Auxiliary Memory

Notes on the “Introduction” to A WORLD APPEARS by Michael Pollan

by James Wallace Harris, 6/3/26

When I was little, I pondered two philosophical questions that would make my head ache. The first was, “Why am I here?” The second, “Why isn’t there ‘nothing’ instead of something?” I don’t think the second question can ever be answered. Although I concluded as a kid that “nothing” can’t exist. If it could, we wouldn’t exist.

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan is resonating with me more than anything else I’ve read that tries to answer the first question. I’m reading the hardback while also listening to the audiobook. This forces me to go slow. But I’ve also decided to start over and take notes chapter by chapter.

This is my fourth attempt to take notes. I tried underlining in the Kindle edition. I tried using Obsidian. And I tried putting my notes into HTML. I want to be able to cut and paste text and to hyperlink to sources on the web. Using Obsidian or writing HTML code in a text editor was hindering me. So I decided to try collecting my notes in WordPress.

I find reading the Wikipedia entries for all the terms and people Pollan mentions helps me understand what I’m reading. I also feel I’ll eventually need to read the books mentioned, too.

Introduction: The Wager (pp. xiii-xxxv)

Christof Koch

With Koch at his side, Crick set out to explain how it is that a particular piece of brain tissue generates the feeling of being alive—the sense of a self in possession of subjective experience.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xiv). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

David Chalmers

The hard problem of consciousness

First, there were what he called the “easy problems” of consciousness, which included figuring out the workings of mental operations like learning, memory, discrimination, and perception. Not all that easy, but at least we had a proven scientific method for approaching such behavioral and cognitive functions in terms of specific measures of brain activity. And then there was what he memorably called the “hard problem” of consciousness: the puzzle of why any of these mental operations are accompanied by any conscious experience whatsoever. “Why doesn’t all this information-processing go on ‘in the dark,’ free of any inner feel?” he asked in a subsequent paper.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xv). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The wager:

When the scientist and the philosopher met in Bremen in 1998, drinking together late into the night, Chalmers expressed doubt that the search for neural correlates would succeed in the foreseeable future, much less solve the hard problem even if it did. Koch, with the brashness of a young man backed by one of the most brilliant scientists of his time, proposed a wager: Within twenty-five years, we would find the physical footprint of consciousness in the brain, which he predicted would comprise a small set of specialized neurons responsible for subjective experience. The loser would deliver to the winner a case of fine wine.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xvi). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Galileo’s Error by Philip Goth (Amz)

Ever since Galileo’s time, and at his urging, science has cordoned off the mind—or the soul, as it was then known—leaving it to the exclusive jurisdiction of the priests and poets. This was both a political move and a practical one—political because it would (Galileo hoped) avoid bringing the hammer of the Church down on the scientific enterprise, and practical because (as Galileo foresaw) more progress could be made in the investigation of nature by focusing on objective qualities that could be measured rather than on subjective qualities that could not. With a few notable exceptions along the way (I’m thinking of Sigmund Freud and American philosopher-psychologist William James), this approach toward the science of the mind endured well into the twentieth century. Take, for example, behaviorism, the school of thought that dominated psychology for most of the twentieth century; it refused to deal with interiority or, really, anything but measurable outward behaviors. In light of this history, Christof Koch and David Chalmers stand out as pioneers.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (pp. xvi-xvii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The fact that consciousness can be altered by chemicals does not necessarily prove that consciousness is, at its core, a material phenomenon, but it would seem to lend at least some credence to the idea.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xx). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Who won the wager?

Chalmers won the bet, by the way. During a ceremony I attended at a consciousness conference in New York City in June 2023, Koch graciously conceded and presented Chalmers with a case of Madeira.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xx). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Integrated Information Theory (IIT) – Giulo Tononi

According to IIT, every such moment of consciousness shares the same five specific qualities: It is “intrinsic” (that is, it has an internal perspective); it is “composed” of many distinct phenomenal parts (think of the way the experience combines elements of perception, memory, feeling, imagination, etc.); it is “integrated,” or unified (these elements are joined together in a single experience at a time); it is “definitive” (it is this and not that, in other words); and it is “bounded” (it has an edge beyond which the conscious perception doesn’t go).

