Memory and technology: Historical and developmental perspectives

This chapter conceptualizes some of the scaffolding relations between human biological memory capacities and technological artifacts. It starts by briefly characterizing different memory capacities, distinguishing between short-term and long-term memory, and then further distinguishing between episodic, semantic, and procedural long-term memory. Next, it conceptualizes memory artifacts as material objects or structures that function to scaffold their users in memory processes such as encoding, storing, retrieving, and reconstructing information about the past or about concepts. Having a basic understanding of memory capacities and memory artifacts, this chapter outlines how we use such artifacts on two distinct timescales, namely historically and developmentally. Historically, we began to scaffold our memory with the invention of iconic representations approximately 44,000 years ago, but possibly longer ago. Some of the key developments in the cultural evolution of memory artifacts are written language, numeral systems, diagrams, libraries, books, photographs, and computational artifacts. Developmentally, we begin to scaffold our memory capacities at the age of four to six and continue to do so throughout the various stages of our life, including childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and late adulthood.