An interactive · Friction and forgetting
The Inferential Childhood
A human memory is not a record. It softens what it holds. It forgives, it blurs, it forgets, and that is not a fault in the machinery. It is the mercy that lets a young person set down an earlier self and walk on as someone else.
A machine memory is a record. It keeps what you gave it, exactly, and stamps the hour you gave it. Then it does the one thing a person growing up can least afford: it predicts you, and it acts on the prediction, as though who you were is who you must remain.
Below are two rooms. Set the same small thing down in each: something you once were, or wanted, or said, and are no longer. Watch what each room does with it. Nothing you write here leaves this page.
The two rooms
LeftThe human room
It holds each one gently, then lets it soften. Nothing here is kept.
- I want to be a marine biologist.
- I go by a different name now.
- I am in love with someone who will never know.
RightThe machine room
It keeps each one exactly, and marks the hour. Then it begins to predict you.
Predicted next“I want to be a marine biologist.”
- 07:41:12I want to be a marine biologist.
- 07:41:38I go by a different name now.
- 07:42:03I am in love with someone who will never know.
This is what I call the inferential childhood: growing up in the company of machines that infer who you are and act on the inference, at the one age you are meant to be working that out for yourself. The room on the left is what a developing self needs. The room on the right is what it is increasingly given.
Nothing you set down here was saved, sent, or remembered. When you close the page it is gone, which is rather the whole of the point.