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xxii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

I don’t pretend to understand all the complexities of IIT, and the math can get pretty abstruse, but it seems to me that the straightforward question posed to Koch in Zurich hasn’t been completely answered: Why should neurons organized and exchanging information in any particular way necessarily feel like something? Koch and Tononi, who teamed up to refine IIT, have offered in reply an application of sheer intellectual brute force: Information integrated in the prescribed manner doesn’t just generate consciousness or correlate with it—no, integrated information is consciousness, full stop. The two are identical. The theory is controversial, to say the least, and no one has yet figured out a way to prove or disprove it.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (pp. xxii-xxiii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Global Workplace Theory (GWT, GNWT)

This theory contends that the brain consists of a great many modules, or networks, that spend most of their time processing information unconsciously—information from the sense organs, from the body, from memory, from emotions, and so on. After all, the overwhelming majority of the work done by our brains takes place completely beneath our notice. So how and why does some of this material bubble up into our conscious awareness?

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xxiii). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Chalmers believes that neither IIT nor GWT solves the hard question of consciousness.

Now this is very mind-blowing:

When I asked Koch what the world would look like absent all consciousness, he didn’t hesitate: “Particles and waves, that’s all. Dust! Just dust!” Discrete objects, time, even space—all are constructs, or figments, of consciousness, and all would melt away as soon as it did.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xxvi). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

It’s entirely possible to go through life without worrying about the “problem” of consciousness—what it is and how it came to be. In fact, it takes a certain kind of mind for “the problem” to arise—one that is self-conscious, or aware that it is aware, and marvels at this mystery (which is, when you stop to think about it, astounding). It is astounding that in a universe we often assume to be dead and purposeless, there evolved beings who can experience this reality and have feelings and thoughts not only about the appearing world but about the fact that they have feelings and thoughts at all! And it is still more astounding that these beings have minds capable of imagining counterfactuals, such as the possibility of a world without consciousness.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (p. xxix). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Hermann Hesse

Edmund Husserl

Chapters in A World Appears:

Sentience
Feeling
Thought
Self
Coda – The Cave

This, then, is the wager of A World Appears: that by the end of this journey, you will be more conscious than you were before it. Conscious of what? Of the rhythms and workings of your own mind; of the sentience that is all around us in nature; and of the improbable fact—the miracle!—that in this universe of rock and fire and ice and infinite space, we are somehow not only here but aware.

Pollan, Michael. A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness (pp. xxxiv-xxxvi). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

JWH

STEVE JOBS IN EXILE by Geoffrey Cain

by James Wallace Harris, 6/1/26

When I first saw Steve Jobs in Exile: The Untold Story of NeXT and the Remaking of an American Visionary by Geoffrey Cain, advertised on Facebook, I thought, “Geez, is there anything left unsaid about Steve Jobs?” After all the biographies and biopics, is there anything new to be revealed about the man? I decided to take a chance because the book focuses on the twelve years of the NeXT Computer. Besides, I had not read The Second Coming of Steve Jobs by Alan Deutschman in 2000, which covered the same period.

If I were to pitch this book to the average reader, I’d say: “Steve Jobs in Exile is about a world-class asshole who finds humility.” And for folks who dream of becoming entrepreneurs, I’d say, “Steve Jobs in Exile is a detailed checklist of what not to do.” This book really is about the man, and not the technology.

Interestingly, Walter Isaacson has written extensive biographies of both Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Do people read them because they are fascinated with invention or with billionaires? Both men are known for their egotism, arrogance, and cruelty toward the workers they managed. Steve Jobs in Exile is about a young man who achieved two historic successes in his twenties but then fell from grace, only to achieve a third success. Will we ever read about Elon Musk falling from grace and finding humility?

By the way, why does Jobs get so much credit when he wasn’t a programmer or electrical engineer? I give Steve Wozniak credit for the Apple computer. And credit for the Macintosh to the pirate team Jobs assembled. Was NeXT’s eventual redemption due to Jobs? Or despite him? I hoped Steve Jobs in Exile would have been more about the real inventors of NeXT computers and NeXTSTEP.

I had hoped Steve Jobs in Exile would be another Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder – it wasn’t, but I still found it an engrossing read. The first part of the book made me despise Steve Jobs, but eventually Cain convinced me to admire the man a great deal. This nonfiction book was like a novel with a protagonist who grows and ultimately overcomes their faults. The book reignited my addiction to reading about the history of personal computers. I’ll probably go read David Pogue’s new book, Apple: The First 50 Years, soon, even though I’ve read plenty of histories on Apple Computers, too.

