Memory and historical knowledge sustain resistance to engineered control.

Evidence

Memory and horizontal alliances are two hallmarks of individuality. In Westworld, humans maintain the hosts’ docility by periodically wiping their memories, keeping them effectively trapped in the present. Indeed, the show’s drama originates when aberrant hosts become able to access memories from past lives, allowing them not only to connect the dots about how they are being used, but to recognize old kinships with other hosts that exist outside of their given narratives. We should not be surprised, then, that Walden Two prohibits members from discussing the Code with each other, or that the study of history has been dispensed with entirely. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 189

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism — memory + horizontal alliance = individuality — is a compact theory of what makes an attention economy’s time-compression (no history, no lateral bonds) dangerous. Top-tier density.