Outsourcing Our Brains: So Busy Recording, We Forget to Live

11/06/2009

A good friend of mine called me in a snit earlier this week. She was going to a big-deal event on Capitol Hill for work—some Senate thing—and a colleague had casually asked her to take photos.

She was all whipped up. “I mean the nerve!” she fumed. “I’ve earned this. I had a dress altered. I don’t want to be stuck behind a damn camera. Not gonna do it. I want to snarf heavy hors d'oeuvres and get snockered. I want to schmooze!”

I tried talking her down, but it didn't work because I totally identified. Not on the schmoozing part. (I couldn't schmooze my way out of a wet paper bag.) I sympathized that logging the event would crimp her fun. Because that's exactly what happened to me at my twins' fourth birthday party last weekend.

It wasn't enough for me to be party planner and people herder; I also appointed myself photographer. So while everyone else was dancing with giant parrots, feeding bison, and stroking camels (the party was at a local petting zoo), I was scrambling around the "safari" wagon like I was after the money shot for National Geographic.

I kept it up the entire time.

Click. Click. Click. Distribute bottles and pellets for barnyard-feeding. Click click click. Order pizza. Click. Click. Click. Everyone on the pony rides. Click. Click. Click. All aboard the wagon. Click. Click. Click. Catch ostrich grabbing cup and chugging pellets. Click. Click. Click. Serve pizza. Click. Click. Click. Cake and candles. Click. Click. Drop dead from exhaustion.

Afterward, I realized I hadn't spent one free moment with either birthday boy. When I wasn't playing traffic cop, I was full-on recording.

In a way, I'd totally missed their freakin' birthday!

So now I'm wondering what else I've missed.  As a blogger, I am always writing, tweeting, Facebooking my observations. That means I'm not living in the current moment. I’m capturing the one that just passed.

And I'm not alone. Millions of other moms—and dads—are out there snapping, blogging, and video-logging their kids' milestones and antics. Now, as I blathered in a previous post, there's a positive side to all this. If you don't capture those first steps and words, it all gets buried in the mush of your poor, information-overloaded brain.

When you record it, you not only have a record to return to later, you also help cement your memory of it—as found by memory researchers. But there’s a price: Not only does your reality become more about the recording, but your reality may be altered by the recording.

Imagine if a bride had to videotape her own wedding. Walking down the aisle and cutting the cake would be more than a little awkward. And it would no longer be her day. It would be her guests' day. But I bet it's been done.

Just think of all the people Facebooking and tweeting their babies' births. I was one of thousands who followed Pregnant Jane (@HisBoysCanSwim) as she tweeted the birth of her son, Monkey, from the very first contraction to the big delivery. It was like my favorite show, "Birth Day," except on Twitter.

And our obsession with digital recording is only going to escalate as the technologies get smarter. As noted in a recent CNN article, Microsoft will soon be releasing a wearable digital camera, SenseCam, that auto-snaps your every action, 24/7. Think of the implications! Will we all become walking citizen journalists recording everything that we and others do? Swear, and it's on the record. Burp, and it's on the record. Everything you do and say can and will be used against you on the Web.

On the other hand, if you do want to record something, it'll be even easier. And we're all so addicted to documenting everything that I can't see us foregoing the recording equipment.

Consider my friend. She called me all gushing and aglow after her Capitol Hill event. But she had one complaint: "Nobody brought a camera," she wailed. "Not even one person. So now we've got no record of it at all."

But boy did she enjoy herself.

First Recollections: Spinning Stories into Memories

08/06/2009

It's a muggy Friday afternoon, and we're crossing the I-395 bridge in Washington, DC—in hot pursuit of a duck. Not the feathered kind. I'm talking about that giant duck-boat thing with wheels that takes people on tours. My three-year-old boys are bananas about it. I’d sort of been hoping they might miss it because once they see it, they're obsessed. Like right now, Punk is quacking and instructing me to go catch it.