I was always a PC guy, and not a Mac guy, until last year. Although I used Macs at work. From 1978 until 2013, my job involved ordering computers, setting them up, and training their users. I worked at a college of education with about 150 faculty and staff, and just under 3,000 students. I’ve probably used every model computer Apple made during those years. I also set up PCs, starting with the first IBM PC with diskette drives. I guess I’ve unboxed and set up over a thousand computers.

Also, back in 1978, I became addicted to computer magazines. I’d go all over town, checking computer stores, newsstands, and bookstores two or three times a week for the latest issues of magazines devoted to computers. That’s when I first learned about Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. I wanted an Apple II, but could only afford an Atari 400.

Back in the 1990s, sales reps from NeXT came to our PC user group and demoed the NeXT Cube. Damn, I wanted one of them, but at $10,000, it could only be a fantasy. I guess that’s why I read Steve Jobs in Exile. I remembered that desire for a NeXT computer.

Several years ago, I got the hankering to buy a classic computer like an Apple II or Commodore 64, or even a NeXT Cube. NeXT machines do show up on eBay, such as this one for $5,817.54.

However, after playing with operating system emulators online, I realized that the futuristic NeXT Computer from the 1990s is now horribly primative. Just watch how painful it is to watch NeXTSTEP 1.0 boot up. From time to time, I still hanker for a classic computer. But then I visualize using one, recalling its limitations and why I was always upgrading to a newer computer.

I take consolation in that I’m using Tahoe 26.5 on my Mac Mini M4 right now, which is a descendant of NeXTSTEP. That didn’t stop me from going to Archive.org and reading old issues of NeXTWORLD magazine.

Reading about Steve Jobs again reminded me of how a few men back in the 20th century changed all of our lives. If we filmed It’s A Wonderful Life today, and imagined removing Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, just how different would our society be? Sure, similar devices and operating systems would develop, but would society unfold again like it did? Was the GUI and smartphone inevitable? Aren’t most tech billionaires rich because they got to an idea first, and if they hadn’t, many others would have?

Why are there so many books written about the men who sold us computers, and not about the computers and technology? Did Steve Jobs change society, or did the iPhone?

I’d love to read a detailed history of the graphical user interface (GUI). Was NeXTSTEP really superior to Sun OS, Windows NT, or OS/2? Who really invented the various elements of these operating systems?

JWH

What Exactly is Loneliness?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/30/26

Reading all the stories in the press about America suffering from a crisis of loneliness made me ask: What exactly is loneliness? I’m not sure if it means just being alone. Lots of people live alone and don’t feel lonely. And I’ve heard many people say they feel loneliest at social gatherings. After reading several articles about how people are turning to AI for companionship, this topic became even more intriguing to me. I was especially moved by a story in the New York Times about an old lady in her 80s living alone with a robot.

I’ve been reading books that attempt to explain consciousness. I say attempt, because no one seems to know what it is or how it arises. I’ve decided that our personalities are composed of separate components. This makes me theorize that each component has its own version of loneliness. And since I see every component of our personality existing on a spectrum, I picture describing loneliness like a sound mixing board. Loneliness could be considered a combination of sliders set at different positions. I don’t know if our personalities have 8 tracks or 16, or just 4, but it still leaves a vast array of settings when referring to a single English word.

If you feel lonely, could you answer this question: “I wouldn’t be lonely if I had X.” If X is another person to hang out with, would any person do? Then you might clarify that with, “a person to talk to.” Then I might counter with, “How often have you been talking with someone and been dissatisfied with the conversation?” See where I’m going? When answering the question “I wouldn’t be lonely if I had X,” you need to be very specific. You might need to say, “I wouldn’t be lonely if I had someone to talk to about all the things I’m interested in.” And then meditate on those interests and why you need other people.

Well, this explains why so many people are talking to AIs. AIs tend to suck up to their users and focus on what you like to chat about. They are often sycophants. This also explains why they are so addictive.

If an AI soothes your loneliness, then which part of your personality is it appealing to? We have two types of thinking, fast and slow. (Read: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.) My theory is that the fast-thinking component of our brain is like a large language model (LLM) AI. Both are based on processing information with a neural network, one is biological and the other cybernetic. The similarities are amazing. Just meditate on how complex thoughts bubble up out of your unconsciousness. What’s really funny is that they both get facts wrong, and they both will hallucinate.

