This post has been cross-posted from my blog, Mneumozine, where I write about memory.

It's odd that Facebook makes us worried we can't forget enough, while Google makes us worried we'll forget too much. As I mentioned here, it's as if we don't even know what to be scared of when it comes to these new web technologies. We're just anxiety-ridden about the whole kit-and-kaboodle -- memory, forgetting, privacy, open source, transparency, anonymity. To me, at least, it feels like a "can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" situation that's actually sort of calming, both in its familiarity and its uncertainty.

The latest buzz this week has come from the tech swarm around Facebook's new Timeline feature, which I honestly haven't even broached yet. But I hear tell that it's literally a chronological record of everything you've ever posted to Facebook. Ever. In the history of your experience on the site. For me, that's about six years.

Whoa.

Without dwelling on that horrifying number, I want to turn to a tumblr post from the Village Voice's music editor, Maura Johnston, who jotted down some interesting reactions to the Timeline feature and what it means in the context of privacy and memory:

I think there's something to be said about the idea of personality development over time that makes me quite uneasy about Facebook's exuberance over being able to chronicle one's whole life on the service. What does that do to the notion of memory, the fuzziness of which can have helpful functions at times? There are people who have been on Facebook since their teens--how is their development into adulthood affected by their past being so present? Shouldn't people have the option to escape their pasts, or at least aspects of their pasts, if they're hindering their personal development? Obviously there are degrees of the latter ideal--I'm not saying, hey, get away with murder and then expunge that fact from your record with a control-X--but I feel like the idea of having your whole life at your fingertips can be a bit of a trap, and can cause old patterns to persist for longer than they should.

My first reaction to this is to wonder how exactly development is (or is not) affected across the lifespan by what you might perhaps call a hyper-salient past?

I'll do some digging and report back on that question.

In the meantime, I also wonder how much features like Facebook's Timeline are something we should actually worry about versus just something whose novelty we should acknowledge makes us feel "quite uneasy." After all, it's ok to be uneasy about new things, especially when their potential consequences are tough to evaluate.

I think Maura is right to point out that the "fuzziness" of memory "can have helpful functions at time." That gets right back at this recurring theme that memory is actually a highly selective process (as opposed to accretive) and -- with the exception of some relatively minor social fumbles that occur when your memory decides to filter out someone's name, birthday, etc., -- that's a good thing. Facebook wasn't around when I was in middle school but if it was, man oh man, would I desperately want Facebook to do me the mercy of letting me forget it.

But that desire right there is what I think is most interesting about Maura's post and about this whole Facebook timeline concept. I have a much younger sister, we're talking almost nine years here, and Facebook was around when she was in middle school, which was less than two years ago. So, not only is the question: how does a hyper-salient past affect my cohort's development, if we can recall a time when the past, our previous selves, weren't so hyper-salient? But also: how does a hyper-salient past affect my sister's cohort, who probably won't remember a time in which there was no public record of every sort of person you've ever been?

To give a blunt example, if you used to be fat before the advent of Facebook (B.F.) but now you're thin and you don't want anyone to see that you were ever fat, no one has to. But if you used to be fat after the advent of Facebook (A.F.*), there's a pretty public record that, at the very least, your immediate friends can always unkindly remind you of. How does that affect say, self esteem, in the two different cohorts I outlined? Or as Maura mentioned, how might that affect habit patterns?

For me, and everyone older than me, maybe that makes for a few nasty situations. Of course that could happen any time someone or something from the past ruffles up some conveniently forgotten memories because they knew you in a so-called past life. But what if everyone younger than me habituates to the constant availability of a partially-public development timeline and instead of CHANGING EVERYTHING, it barely changes anything?

And once we get used to how Facebook helps us remember, what if one day our timeline gets lost. What will we be worried about then?

*heh - lame, I know.

Photo Credit: olga.palma via Wikimedia Commons