcast of the information age.”(p.141) and for his brother’s life was shameful due to "He was among the ranks of those who cannot easily process written information, the data-disabled" (p.142) and he cannot remember things which others think are suppose to remember. This story has a sense of reality to the author, and also a muse for him and prompted him to write this piece, it is the reason that why Bater put it to be the first section. Then Baxter overhears a conversation between two women in a restaurant. "How much memory have you got?" one of them asked the other. "I don't know." "You don't know?" the first one asked. "You don't know how much memory you have? Didn't you ask the salesman?" (p.145) they were live in “where information processing is a major industry” (p.144) but they still forgot. Then Baxter say that the society has a “huge desire or need to forget, a kind of fetishizing of amnesia.”(p.145) it is ironic. In the age of information overload, privacy is virtually no longer and become the most trivial tidbits to the public, is it not a possibility to forget?
And later in the essay he mentioned how certain types of memories can work be perceived, he discusses the example of Reagon, “it was characteristic of Reagon to say, I don’t remember.”(p.148) Not only his “dumb brother” forgot, but also people who are seems to be good at deal with information, forget, or they chose to transfer some memory in to a form of garbage. This is an example what the article calls ‘strategic amnesia’. A type of forgetting that is strategically used to forget something which is unfavorable figure for the person. “Forgetfulness means that your mind may have crashed. It may, paradoxically, set you free” (148) for Reagon, he uses the strategic amnesia to somehow set him free form responsibilities. His strategically ignored the past and obtained power for the future. Likewise, Clinton uses his forgetfulness as an escape route. “His high approval ratings suggest that nobody really mind, that in fact, the American people secretly approve Clinton has become a hero of selective data management.”(p.149) Those examples above are how people uses the strategic amnesia to make things work. And I do not think they feel shame because of forgetting. “Forgetting and shame might just serve, under the immediate surface of consciousness, as an escape route of sorts.”(p.150)
Memory for Baxter seems involve several different meanings, and had a kind of worry about the balance between memory in data and memory in experience. He uses several examples to discuss his points.
Cultural memory, the mass memory of certain group, people in the group have a common past sense of identity. Baxter uses his city as an example. "The virtuosi of knowledge, they are presumed to have-they do have-some authority because of what they know and what they remember. Their lives and their authority depend upon their ability to remember, and to remember their subjects in public. (p. 144)" his concludes was cultural memory pushing the personal memory do not have place at all. The culture itself becomes the act of remembering, and the ability to remember becomes extremely important, personal memories are now swapped out with information, therefore when people stay in front of a computer screen all day then when they come back home feel as though they have had no experiences, and look elsewhere for some stimulation. And we can found other evidence which had the same issue in his essay. Just like "The day ends, not with physical exhaustion, but with data-fatigue or data-nausea" (Baxter 146) Nowadays people spend a lot of time in front of computers, people become exhausted from day to day, not the physical exhaustion, is the mental exhaustion from information-inflation. Baxter also worry about that nowadays, our minds are flooding by tons and tons information, and the personal experience become devalued. “Experience has fallen in value,” he suggested that many people do not want to exchange experience with others. That is kind of what the society tends to do.
As Baxter say "No one can absorb all the information" (p.146). We must selective memories. And do not feel shame about forgetting. The reason is face the information-inflation, try to remember everything might not be a good idea.
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