Stored in memory
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Facebook doesn’t tell me it’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow anymore. I have to remember it for myself. It’s one of a handful of dates I’ve collected during my life that I can’t forget. Like the others, it’s etched on my memory along with the birthdays of all those I’ve ever been close to, and all the dates where something significant happened that somehow changed my life. Take away my phone and turn off my computer and I’ll still tell you when it is and why that matters. But that’s not true for everything else.
Technology has limited my ability to memorise the things I used to. Everything is stored in digital memory now, called up on a screen on demand with a minimum of effort. I don’t need phone numbers anymore; just names. I don’t need dates; I have reminders. Addresses are pins on a virtual map with blue lines plotting my fastest route. Everything I need to know is a few taps away. I needn’t trouble my brain for any of it.
Before I had a mobile phone on which to call them, I could remember the addresses, birthdays and phone numbers of everyone I knew. I can still remember those details for people who haven’t been in my life for years, but I couldn’t tell you my current landline number without checking.
I don’t need to call many of those people now. I don’t need to write. Visiting would be pointless in most cases, since the people living at the addresses I have memorised wouldn’t know me. I know my friends’ houses by sight. I find them by landmarks instead of numbers. I phone them by name. I write to them on a screen and post things by tapping send. My email apps finish single line addresses so I don’t have to. Everything is instant and effortless. Everything is mindless. And that bothers me. Quite aside from the fact I’m not exercising my brain the way I used to, it feels less personal somehow. Once I’ve added them on WhatsApp, I know as much about someone I’ve just met as someone I consider myself close to. I can learn more about a Facebook friend I met in passing than a family member I’ve known since birth.
Since he passed away, my dad’s Facebook page has become ‘in memoriam’. It’s not so much a profile anymore as a place to look at the few memories he shared with the world. There aren’t many. Despite a vague fascination with technology and online trends, he didn’t use social media much. He had accounts on all the big ones, many of which I didn’t know about until I found them after he died. A much younger version of me is even stood next to him in the profile picture of one of those I discovered. He followed me on all of them. It’s the sum total of everything he did on most of them. On Facebook, I see a handful of pictures and the last few years’ worth of birthday messages. That’s about it. It’s not much of a memoriam. The footprint he left on the world may not have been huge, but he was more than that profile page admits. And I remember the finer details of it better than anything technology has given me since.
Tomorrow, my dad would have been sixty-six. I don’t need Facebook to remind me. He’s in my memory.