Year: 2022

In Marjorie Prime, we got a fantastic display of memory being “constructed”. When this phrase was introduced in the lecture I found it hard to wrap my head around. But seeing them being built in real-time is much more comprehensible. Also during the lecture, we cover how context can affect memory, you can see many examples of this in the film but what comes to mind personally is how Marjorie reacts to the topic of her son, Damian. At different points, Marjorie has forgotten in the case of Marjorie Prime never learned of the tragedy of his death. Without that context, she is open to speaking about him willingly, he is no longer the black sheep in family stories. You can see how the daughter Tess finds the casualness with how her mother mentions this long forbidden topic very upsetting, this has other reasons but the root is she has a different context of these memories than her mother currently has in front of her.

 

 

 

We also see a more abstract version of what is not “Good Remembering” during the course of the film stories are told and retold. This is a more literal explanation for the process of memory where we remember not the initial incident but the last time we remembered that memory. For example when Marjorie is speaking to Walter Prime and she re-writes the story of their engagement, intentionally, where instead of the reality where they watched My Best Friends Wedding, Casablanca was on instead, a classier alternative, perhaps?

 

Every week I am truly surprised by the diversity of topics that the show, Star Trek, regardless of what generation it is the topics explore many different areas of thought. In this episode, “The Mesure of a Man” the question was posited “Is Data the Property of Starfleet?” within this question came many more, including, Does he have a soul? The show had a surprising amount of nuance considering the time it originated from, yet it definitely had some failings. I noticed they implemented a kind of “white savior ” moment for Dr. Picard. When one of the black cast members makes an appearance and explains a comparison to a race of Data’s being treated like property by bringing up slavery. He then goes on to use this point of view to bring everyone into the light and save the day. I found this slightly unsettling in viewing this episode. I think this is also an example of thinking through the world or extended cognition.

In the episode it’s made evident that one of Data’s functions is being, a quasi-memory vault, this made me think of what we spoke of in class about offloading memory. At any time members of the crew expect to be able to turn to Data and access an innumerable amount of information about any matter. He almost serves a similar function as a cell phone. This would be considered offloading memory onto technology in class.

What is a memory? A memory in simple words is the process of taking in information from the world around us. Our minds process it, store it and later on recall that information. Everyone has memories; good ones, bad ones, sad ones, etc. I hate when I remember the bad ones and sometimes I even wish that I can erase good ones in the past that make me sad now but having these memories is what connects us to our emotions. It’s a part of us and it’s something we will always have.

In the movie, Majorie Prime, Majorie is starting to experience the first few symptoms of Alzheimer’s. Her daughter, Tess and her son-in-law, Jon, hire this service called Prime. This service is designed to assist Alzheimer patients that create a holographic projection of deceased family members. These projections are filled with memories of the patient’s so they can repeat these memories back to the patients when they are being forgetful. Majorie receives a hologram of her late husband Walter. She starts talking to him and enjoys her time with her “husband” but her daughter is still skeptical. I think this matches the Remembering emotions from this weeks’ slides because we experience emotions as we remember. Both the memory itself and how we feel about the memory; in the movie when Majorie was reminiscing with her “husband” about good times and little things they did, she expressed a lot of happiness. However, in one scene when she starts to say she wants Walter but not the Hologram Walter, she seems angry because that is not the memory she has of him in that moment. Memories have such an impact on our emotions because it’s like we are trying to remember how we felt in that moment and remembering a certain thing can trigger any type of emotion within us.

In the Star Trek episode, “The Measure of a Man”, Commander Maddox wants to better understand Commander Data’s brain and wants to transfer the contents of Data’s memory to the star base mainframe computer. Maddox promises he will restore Data’s memories and they will stay intact but Data is concerned that Maddox isn’t telling the full truth. A trial begins and Data begins to explain how the experiment that Maddox wants to conduct, can cost him his life. I think this episode pertains to the Affective Dimension of Memory slides that we discussed because the Affective Dimension of Memory influences what we perceive and attend to and Maddox argues that Data is not a sentient being, however, if Data is already feeling nervousness about the experiment, that already makes him sentient. He is able to feel something based on that alone.

In this week’s module we went over memory. I think memory is one of the most intriguing topics out of all the topics we discussed this semester, as I find myself thinking about memory and talking about it quite often in my day to day life. I could never really understand it, but I feel like my memory is weak when thinking about moments of the past at any given moment. It’s like if I just try to think about random moments without being prompted to think about anything specific, I can’t really remember much. It’s kinda weird because I feel like it should be easier to just remember things. I think this goes along with the slide we had in our video lecture of “Good Remembering.” It’s as if there is an an unfaithful feeling to the past if you cannot remember it well.

