As the deadline for our project draws nearer, I've been thinking a lot about the word memory and the different types of memory that exist. Of course, we have been comparing the human memory to technological memory, but I've been thinking more about perspective and more specifically dreams.

Perspective on a memory can vary over time and from consciousness to subconsciousness.  Dreams are basically a memory that is altered by our subconscious.  Whatever we want that memory to mean to us is how we view it in our dreams.  A dream can be a memory, exactly how we experienced it, or can exist in fragments, as a catalyst of events for the rest of the dream.  

There are also memories that we choose to forget and those that reoccur, whether we want them to or not.  There are also the memories that we forget and are triggered, maybe many years later by our senses.  I experienced this recently at an arboretum on Long Island.  I had completely forgotten I had been there as a child.  As I walked the trails, I had no recollection of the day until I walked through a house onto a wrap around porch that looked out onto the Connetquot River.  I was suddenly 6 years old again.  When I walked through the branches of the giant willow tree, among the hundreds of carvings, I saw a heart, bearing the names of my aunt and uncle, who had accompanied  me to the arboretum that day.  This gave my vague memory validity.

This also brings me to another point.  If a memory changes over time, then what validates it?  Another person's account of the story, a scene, a picture, a sound, a smell?  Things that can validate a memory could also be the same things that can discredit it.  How often do people argue over details of a specific event?

There are also big events that impact a wide range of people, such as the assassination of JFK or 9/11.  Everyone has a different memory of the event that they can specifically recall.  Often, people are asked "Where were you when...?"  Showing that memory has a specific place in our lives, in society and in history.

Can we call this a variation on a memory?  A collective memory that varies from person to person.

I hope to develop these ideas a little more as we delve further and further into this project