Digital Science Fiction

by Mark Aragona

It seems that the human mind doesn't want to work harder than it has to. Studies are showing that our easy access to search engines is affecting our ability to recall information: we are less likely to remember something if we know we can find it online.

Researchers from the University of Columbia, Harvard, and University of Wisconsin conducted psychology experiments on a group of participants to test how memory works. In one trial, they found that volunteers are more likely to remember trivia if they thought they would not be able to research it online later on. Researchers concluded that they "don't make the effort to remember" if they knew they could look up the information.

A second memory experiment also showed that participants are more likely to remember where important data is stored in a computer than what that information is. "That kind of blew my mind," says lead author Dr. Betsy Sparrow.

According to Sparrow, the Internet functions as a "trans-active memory" which people have come to depend on to store information for them. Trans-active memory is nothing new-we've been doing the same thing for centuries through books and other people. Scholars and experts, for example, have been entrusted with and are expected to retain certain specialized data. In more social terms, we rely on our own spouse or partner to remember important dates and events for us. We leverage other people's memories for our own benefit.

The Internet is a game-changer because it provides a vast amount of information within easy reach.

On one hand, storing information digitally may just be a good way to ensure it can be accurately recollected later on. After all, we have a tendency to forget, be selective about, or even subconsciously alter our memories according to our convenience.

On the other hand, it does tend to make us lazy. Would that mean that general education is less valuable, because most of what we want to know is just a Google search away? And with the advent of Intenet Protocol version 6 and mass storage, the web will have a seemingly bottomless capacity for keeping the information it receives on a daily basis. How will all that affect our ability to remember? Will long-term memory eventually decline as online technology grows?

Morever, if the Internet can affect our memory, what about other thought processes, say analysis or critical thinking? What about social intelligence? Or even just the ability to form a personal opinion? If we continually rely on the Internet to remember for us, will we eventually come to rely on it to tell us what to think?

by Stefan Abrutat

Combining movie genres has been a Hollywood trademark since Abbott and Costello first goosed Frankenstein. (I can't remember if they did or not, but it's a notion that's certainly entertaining me, so perhaps they should've).

The movie industry borrowed the idea from the literary tendency to categorize fiction into different types, but I don't think the division really applies in this more fleeting of mediums. Movies are over in a couple of hours, whereas novels stay with us for much longer. For me, if the literary genre is romance, for example, I'm about ready to eat a gun barrel during the typical female protagonist's first agonizingly contemplative daydream about the object of her fantasy's biceps or brawny chest. I don't have to sit through such protracted stuff in movies, thank Christ, or you might hear about me on the evening news.

See, I'm personally of the belief that a genre shouldn't define a particular movie. I've never understood when someone says they don't like horror movies, or fantasy films, or high school flicks, or whatever. To me, a good movie is a good movie; I don't care what genre the marketing gurus have shoe-horned it into.

Genres are a marketing tool designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator of movie-goer; the kind that mindlessly inhales popcorn by the bucket and requires a picture to paw at on a drool-flecked fast food menu. These blank, grunting boneheads are the reason staggeringly bad movies like Transformers 3 get enthusiastically thrust upon us.

If a movie is well-written, beautifully shot, and superbly acted, what's not to like? If such criteria can't hold your attention, I strongly suspect you're firmly entrenched in the demographic I've just been describing.

This latest genre mashup is Cowboys and Aliens, which carries the quadruple stamp of being helmed by the capable Jon Favreau (Ironman, Ironman 2, Elf) and produced by Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Brian Grazer. That's quite a bucket of talent, but I start to get nervous when I see another TWELVE producers attached, not to mention FIVE screenwriters. There's collaboration, then there's groupthink.

So I'm looking forward to this offering with a little more trepidation than I expected, which is probably a good thing. I think it's actually better to underestimate a movie going in, so you're pleasantly surprised by the event itself. And if a movie is bigger and better than its trailers (which more and more movies are doing nowadays; teasing the audience rather than aggregating the best bits into those two minutes: see the Super 8 trailers, for example) that feeling of value for money caps the movie-going experience. I'm certainly getting that teaser feeling from the Cowboys and Aliens trailers, which hints at rather more than shows there's big things contained within. I most certainly hope so.

Cowboys and Aliens opens on July 29th.