# SIG-MRG 2026-07-30 — Session Notes

Participants:
  - Mark Elder
  - Kei 🗝 | UTC-4
  - Wip | UTC+1
  - ayseayse__
  - jackie luo | utc-4

---

## 📖 The Reading

The transcript does not state the title outright, but the discussion clearly centers on a text by **Leroi-Gourhan** (referred to as "Roy Kohan" / "Roi Kohan" phonetically) concerning the exteriorization and fractionalization of memory — likely from *Gesture and Speech*. Discussion references specific sections including "the fate of the hand," the keyboard example, eighteenth-century automata, the encyclopedia, and a closing passage on the "mythogram"/table of contents. The exact chapter is not named precisely.

## 🧭 Overview

The group discussed a text tracing the historical externalization of human memory — from oral/mnemonic practices through writing, automata, the encyclopedia, and into computing — and connected it to contemporary AI, training pipelines, and voice interfaces. Conversation moved from what gets recorded versus retained orally, to the "fractionalization" of memory in machines, to whether emerging voice/AI interaction constitutes a return to orality (or a new, non-fractionalized, non-memory-supporting mode). Kei proposed the idea of a possible additional ("third"/"fourth") type of memory that the text's schema doesn't quite capture. (Note: audio was heavily overlapping in places, so some attributions are approximate.)

## 💡 Key Points & Themes

- **Mark:** Local, embodied memory has atrophied as memory has been mechanized/exteriorized. Ancestral mnemonic devices (beads, seashells) carried meaning only within a local training context; once the people who understood the symbols died, the knowledge became untransmittable. He framed this as a relationship between local memory and exteriorization.
- **Wip:** Echoed that AI captures mainly text-encodable knowledge, but much lived experience, gesture, and environmental knowledge cannot easily be coded into training text. He was fascinated by "the hand" as a powerful, complex tool capable of many gestures and interaction patterns.
- **Wip (interface argument):** In the digital world we've flattened interaction to a 2D screen while the machine does all the complexity behind the scenes. He'd like future devices that let our hands handle more of that complexity ("gesture space"), which he believes would open a richer design space and support memory.
- **ayseayse__:** Raised historian of science **Jessica Riskin** and her book on agency — the argument that mechanical science placed agency in a "god's-eye view" starting in the 1700s, tied to a Cartesian, church-influenced designer/hierarchy worldview. She linked this to **RLHF** (reinforcement learning from human feedback) and alignment pipelines: a human evaluator's preference reinforces "good" responses, injecting designer/engineer values rather than allowing an evolving/arising sense of agency. She connected this to the chapter's keyboard example (press "k," machine writes "k") as a decision-tree input/output model that reshapes how we relate to agency.
- **ayseayse__ (embodiment):** Reflected that speaking/commenting to an AI feels like letting words flow directly "from the brain" rather than giving them a linear, pre-shaped form — a mode different from how we've historically made things oral.
- **Kei (what gets recorded):** Challenged the author's assumption that writing began with "specialist"/authority-related information (dates, lineages, political/religious authority) because everyday things were simply remembered. Kei suggested the opposite may be possible: some everyday or important practices (e.g., around health and food) may have been seen as *too important to write down* and reserved for oral transmission. This complicates the natural inclination to equate "important" with "archived," and maps onto questions of what is kept *out* of AI training data/pipelines.
- **Kei (fractionalization):** Highlighted the author's model of memory as both externalized *and* fractionalized — e.g., 18th-century automata where pistons/levers/gears each "hold" a piece of remembering that coheres in the whole machine; the encyclopedia's discrete-but-interlinked entries; and integrated memory in early computers. Kei argued contemporary AI (electricity, chips, matrix multiplication, training corpora) produces an "associative mesh" that is *not* fractionalized in the same discrete way, prompting the wish for an additional type of memory in the schema.
- **Kei (keyboard/alphabet):** The alphabet is a form of fractional memory — discrete symbols whose coherence produces meaning; the keyboard dissociates the physical gesture from the coherence produced.
- **jackie luo:** Voice/AI input is a growing mode of interaction but differs from historical oral tradition because it isn't aimed at memory retention — it's more "throwaway," assuming permanent capture without the active process of recording. She noted AI notetakers, Google Maps, and similar "memory prosthetics" reduce her own conscious retention (of meetings, physical surroundings) because the information is offloaded.
- **Wip (on the memory book):** In *The Memory Code* (Lynn Kelly), oral cultures sustain memory not through speech alone but embedded in environment — performance, ritual, timing/place. He questioned how future speech-based interaction with disembodied AIs will handle this performative/embodied dimension.
- **Kei (closing reading):** The author's ending suggests the evolutionary driver of memory has shifted — print stopped evolving around the 18th century, and evolution is now tied to "documentary material freed from any context." Kei linked this back to Mark's opening point about *alocality*: memory is no longer embedded in an environment that replicates contextual cues; it becomes a matter of retrieval/finding systems and recall rather than the content recalled.

