The Internet is an environment in which image, word and sound are manipulated for the sharing and preservation of information. This is the first time that people have had this degree of flexibility in drawing on the generative qualities of the mind in an external medium. This medium and its multiplicity of modes has a potential immediacy comparable to that of thought in contrast to the more crafted, time-invested outcomes of books, films, art and music. On the Internet these are subsumed into the generative medium, and are merely another mode available for communication, or preservation. The possibilities for the medium are limited only by the mind, and the time taken for technology to cover the ever closing gap between the two.
In this section I suggest the internet has taken the form of an external component for our memories in the form of a world of online constructs tagged by image and word in the manner of the memory palace or theatre of classical and hermetic tradition of ars memoria. However, the palaces generated externally suffer from the drawback of having a multitude of inhabitants which adds pressure to the cohesion of the links and representations within the environment in that, depending on the media, they are subject to the scrutiny of a wide audience.
The classical orator considered memory as an essential component of the art of rhetoric. The development of this skill is known as the art of memory, or Ars Memoria. The principal texts that have come down to us on this art are a dilution of the tradition that has for the most part been lost to us. The key texts from the classical world are the Cicero’s De Oratore, Ad C. Herennium libri IV (by an unknown author known simply by its dedication) and Quintillian’s Institutio oratoria. There are a number of approaches and considerations on the exact method of the art of memory which principally deals with the rules and practices for the generation of images and locations in a construct. Items of information can be recalled by imagery and association as and when they were required.(Yates, 2006)
It is not necessary to elucidate this further a well-known example will suffice: Dante’s Divine Comedy while not a memory construct per se it does give an indication of the type of locus that would be used to house the information. It is essentially a visual filing cabinet of torments and pleasures. The classical world was not unified in its ideas about memory, with indications that memory came in different forms, and the distinction between remembering and recollection, as well as the natural and artificial memory. And it is no coincidence that although going through a number of developments (Lullism and Ramism to name but two) the art disappeared into the hermetic world in the 16th century. Correspondingly the availability of written text via the printing press was rising.
It we now compare this structure of the memory palace with any website, including the one used to deliver this essay. Images are portals to new locations where information is accessed, association it made between image, text and metaphor where no obvious correlation exists until defined and explained. The comparison with memory construct is clear. The process of searching for a piece of information via hypertext link corresponds to rhetorician passing through the corridors of the construct in the swiftest route to access the image.Using this comparison it could be argued that any media from cave paintings to Crime and Punishment to a song by Abba is an external investment of memory and culture that can be accessed by others. And to a certain extent this is the case. However, the key factor is flexibility – the contents of the memory palace can be moved at will, the components are fluid in comparison to the setting in stone of printed rather than hypertext.
This technology marks the next stage in the transition from the ars memoria, through print to the Internet as a generative and flexible aid to our memory.