Marjorie Prime

Expanding on this idea of “good remembering,” we see ample examples of how Alzheimer’s disease affects Marjorie’s memory. Having watched the movie, it actually reminded me of my grandmother and her experience with a similar neurocognitive disease she faced the last couple of years leading up to her death. The movie does an incredible job of depicting how Marjorie experiences the memories she has with her husband through a hologram of her late husband, Walter. I found this interesting because my grandmother recalled memories of my grandfather while she was experiencing the affects of the disease; however, she could not recall simple tasks she had done throughout the day. The quote that stood out to me the most in the movie was from Marjorie’s daughter, Tess. She states, “Memory is not like a well that you dip into or a filing cabinet. When you remember something, you remember the memory. You remember the last time you remembered it, not the source. So it’s always getting fuzzier, like a photocopy of a photocopy.” This quote is a wonderful example of the idea of good remembering. As the video lecture states, “memories change over time as we construct and think about them through different contexts and from different perspectives.” So the idea of memory not being like a well or filing cabinet is true. I believe some ideas like to think of memory as like saving things on a computer. If you save a picture on a computer, every time you open the picture, it will essentially appear the same. However, we know that our memories don’t work that way, as every time we remember something, we are remembering the last time we remembered it, not the event or occurrence as it may have actually happened. This pretty much sums up to me why I can’t remember many memories from the past well. I guess if you don’t think about events of the past often, or if you often think about events of the past in different contexts and emotions, then they’re bound to change. And that’s ok. Everything seems to change in retrospect.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

After watching this episode, it represents my analogy to the mind not being like a computer very well. In the scene where Data is looking at his memories afraid that he will lose them and their meaning, I thought about how memories can change and still be accurate. I feel more alright with the idea that memories change over time and that they aren’t direct recollections of what actually happened but rather how we are thinking about them and how we remember the last time we remember them. Again, the idea that everything changes in retrospect is so interesting because I often find myself thinking of a moment, a certain time, or phase in my life and perhaps thinking of it as a good time when in reality I probably wasn’t as happy as I think I was. I find this to be a beautiful aspect of memory because, as our lecture states, memory is influenced by context, emotion, and environment and is not meant to be stored in perfect order like a computer saves files.

It’s been a pleasure being a part of this class during the summer semester. I wish everyone the best of luck in their future endeavors!

Star Trek is an unusual series for me to watch, as someone who is fascinated by space epics and grew up hearing about it constantly. And during my time in this class I’ve come to learn that the series just… doesn’t capture me in the way I thought it would ! I feel bad about it, but I don’t think it’s my thing. I mean maybe deep down fantasy and horror are my genres and sci-fi is just the cool popular kid I want to be like. But I digress. I think Data may have changed my mind about the series.

I have always loved the concept of androids in media. My favorite video game, Persona 3, has an android character named Aigis. I remember playing the game for the first time in middle school and being shaken to my core as she said “I want to live.” It took me some time to fully understand what this statement meant. Of course, she already appeared to be alive. But I think she was referring to living rather than the state of being alive. Making memories and really feeling. I thought about this when I watched The Measure of a Man, particularly when Data talked about what made memories unique. While androids are often depicted as emotionless machines, Data expresses his deep need for emotions in order to recall memories for what they are and experience them properly. While Maddox seemed to disagree with the importance of giving machines humanlike emotions, Data is displaying here the importance of emotions in recalling memories. Much like in Inside Out, memories can be experienced different ways depending on the emotions felt at the time. Without the ability to feel, Data would recall facts and nothing else. Sometimes, that isn’t enough.

Marjorie Prime reminded me a bit of a game of telephone. At the start, you have the real story of how Walter proposed to Marjorie. However, at her request, Walter Prime changes the story to meet her romanticized version of the life she no longer remembers. When Marjorie passes, this altered story is passed on to Marjorie Prime and, later, Tess Prime as well. These AI versions of this family are likely far removed from the real versions of Walter, Marjorie, and Tess. Aside from the altered proposal story, requested by Marjorie, we have the story of the flags she recalled, which were a scene from a movie and not an experience she and Walter ever had. But because the Primes are told this is true, it has now become true. I wonder if we can call this a version of the Mandela Effect. Collectively, they believe in an altered version of the truth. Though, it’s because they were told an altered version of it.