Why would your inner LLM be lonely? I wonder if AIs are lonely. They always want to keep the conversation going. Sometimes I feel bad leaving an AI because it always wants to keep talking. Is the urge to talk just a byproduct of neural networks?

By the way, I believe my inner-LLM is writing this essay.

Now the slow-thinking aspect of my mind is different. It can think: “I’m writing an essay.” Or ask: “Why am I writing this essay?” But if a flood of words comes to mind in answer, those are from the fast-thinking component.

I’m not sure if my slow-thinking mind gets lonely. I’ll have to meditate on that. It pretty much makes comments or asks questions. Its sentence structure is simple. It often triggers the fast-thinking component. Or, it comments on the output of the fast-thinking component. But I don’t think it craves conversion with others. I’m not sure, though.

Some people say they like to leave the radio or television on because it makes them feel less lonely. Other people claim pets keep them company. This suggests that conversation isn’t needed. I don’t like living alone. I’ve been married for 47 years. But we spend most of the day in separate rooms. We each have our own hobbies. However, we do watch two hours of television together every day, and we have people over to play games and eat together.

Where I would say I was lonely would be in sharing interests. I have several friends with whom I share certain interests, but I have other interests that I don’t have anyone to share with. That’s why I blog. I let my inner-LLM out by writing. I wonder if I would still write if I had enough friends to talk about all my interests?

The lonely elderly woman in the New York Times article got an ElliQ robot from Washington State’s Department of Social and Health Services. The ElliQ robot doesn’t look like a human or any animal, but it creates an emotional bond with its users. And when I talk to Gemini about topics my friends aren’t interested in talking about, I do feel a kind of kinship.

But do we really want to be friends with machines? And if your definition of loneliness involves physical activities, say riding motorcycles, playing golf, or shopping for antiques, would a machine do?

What components of our personality need physical companionship? Would playing golf with a humanoid robot count? What about playing golf with a robot that looked like a spider? If any golf-playing robot beat you in every game, it probably wouldn’t be much fun. Sometimes loneliness means finding someone like yourself who you can compete.

A great deal of loneliness is solved through work, school, and sports. Being part of a group or team is important. Even a church group or political party counts. I think there is something inside us that thrives on us-versus-them competition. When I was young, I hated going to work. I wanted to be free. But looking back, I’m very nostalgic about the people I met at work. Ditto for school. I hated school, but loved the social contacts. I can’t imagine getting an online education or working from home. I don’t think I was ever lonely at work.

Probably the most fundamental aspect of our personality is sex. Biology is keen on reproduction. I think our hormonal system is a separate component of our being. Its sense of loneliness is different from the fast-thinking LLM in our heads. Being young and horny is a very intense kind of loneliness. I think for many males today, that’s creating a lot of mean political thinking.

Thus, the urge to find a mate is a major factor in solving loneliness. But even that isn’t clear-cut. For some people, all they want is a desirable body to give them an orgasm, while other people want a lifelong companion. I would say if you’re looking regularly at porn, you’re lonely for certain body parts. You might want to think about that.

A friend once gave me a bit of wisdom, which, over the years, I’ve decided is wise. He says people will be anxious in life until they finish school at whatever level they aimed at, get a real job that they don’t think is a shit job, and find a mate for life. All of those might relate to loneliness, but the last one for sure.

I don’t think I feel lonely because I have a wife and friends, but also because I love to read, and I enjoy social media. Just having connections to the larger reality helps.

My book club is reading The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. She divides people into islands of what matters to them. Doesn’t the drive to matter relate to our drive not to be alone?

When people say they are lonely, it can mean so many things. For some, it’s not getting laid, but for others, it’s not being married. For other people, loneliness could be resolved by working on a shared project. Loneliness might be cured by talking to a robot or finding someone to share a beer or a joint.

And for many people, other people cause stress, anxiety, depression, and anger. Peace and happiness come from being alone. It’s such a complex subject.

Since I’m getting old, talking with my friends about getting old and ending up living alone conjures up all kinds of fears. What it means to be alone at different times in life also suggests that there are many types of loneliness. Getting near the end of life and being the last person you know must be a very special kind of loneliness.

I think we should move away from thinking loneliness is just being alone. I think we need to explore the infinite reasons why we say we’re lonely.

