Thursday, July 1, 2010

Introduction

In the essay “ Shame and Forgetting in the Information Age”, the author Charles Baxter not only arranged a very circumspect reading structure to make an approach to the topic in analyzing his vexation towards the “narrative dysfunction”, but also organized a pretty continuous relation net. Just as all of us, of course including Baxter he himself can clearly see the increasing significant role of data memory that even dominating many people’s entire brain. As a result, the portion of memory left for the experience is in a inferior strength position. The most prevail way of data remembrance has impact almost every people’s perception, and then emotion. They believe forgetfulness is unforgivable and habitually result in a mood of shame. This consequences aroused by the info-glut is rather contagious that make a miserable skills dealing with shame and forgetfulness when transforming experiment memory. That is, a standard symptom of the “narrative dysfunction”and “strategic amnesia” involved in the everyday social life. Many people have lost a competent ability in telling a story while is also being reflected in those criticized memoirs. These facts, I think, comsist the stimulation for Baxter to appeal to people to remain a natural way of remembering and expression under the huge pressure of information inflation.At last, as a conclusion and also a motif, human brain has its advantage that could never be replaced
Quotes:
1.“ Forgetting was shameful to him, and he felt it marked his life.”(141)
2. “ A proliferation of information causes information-inflation.That is,every individual piece of information loses some value given the sheer quality of other information.”(146)
3. “ Remembering data and remembering an experience are two very different activities.”(146)
4. “ In an information age, forgetfulness is a sign of debility and incompetence. It is taken as weakness, an emblem of losing one’s grip.”(147)
5. “ ...the explosion of information in the Modern Age is denying us something precious: “ the ability to exchange experiences.” That is storytelling.”(149)
6. “ His implication is that the coming information- glut will force experience -and storytelling generally - into a corner and additionally force it to resort extremes.”(149)
7. “ Forgetting and shame might just serve, under the immediate surface of consciousness, as an escape route of sorts.”(150)
8. “ The memoir is the memory’s revenge upon info-glut.”(151)
9. “If any writer can tell the story of his or her life,s/he has a chance of escaping from the suffering of a dysfunctional personal narrative.”(152)
10. “Shame comes the first, but strategic forgetting follows closely behind.”(153)
11. “ All the computers in the world cannot remedy it.”(157)

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