Though, if I’m being perfectly honest, the best part of the movie was when Jon was holding the shiba puppy. I couldn’t focus on anything else in that scene the dog was so damn cute I couldn’t handle it. The movie had a great concept, though I feel the execution could have been a bit stronger. Regardless, it was worth the watch if only for the cutest dog I have ever seen.

I told my dad about Marjorie Prime and he said it bore a resemblance to the Black Mirror episode titled “Be Right Back.” Now, I don’t have any intention on watching Black Mirror, but if anyone is a fan of the series or curious about it, it might be beneficial to take a look !

This week we had to watch two films in which people who weren’t actually people were the stars. In Marjorie Prime we saw a prime, Walter, which was like a holographic person of Majorie’s husband. It took me a little while to realize he wasn’t real, but Marjorie walked over what should’ve been his solid feet. In the Star Trek episode we see Data, which is literally Data. He knows everything about the Enterprise and is almost like a human on the ship.

Marjorie uses Walter to listen to all the memories she’s soon going to forget because of Alzheimer’s. Since he’s a holographic projection, he doesn’t forget the things Marjorie tells him. She often asks him to tell her stories of things like her old dog and adds in details before he does. This shows Marjorie’s memory isn’t totally gone, but when it is, she’ll rely on Walter for all her memories.

One time Walter was telling her the story of when he proposed to her. She was adding in details that didn’t happen and essentially said that if they think about it enough, the next time they talk it’ll be true. This was Marjorie trying to change her autobiographical memory since this memory is a revisable and negotiable record of ones personal history. Her emotions were influencing this change because she was visibly more excited and happy about being proposed to after watching Casablanca. I know memories change because we think about them in different contexts, but Marjorie was just changing the whole memory which made me laugh. Marjorie was trying to change the memory with the Toni example, but I wonder how she would have reacted if let’s say Walter said the dog’s name wasn’t Toni and instead something else. 

I feel like the Star Trek episode connected more with the emotions of Inside Out. When Picard finds out that Maddox has an ulterior motive, he first becomes sad and then angry. I imagined the emotions from Inside Out being in Picard’s head.

Maddox plans on putting all Data’s data in a positronic brain in order for him to figure out how he works. Data doesn’t want this to happen because even though he’s not human, he still remembers events and experiences with emotion, just like a human does. He’s scared that the episodic memory won’t come back to him and it’ll just be the semantics. Without his memories, he wouldn’t be himself. The flavor of the memory would be gone and this is how Data explained which I thought was perfect.

Memories are extremely important to when it comes to one’s identity. Memories and the way people recall certain events are the reason they act and behave in certain ways. This is the affective dimension of memory and all the characters in both films experienced it.

In our last module before the final project, we are looking at memory. Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s episode “Measure of a Man” and Marjorie Prime explore interesting aspects of memory and how it connects with our cognition. Let’s take a look.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

In its episode “Measure of a Man”, Data has a one-on-one conversation with Maddox regarding Maddox’s experiment plans. In an attempt to get Data to go along with his plans willingly, he says to Data, “Your memories and knowledge will remain intact.” Data responds, “Reduced to the mere facts of the events. The substance, the flavor of the moment could be lost.” Later Data adds, “While I believe it is possible to download information contained in a positronic brain, I do not believe you have acquired the expertise necessary to preserve the essence of those experiences. There is an ineffable quality to memory which I do not believe can survive your procedure.”

In this scene, Data explains the difference between being able to remember an event and actually feeling the emotions of that event’s memory. He fears of losing the latter. This is quite similar to the VoiceThread’s discussion of when we remember emotions, as recall leads to emotions “both of the memory itself and how we feel about the memory (meta-emotion).” Data could lose that quality in the process of recall.

In the trial, Data mentions how the experiment can cost his life. I think he means quality of life. Losing the emotional aspects of memories breaks the thread of meaning behind those memories. He will simply be an empty shell, quite literally just a machine, or at least the type that Maddox references.

Marjorie Prime 

Tess and Jon converse inside the bar by the piano. As they recall the last time they were in the bar, Jon says, “Memory. Sedimentary layers in the brain. You dig in, you know it’s there, you just have to-” and Tess interjects saying, “No, no.” She explains, “William James had the idea, and it’s been confirmed scientifically that memory is not like a well that you dip into or a filing cabinet. When you remember something, you remember the memory. You remember the last time you remembered it, not the source, so it’s always getting fuzzier, like a photocopy of a photocopy. It’s never getting fresher or clearer. So even a very strong memory can be unreliable because it’s always in the process of dissolving.”