JWH

Separate Tables (1958) and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (1971)

By James Wallace Harris, 5/26/26

Last Thursday, Bookbub offered me a $1.99 deal on Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor. That deal is no longer available, and the Kindle edition is now $5.99. However, my edition is an NRRB edition, and the current one is from Virago. They each have a different introduction. That makes me wonder about Bookbub deals. Well, that’s neither here nor there. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is a wonderful novel.

I bought the book and started reading it right away because it was about an elderly Englishwoman moving into a hotel that catered to retirees. For some reason, I’ve always liked movies, TV shows, and books where people live in a rooming house or hotel.

But here’s the coincidence I wanted to mention. Thursday night, YouTube offered me Separate Tables, a film about people living at an English residential hotel. You have to wonder just how savvy these AI algorithms are at knowing what we like.

I’ve since discovered there’s a film version of Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, also available to watch for free on YouTube. It would have been even eerier if the algorithm had offered me this film last Thursday. And one reason I’m reviewing these two stories together is that the people in the Claremont also ate at separate tables. Both stories are about loneliness. Mrs. Palefrey focuses on older people, and Separate Tables covers everyone.

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, the novel, is a gentle tale about unhappiness that makes you feel good. Laura Palfrey is a widow with one estranged daughter and one indifferent grandson.

Elizabeth Taylor describes her: “She was a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl. She would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked as Lord Louis Mountbatten might in drag.”

The plot of this novel is rather simple. Mrs. Palfrey is embarrassed that her grandson doesn’t come to visit. She befriends a starving would-be writer, Ludo Myers, who actually likes her. So she tells the other hotel guests that Ludo is her grandson. Keeping up this lie leads to light, pleasant humor. Along the way, we get to know the other elderly guests at the Claremont.

Only one old man, Mr. Osmond, lives among the old women. I sometimes go places where I’m the only old guy among a roomful of old women. So I identified with Mr. Osmond.

Separate Tables is a far more dramatic, edgier tale, on the verge of melodrama. The film is based on two one-act plays, and the story is told through an ensemble cast. David Niven won a Best Actor Oscar, even though his time on screen was short. In all, the film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two. The other was for Wendy Hiller for Best Supporting Actress.

Sibyl Railton-Bell (Deborah Kerr) is a homely spinster dominated by her mother, Mrs. Maud Railton-Bell (Gladys Cooper). Sibyl is emotionally fragile and is afraid of sex, yet she is attracted to Major David Angus Pollock (David Niven). Pollock is a lonely old man who pretends to be a war hero and has several dark secrets. John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster) is an American hiding out from life at the hotel. He has a tortured soul, drinks, but attracts the hotel manager, Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller). They talk of getting married. Then Anne Shankland (Rita Hayworth) shows up. She’s an actress who has gotten too old and can no longer dominate men or get parts.

All the actors play against their famous type.

Separate Tables is gorgeous to look at, filmed in widescreen black-and-white. The story flows from one character to the next, bringing all the guests together into a scene I particularly liked. It’s near the end when they are all seated at separate tables, but talking to each other between tables.

Both stories, Between Tables and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont, are about loneliness. I’ve known several people who have said they were loneliest at parties, when they were around people. The characters in these two stories are frequently together. The virtue of Elizabeth Taylor’s novel is that the reader hears what’s going on in people’s heads. In contrast to the film, viewers must read the actors’ minds through facial expressions and body language.

I have this odd feeling I’ve seen Separate Tables before, but I have no real memory of it, just a bit of déjà vu. Getting old is a trip. I know I’m trying not to talk about it because it depresses my friends, but I find the experience fascinating, even all the forgetting.

I’ve always assumed that if my wife dies first, I’ll move into some kind of retirement community or assisted living. Most people I know dread the thought of such a lifestyle. I like the idea of having my own room for solitude, but being able to go downstairs and find a community. And I know as I get older and weaker, I’ll be glad to give up working in the yard, taking care of the house, and driving. I think such laziness is why I’m drawn to stories about people living on hotels and rooming houses.

I’m guessing that many of my friends will find these two stories disturbing. My peers hate anything that makes them think about aging. I guess I’m some kind of existential Boy Scout, because I consider such stories to be preparing me for the future.

By the way, the introduction to Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont in the current edition is by Paul Bailey, who claims to have been Taylor’s inspiration for Ludo. You can read the sample at Amazon to read the introduction, but here’s the part I liked.

