Contextless screen experiences erase memory traces, unlike identity-linked ones.

Evidence

The question what time pattern a visit to the cinema leaves behind is instructive here. It seems that contextual conditions and the subjective meaning the film has for the moviegoer exert a decisive influence. This might actually also give us a crucial clue to an explanation of the television paradox: my conjecture is that in the case of television (and computer games) memory traces are erased so quickly because the experience is, first, desensualized and, second, as a rule decontextualized. Desensualization means here that it is exclusively sight and hearing that are addressed, while tactile sensations, smells (which are, as is well-known, of great significance for long-term memories), and tastes are absent. In addition, all stimuli come from a narrow, spatially limited “window.” Relevant studies have shown that the degree of neural activation and brain functioning is, when compared to other activities, altered or limited. Nevertheless it seems to me that the phenomenon of decontextualization is of even greater importance here: what happens on the screen does not stand in any relation to the rest of our experiences, moods, needs, desires, etc., and does not react to them; it is, in the narrative context of our life, almost completely “contextless” or unsituated and therefore cannot be transformed into the experiential constituents of our own identity and life history. They are stories of strangers without any internal connection to what we are doing before or afterward or what we believe ourselves to be, so “nothing remains behind.” Things are different when, in contrast, such connections can be made: for instance, to Star Wars fans who live with and through their heroes, collect the memorabilia, read magazines, etc., watching the newest episode is not contextless. It can be narratively assimilated into the horizon of their life and identity with ease. So it stands to reason that in such cases the television or cinema experience follows the short-long pattern. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 403

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Television consumption creates dense experience that leaves no memory trace. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 400; Experience requires narrative embedding unavailable in accelerating modern life. — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 408; Humans become antiquated because meaning-processing cannot keep pace with change — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 432 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Screen activity races time at both ends yet erases memory #corroborates (0.93) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 813
• Total visibility and memorialization destroy an object’s power to trigger involuntary memory #corroborates (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 172
• Digital memory lacks the living, retranscribed temporality of real memory #complicates (0.75)
• Task-related fMRI subtraction can erase the very activity it aims to measure. #corroborates (0.75)