Strategic Forgetting And The 500 Year Old Catalog Of Lost Books

The discovery of a 500 year old manuscript which summarizes many unknown books from history captured my imagination. It comes from the library of Hernando Colón, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus who had tried to build the biggest library in the world during the early part of the 16th century.

Meanwhile Disney shared more details about their long-awaited streaming service called Disney+ and many early reviewers expect it to dominate the streaming sector. It is yet another example of how our shared culture is likely to be preserved in perfect little streamable chunks far into the future.

Today we rely on the Internet to save our history for us, including all of the facts that we would rather not have to remember. It has allowed for a widespread form of what some experts are calling “strategic forgetting” where we can decide what we no longer need to retain in our heads and instead rely on others (or technology) to remember for us.

Doing this can indeed help us be more creative instead of forcing us to keep trivial memorized facts in our brain. As long as we don't unintentionally put too much faith in our technology to remember the basics of our history and culture for us ... and forget to teach enough of it to one another to preserve that culture in the first place.