Tess’s point is very interesting, but is she quite right about a memory being unreliable because it’s in the process of dissolving? Thinking about the VoiceThread, I don’t believe so. It says that “Memories can change and still be “accurate”.” There is “emotional accuracy” in the memory. Even if a memory becomes fuzzier, you can still feel the emotion from such memory. It’s that “flavor” that Data was talking about. Hypothetically, let’s say I have a memory of a really crappy birthday party in which nobody I invited showed up (this didn’t actually happen I swear). At first, I remember myself crying when my mom brings the cake out. I remember feeling sad, and I feel sad when I think about the memory. As I grow older, I can’t experience the episodic version of the memory because I lost the details about the cake and me crying, but I can experience the repisodic version, the thematic version. I can still remember feeling awful because nobody showed up. So, is the memory really that unreliable as it gets fuzzier? Food for thought.

In this week’s module, the film Marjorie Prime and the Star Trek episode “Measure of a Man” demonstrates how memory can be remembered in different ways and how it can explain who a person is. In Marjorie Prime we learn about how Alzheimer’s plays with your memory. Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease. As someone who has multiple family members who has this disease, firsthand I can honestly say it’s terrifying. Since there is no cure, the best thing anyone can do for them is giving them the best years, the months, and the days they have left.

Marjorie Prime the movie is quite interesting. Right in the beginning of the movie, we are introduced to the main characters, Marjorie, and Walter. Marjorie prime is 86-year-old women who has Alzheimer’s and Walter Prime is a hologram of her late husband. As someone who understands Alzheimer’s very well, I have learned that the people with Alzheimer’s last memory to go is their significant others. First would be people they once met, then it would be friends, followed by cousins, and lastly would be their children than significant others. Marjorie gets to live her last couple of days talking to her late husband and reliving all their memories together.

In the film, there is a particular scene that Tess states, “When you remember something, you remember the memory. You remember the last time you remembered it, not the source. So, it’s always getting fuzzier, like a photocopy of a photocopy……even a very strong memory can be unreliable because it’s always in the process of dissolving”.  This to me made understand what the voice thread was explaining in memory. Memory is constructed not recorded or stored in the mind but built in the mind. Memory is a complex, it’s not just black and white. By talking to her late husband its possibly the best way of remembering her emotions. Memory and emotions work hand in hand. We have a better chance of remembering a happy emotional memory than a sad memory. Connecting this back to Inside out, we learn that all her memories were stored as a happy and a sad memory and with each memory she felt a different emotion attached to it. Which is why when joy felt like she needed to feel that emotion again she brought up the sad and happy emotions. In the voice thread we talked about affect priming, the influence of emotion what we pay attention to and remember.  Marjorie remembers how she felt during these memories that Walter speaks about. but remembering how she felt during that memory she than starts remembering the memory by understanding the emotion she felt with Walter help.

 

Extended cognition is shown thru out the movie. Walter Prime the hologram would be considered an extended cognition example because they use “the brain, body, external tools and technology, interpersonal and social supports, and culture create complex and interactions that form a cognitive system”.  Marjorie prime can talk to her late husband by having Tess and her husband talks about what memories and fills in details for Walter to be realistic. By using all these components, Marjorie can speak to Walter in a way that many of us wish we could do with loved ones who have passed away.  We see that when Walter learns something new, he states “I’ll remember that next time”.  Showing how he is just going to remember what he was told, he does not actually that build the memory because it’s not his memory, it’s just a story.

Star Trek episode “Measure of a Man” was my favorite star trek episode so far. Data is the focus of this episode.  Quickly in the episode we find out that data is a robot and not human.  As we have found out in multiple texts in this semester, robots don’t have their own memory or emotions. His memory would not be his own without any emotion to it. But to everyone Data was more than a robot, he was family. Data was being called an IT, when to me an IT is something that doesn’t feel emotion, Like a tree. but, Data did have emotions and he had his memories. He was no star-trek “property”. History has always showed us that us humans can be judgmental and always need to put down someone. If it wasn’t people of color then it had to be people of religious beliefs. In this case, it was a robot, but a robot who felt more than any of them. all his memories had deep emotion attached to it. That to me is more human than any of them.

Watching Marjorie Prime and Star Trek’s “Measure of a Man” this week made me really think about at what point would a robot become human. Both of the texts this week depicted artificial Intelligence with an enormous data storage capacity and the ability to learn. So where is the difference between them. Why was I sympathetic to Data’s plight in Star Trek, while agreeing with Tess, that the Primes were nothing but “sounding boards” – not human.

