
How False Memories Shape Personal Identity
What does it mean to remember?
As more time passes, each memory becomes a recollection of a recollection, distorting with every iteration like a game of telephone.
As more time passes, each memory becomes a recollection of a recollection, distorting with every iteration like a game of telephone.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: The sand underfoot is white enough to seem like a deliberate cliché. The granules are so fine that each footstep squeaks. The shallows are (of course) a tropical blue-green—enough to make us forget we’re in British Columbia. White foam tops the big rollers coming in off the open ocean. There is nothing between us and Japan.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: There were then two glowing screens atop my desk; three, if you count my yappy little phone. I was a magazine editor at the time—or, as we now say, a “content creator.” Yet I spent my days not so much creating content as reacting to it.
This tiny jellyfish managed to sidestep death and achieve what so many centuries of human culture have romanticized: immortality.
The way we organize our intimate, physical space has a lasting relationship with the way we think and experience life.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: Can you control your dreams? According to Dr. Stephen LaBerge, a world-renowned Stanford University psychophysiologist and an authority on lucid dreaming, the answer is yes.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: As an activity that takes up a large proportion of our time, getting a job that doesn’t send you over the brink of insanity is probably a good thing. But given that most people tend to have several occupations over the course of their lives, you’re almost assured to have to endure at least one or two tough jobs.
What can memes tell us about Gen Z, the most socially conscious and digitally connected generation?
It is clear that fame is changing—influence for the sake of influence is becoming a business model as a result of social media, where fortunes are made by commodifying personalities and popularity is birthed by algorithms.