## 🔀 Questions & Disagreements

- **Kei vs. the author (recording assumption):** Kei found the author's assumption — that important things get written down and everyday things are just remembered — a "fast" and somewhat funny assumption, and offered the counter-possibility that the most important knowledge was orally transmitted precisely *because* it was too important to archive.
- **Kei vs. the author's schema (fractionalization):** Kei subtly disagreed that today's AI memory fits the fractionalization model; contemporary systems produce an associative mesh less discretely fractionalized than automata or encyclopedias — hence the call for a new memory type. (There is some ambiguity in the transcript over whether this proposed new type is a "third" or "fourth" kind; Mark and Kei both used slightly different numbering.)
- **Open question (embodiment/performance):** How will future voice-based interaction reproduce the environmental, ritual, and performative anchors that historically made orality a memory-sustaining practice — especially given that AIs are *disembodied*? (Wip)
- **Open question (agency):** Whether RLHF/alignment amounts to an "injection of values" from a designer perspective versus an evolving/arising agency, and whether current design is "conscientious" about this. (ayseayse__)
- **Open tension (voice as return to orality):** Kei framed emerging voice interaction as an "orality that no longer fractionalizes the interface" but also "doesn't help us remember" — leaving open whether this is genuinely a return to orality or something new.

## 🔗 References Mentioned

- *The Memory Code* by **Lynn Kelly** — mnemonic devices of ancestors and how oral cultures sustain memory through environment, performance, ritual, and timing.
- **Jessica Riskin** (historian of science) — book on agency; the "god's-eye view" of agency in mechanical science, liveness vs. Descartes, and the church-influenced Cartesian designer hierarchy.
- **RLHF / reinforcement learning from human feedback** and alignment pipelines.
- **Bernard Stiegler**, *Technics and Time* (transcribed as "Bernad Siegler's Techniques and Time") — proposed next reading; concept of "tertiary memory" (a third layer of memory).
- **Leroi-Gourhan** ("Roy Kohan") — cited as a strong influence on Stiegler and apparently the author of the text under discussion.
- **Simondon** ("Simon") — mentioned as a previously read, drier author for whom Mark produced a summary.
- AI notetakers and Google Maps — as examples of memory prosthetics.

## ✅ Action Items & Next Time

- **Next two sessions:** Read excerpts from **Bernard Stiegler's *Technics and Time*** — an excerpt from Volume 1 for the first session, then an excerpt from Volume 2. Kei warned the material is dense.
- Kei wants to "put a pin in" the idea of a further type of memory and revisit it in following sessions, connecting it to Stiegler's concept of tertiary memory.
- Kei encouraged continuing to follow the paper/work that ayseayse__ mentioned she is writing (on RLHF/agency).
- **Next meeting:** in two weeks.

## ⭐ Memorable Quotes

- **Kei:** "There's a sense I think we have this natural inclination to believe that important things are the things that need to be archived."
- **jackie luo:** "I do feel like it affects how I remember... the availability of sort of these memory prosthetics that kind of lead to us not storing information in the same way."
- **Kei:** "It's an orality that's no longer fractionalizing the interface... but also doesn't help us remember."

*Note: Much of this session's audio had heavy speaker overlap (especially between Mark, Wip, and Kei), so some sentences were fragmented and a few attributions are best-effort reconstructions.*