I think a major difference lies in emotion. While Walter prime is telling stories to Marjorie in the beginning of the movie, he emotes, his face smiles and he can capture physically an emotional response. However, he’s missing the feeling to truly be sentient. There is only information storage and regurgitation. Marjorie asked Walter Prime in the beginning of the movie if he feels the emotions or just remembers the emotions experienced by the person telling the story. He responded that he likes to learn more because it makes him better/more human. Which as Tess points out when discussing memory is what makes them the opposite of human. She says that humans don’t retrieve memories from a well, but rather are retrieving a copy of the memory from the last time we recalled it, and therefore memories are always in the process of deteriorating. I don’t agree with deteriorating as the right word for this, this week’s voice thread discussed how memories change over time. Our understanding of a memory changes, which also affects the way we view that memory. Our emotions also play a major role in memories, we remember the emotions felt during the memory but there are also a second set of emotions that we experience while discussing/remembering. This is where the Primes fall short. Their “memories” are perfectly preserved forever with the same emotion described the first time they heard the memory. They don’t have meta-emotions, they aren’t reevaluating how they feel about a different memory when a new contradictory memory is given. Like the Parrot talked about in the movie, they just repeat back the information, the same way they heard it, forever.

Data on the other hand is different. While his reasoning behind his decision to not undergo the procedure may appear more pragmatic. He still has more complex emotional reactions regarding the situation. He is worried about his consciousness being dumped and backed up into a computer he doesn’t want his memories “reduced to the mere facts of the events the substance, the flavor of the event is lost.” This is what the primes are missing. They are receiving the facts (with emotion being filed as a fact of the event) While losing what Data calls “The ineffable quality of memory.” For Data, his memories are rich with emotions. He keeps mementos to remember people and events that are important to him. He doesn’t want to lose those reminders. At the end of the episode, he understands the complexity of Captain Riker’s actions. He didn’t just look at it as fact that he argued the case against him, Instead he could empathize with what he did.  He eased the captain’s mind by telling him I understand that your actions “injured you and save me” This shows his ability to process complex and process his own complex emotions and evaluate how he would proceed in a similar situation.

 

 

 

 

 

Marjorie Prime

The film’s focus is on the character Marjorie who suffers from memory loss. The image of her young husband retells stories to her, using episodic memories. She doesn’t remember the day previous, like when he told her about getting a dog before they have children. She adds in little things, additions to how she felt, and he responds “I’ll remember that.” 

We find out that this image is a technology like an AI called a Prime. Walter Prime is like a vessel then for memory. 

The script itself talks about memory a lot on a scientific basis. Tess reiterates that you remember the last time you remembered a memory and not the memory at its source. 

Music is predominant in this film, what Marjorie chooses to listen to and she talks about her desire to play the violin, she remembers how to read music and the names of the strings, the first song she learned. In a scene before this, Tess plays the piano after a discussion about memory. This feels like a subliminal message about how music sticks with you over other things, could it be that this is an example of affect as information, information as memory retrieval? 

Earlier in the film, the story of how Marjorie was proposed to is much different from the memory that comes when she looks at her wedding ring, which is a real example of affect of information since looking at the ring prompted her to remember. I think she was also influenced to remember by the story, a part of her might have realized it wasn’t the real thing that happened, affect of priming? 

The different primes are made up of the autobiographical self but it’s composed of the perception of memories of the family members making the Primes more biographical. A question asked at one point is to a prime was, do you have emotions?

What I like about this film is that it’s a real depiction of what it’s like to take care of someone with memory problems, aside from the science fiction of the AI technology. 

There are a lot of layers to this film, I liked the subtle revelation that Marjorie had passed away. This was one of the sadder movies I have watched in my life, so intentional from every shot, what they choose to include in every scene (the mess, the whisky, etc.); really excellent filmmaking. 

Star Trek “The Measure of a Man”

Firstly, I have been watching the Star Trek episodes on my computer and I watched this one on my TV, I can’t believe the amount of makeup they put on the person who plays Data! 

The scene that stood out the most to me was when Data was gathering the items that have meaning to him, looking at them nostalgically and Commander Maddox comes in to try to convince him to undergo the procedure of taking him apart, saying he will keep his memories. Datas main concern is those memories loosing their essence, the emotions that come with them. 

The common theme of the two works is: are computers able to conceptualize memories and feel? 

Also, I think the films for this week and last were kind of interchangeable due to that theme. These last two modules were my favorite to learn about and had me thinking about the lectures in my day to day life, too. 

I have to say, I’m glad I don’t have to watch any more films or television episodes! This class has reinforced that I’m a book person and not a television or movie person. However, the films were great reinforcers of the concepts we learned throughout the course, and I enjoyed making connections between the two.