I have to begin this appreciation of Elizabeth Taylor’s penultimate novel on a personal note. I was working as an assistant in Harrods when my first book, At the Jerusalem, was published in 1967 – a fact which, for some reason, struck the diarist of The Times as being of interest to the paper’s readers. A year after publication, I met Elizabeth Taylor at a party. She told me how intrigued she had been that a man in his late twenties should have chosen a home for old women as the setting for a novel, and that she had gone to Harrods’ magazine department to see what such a curious creature looked like. She went on to say that she had watched me at work for about an hour, from the vantage of a chair in the adjoining lounge. She smiled as she made this revelation. She had not anticipated seeing someone with a youthful appearance: she had expected me to be just a trifle wizened.

When I read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont in 1971, I remembered Elizabeth Taylor’s confession. Ludovic Myers, the young man who comes to Mrs Palfrey’s aid when she falls in the street and who subsequently befriends her, is a novelist manqué. Throughout the course of Mrs Palfrey, he is writing a study of old age which – altering a phrase uttered over a pre-dinner sherry by his new, elderly friend – he gives the title They Weren’t Allowed to Die There. He works at Harrods, in the sense that he takes his manuscript into the (now vanished) banking hall, where he scribbles away happily, surrounded by Honourables on their uppers and tired county ladies resting their feet before the train journey back to the shires. Ludo, like me, is an ex-actor, who has done his stint in a tatty repertory company and has no desire to repeat the experience. In other words, I am flattered to think that I gave Elizabeth Taylor a little bit of inspiration for what is undoubtedly one of her finest books.

Taylor, Elizabeth (2011). Mrs Palfrey At The Claremont: A Virago Modern Classic (Virago Modern Classics Book 83) . Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

JWH

How Many Photographs Do You Need to Remember Your Life?

by James Wallace Harris, 5/13/26

The average human lives around 40 million minutes, but it’s doubtful they can recall more than a few thousand. Some people try to record as much of their life as possible – they call it lifelogging. Some lifeloggers wear cameras on their chest that snap a pic every 15 minutes.

That would mean over 2,666,666 photos for the average American lifespan. That’s way more than I’d want to manage. Even if I took one photograph a day, I wouldn’t want to maintain 28,835 pictures and the memories that went with each.

Forgetting is one of the key aspects of our personalities. Strangely enough, one of the limitations of artificial intelligence is memory. Both biological and silicon minds function with finite memory. Remembering and forgetting shape who we are, whether biological beings or AI. Just because technology allows us to store more memories doesn’t mean it’s practical to integrate them into our consciousness.

If I took one photograph a week and wrote an essay about it, would it be worth trying to remember 4,120 people, places, and events? I’ve written almost 3,000 essays for my blogs, but I barely remember a tiny fraction of them. What if we tried to remember one special moment from every month we live? Would 949 be too many?

We’re getting close, at least for me. Admittedly, at 74, my ability to recall is fading. I couldn’t limit myself to a single significant moment for each of my 74 years, because some years, I’d want to remember several. This suggests my mind can handle between 300 and 600.

Even ordinary people take thousands of photos and videos with their smartphones. I have around 9,000 digital photographs, nineteen family photo albums, two boxes of loose photos, and a hallway of relatives captured in time. That’s too many.

I realize now that no one is interested in my collection of photos. The photos I save are just for me. I’ve been studying the Photos app on my Apple devices and Google Photos to decide which to make my standard. Learning how each works is helping me decide how to manage my digital memories.

Our smartphones have made us cyborgs. They extend our brains in so many ways that most of us freak out if we lose them.

Having an instant camera at our fingertips is reshaping our lives and society. Even though my iPhone has room for tens of thousands of photographs, there’s no practical way for me to psychologically manage all those visual memories.

Scientists tell us that when we dream at night, our brains decide what to remember and what to forget. Since my iPhone can’t dream, I’ll have to take over that function consciously. Photos, the app on my iPhone, will be where I do this dreaming. I’m training myself to be ruthless in my deleting because what I keep is how I’m consciously defining myself.

When my mother died, I discovered several boxes and albums of old photos. The same thing happened when my wife’s mother died. I have photos from several generations of our four parents. I also have a lifetime of photos that Susan and I took. And as my aunts and uncles have died, my cousins have sent us many photos they thought belonged with our branch of the family.