"Oh no. He's getting away. After him!” he squeaks. “Fast-aw mommeee, fast-aw!"

Of course, my pursuit fails miserably because, well, this is DC, and traffic is always at a standstill. Nevertheless, I'm trying to get a GPS on the duck, some coordinates, anything, when I notice the black cloud billowing across the GW Parkway. "Looks like a storm ahead," I comment, absently, then immediately regret it because the boys start panicking.

"Oh, it'll just be a few drops of rain—nothing to worry about," I tell them.

Boy am I wrong.

About a half hour later, on I-270 approaching Frederick, we get hit by a borderline tornado. Womp, womp, womp. Sheets of rain smack the windshield, and our visibility goes poof. The only thing we can see—and hear—are branches pelting us from all sides. Somehow, Punk, having given up on the duck, is sleeping soundly through all this commotion, but not T-Rex. He's terrified, screaming, "I'm scared! I'm scared! What’s happening mommy?"

What’s happening? Mommy is white-knuckling the steering wheel, watching stones spin next to the driver’s-side window and something approximating a log whiz past the windshield.

But, somehow, I practically sing my response: "Oh, now, nothing to worry about honey." {Crack!} "It's just a little storm." {Crash!} "Just relax and enjoy the rain."{Thud!}

Clearly skeptical, T-Rex starts whacking Punk, trying to wake him up—to…share his discomfort, I guess. I quickly put a stop to that. But I do feel bad that T-Rex is so scared. And when we finally drive out of what felt like a bad acid trip, it occurs to me that this could be one of T-Rex's first memories. Maybe even his very first recollection.

I'm pretty sure I was around his age when I started my own mental record. Some of it is hazy, pleasant impressions from the farm we lived on. A cow licking my hand. Picking apples from the orchard. Swimming in the dam. But the clearest memories are of less-than-sunny events.

I don't mean anything seriously traumatic. Just regular-life unpleasantness that, as a kid, you're not expecting: getting a bee-sting on the eyelid that made my face swell up like a blowfish, for example. Sitting on my dad’s shoulders, projectile-vomiting into a trashcan after having tubes put in my ears. Or watching my favorite toy truck get run over by an octogenarian.

To see if others remember similar experiences, I did a highly unscientific, informal survey on Twitter. Tiny sample. Very qualitative.

Most respondents, in line with behavioral science research, recalled their first experiences from age two or three. Also squaring with research and with my first memories, they recalled standout happenings, departures from the daily routine: meeting a new sibling in the hospital, falling down the stairs, hiding in the depths of a closet when company arrived.

Why the amnesia before age two? Scientists explain that, during the first years of life, children learn language and recognition skills that lay the foundation for what we commonly know as memory, and what psychologists call "long-term memory." This is how we describe our personal conscious experiences.

Researchers also find that:

• We form our first significant memories when our sense of self begins to take shape.

• These first autobiographical memories are our own interpretations of what happened and may not reflect the actual events. Really, our long-term memory is part of how we define ourselves and make meaning of life.

• Culture plays a large role in our first memories. Research by University of New Hampshire psychologist Michelle Leichtman finds that in more individualist societies, like ours, recall starts earlier than in more collectivist Asian societies. Her explanation: Because personal stories are so important in our culture, adults feed children’s memory formation, discussing events with them in ways that build and reinforce their autobiographical memories.

 

On one level the adult reinforcement bit makes sense to me. But on another, I think we most vividly remember our pure emotional response, and by age three or four, we have the words to describe that response.

And on yet another level, some of us are the kid who was awake during the near-tornado. And some of us are the kid who slept through it.

But if adults have as much to do with shaping kids’ memories as scientists say we do, I’ll have to stop myself from mentioning that Friday-afternoon monsoon to T-Rex. Instead, I’ll try to bring it back to that dern duck—how next time we’re going to catch it, no matter what.