Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue
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Self-Improvising Memory: A Perspective on Memories as Agential, Dynamically Reinterpreting Cognitive Glue
Human memory is not an archive. It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose.
Our sense of who we are depends, in significant part, on our memories. And yet they’re not to be trusted. ‘What is selected as a personal memory,’ writes Professor of psychology and neuroscience Giuliana Mazzoni, ‘needs to fit the current idea that we have of ourselves.’
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Kei Kreutler, in Artificial Memory and Orienting Infinity, reframes cultural memory systems—rituals, archives, architectures—not as storehouses of facts, but as technologies of orientation. Their purpose is to help agents navigate an overwhelming and shifting landscape of relevance. Memory in this sense is not for preservation but for direction—for
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