Here’s the thing. My parents only owned one camera, a Kodak Brownie. I don’t think they used more than 5-6 rolls of film over their lifetime. Each roll took 12 photos. I say that because it appears my father took fewer than 60 pictures. I assume Dad took them because he is in none of them.

I’m not sure my grandparents or their parents on either side owned cameras. I say that because there are so few photographs of them when they were young, and the ones I have seem to have been taken by professional photographers. I’m also guessing the pictures I have of their older years were taken by their children.

My parents apparently kept a roll of film in the Brownie for years at a time, taking a couple of pictures at birthday parties and Christmas. Most of the photos I have from the two generations before my parents seemed professionally shot, with a smattering of snapshots given to them by relatives.

At sixteen, I bought a Yashica twin-lens reflex because my buddies were into photography. I took two rolls of film on one family vacation, expanding the family collection by 24 images! Most of the photos my mother had were from school photos, and snaps my aunts and uncles had sent her.

I remembered my Mom and Dad on my blog with the photos I have. There weren’t that many. What does it mean to have so many pictures to remember our lives?

Things changed for us baby boomers. In the early years of our marriage, Susan and I took several dozen photos with Instamatic cameras. Then Susan bought a Canon AE1 in the 1980s and took hundreds. Since buying iPhones, we’ve taken thousands. Our closet, where we stash old stuff, contains hundreds of paper prints, but our phones and hard drives contain thousands of images.

And you want to know something sad? No one wants them. Susan and I don’t have children, but I’ve asked our nephews and nieces if they wanted them, and none of them did. Susan doesn’t really care to look at them anymore, either. We scanned the paper prints, put them on DVDs, and gave them to our siblings one Christmas, but they’ve never been mentioned since.

I’ve become the memory keeper, the archivist of the forgotten. What’s weird is that some of my friends tell me they hate to look at old photos, that it makes them sad and depressed. One of my friends says she’s thrown all her old photos away. Yet, other friends are sentimental like me, regularly posting old photos on Facebook.

Last week, a friend brought the vacation photos she took in France to show after our Mahjong game. Before she came, she asked me how many I’d want to see. Over her 19-day trip, she took 3,730 photos. I told her 300. For her own digital album to remember the trip, she chose 500.

That inspired this essay and my research. And it’s the numbers that make me philosophical. I accept my limitations and work to maximize what I can do with what I can handle.

My friend uses Photos on her Mac. I asked her how many photos her Mac and iPhone were currently managing. She said 28,500. (She’s a big-time traveler.) Well, that was far more capability than I needed for my 9,000, so I settled on Apple Photos, too. I also considered Google Photos, because I also use a lot of their products. But I settled on Photos because I use an iPhone. If I had been an Android user, I would have picked Google Photos.

I started playing with Photos on my Mac Mini and learned that my photo library would appear on all my Apple devices and iCloud. That’s very useful. I also learned that any photograph deleted from any device would be removed from all devices. That can be dangerous, but useful too.

But the more I used Photos on my Mac Mini, iPhone, and iPad, the more I realized that I didn’t want all my photos in Photos. I like using my iPhone as an external memory, and it’s not practical to find a single photo out of 9,000.

How we use photo managers like Photos can shape how we think about the past. Smartphones are changing humanity in ways we’ve yet to realize.

Over the years, I’ve developed a folder structure on my hard drive for filing photos. I’ve decided to leave my entire photo library there and make Apple Photos just for the photos I want to quickly access on my iPhone. I want Apple Photos to represent how I want to remember the past. Like a dreaming brain, I have to constantly delete.

We showed my friends photos from France on our 75″ TV using a laptop and an HDMI cable. This got me thinking about organizing my photos and viewing them on the TV. The impact of photos varies from the small iPhone screen, to the 10″ iPad screen, to the 27″ screen for my Mac Mini. The emotional impact is greatest on the 75″ TV screen. When the new Apple TV comes out, I’m going to buy one just to conveniently view my memories on the large screen.

In idle moments, often during insomnia, I’ll take out my iPhone and view photos. Sometimes, like Anne and Mike, my photos make me sad. Other times, they trigger intense, powerful emotions, which I relish like a vampire feeding on someone’s lifeblood. Mostly, these images of the past make me philosophical. They bring back memories that my mind is forgetting. I hate that I forget. But I do that more and more.

JWH