Of Memory & Signs

There is an old story about the invention of writing that I am often reminded of. Upon conception, the inventor brings this new technology before the king to show him what amazing things are possible. But, much to the inventor's surprise, the king, while impressed, is skeptical! "But if we can write everything down, what use will we have for our memory?" The king asked, "Won't our memory just wither and die?" I suppose partially why I like this story is because it seems so far away: a time when writing could be considered a dangerous innovation. It seems like a silly idea, but yet I often find myself thinking similar thoughts about the unintentional implications of new technology.

The king's objection may seem bizarre, but surely it is more apt when applied to the World Wide Web! The internet, and especially in its most recent, highly portable incarnation, feels like it is obliterating our need for anything but short-term memory. I find it alarming our reliance upon this technology for knowledge about the world, myself very much included. So often in conversations, when we stumble up against the unknown, or the misremembered, we reach immediately for the internet to get us past it. This points to the immense amount of power that could be wielded by the people charged with the constructing, maintaining, and otherwise framing the internet. Good will can do a lot of things, but we can't rely on good will alone to prevent the abuse of that much power. Soon, if all of the knowledge in the world is not owned by a handful of corporate entities, the access to it may very well be. This is cause for some concern, I think.

One of my favourite parts of Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude is when the disease of amnesia sweeps through the small town. Since no one can remember anything, they go around putting signs on things to remind themselves what they are and what they are for. One such sign reads simply, "God Exists".

Sometimes I feel like we are beginning to live in such a world. There are signs everywhere! All buildings have labels on them, and I swear there was a time when such labeling of the city was relatively minimal. Oftentimes the form of the building spoke for it, or you would have to use some intuition or investigative skills in order to find the building or place you were looking for. Also there were times in recent history where the city was small enough, static enough, and the population was small and static enough to be familiar with which building was which. Our buildings increasingly look the same. Our urban environments are large and constantly changing. And our populations likewise are so large and mobile that the possibility for familiarity is rapidly diminishing. We need the signs.

I was recently in London, Ontario for a spell. While there I was walking through a pretty familiar and comfortable part of the city - the trees old, the houses old, the streets pedestrian-accommodating. But I reeled as the sense of place that I had been used to there was violently splintered by a recent addition to the urban environment. On one of the telephone poles, the City had hung a sign that indicated which way to go in order to get to the highway 401, the major thoroughfare that connects the city to Toronto and to Windsor and beyond. Which is not to say that I didn't understand the need for the sign. I understand the feeling of being in a foreign city, in a car, and off of the beaten track. It's always useful, even if it feels slightly odd, to come across a large sign pointing you in the right direction when you thought you were completely lost.

This sign is hopefully not for local use, but for those just passing through. But perhaps we should be wary of our sign making. How we sign our cities says a lot about how we understand or imagine them. Increasingly signs pop up all over our urban centres describing where certain things are. Hospitals, for instance - that makes sense - or particular local attractions chosen by the city administration (presumably) that they feel are either more important than the rest, or are more likely to be wanted by the person for whom the sign is intended.

I find the decision to post the 401 sign particularly frustrating because I can't help but feel that secretly what it is pointing to is not just the highway, but the cities that can be reached by the highway, and the airport reachable by the highway, and the whole rest of the world. It feels subversive to the immediate place, as if the topos (if you will) is being undermined. As if someone were whispering in your ear, "this is nice, true, but Cairo is this way. . ."

One important consideration when it comes to signs is who they are intended for, and conversely, for whom they are not intended. The 401 sign for instance is definitely not intended for the local, out walking their dog, or on the way to the corner-store to fetch a carton of milk (these are my romantic visions, you see, of the life lived). There is no sign that says, "Exotic Massage Parlour this way," but there is one that says, "Children's Petting Zoo." In this way, the City of London paints an image of how they imagine their city and how they want it to be.