There is a close relation between sunrise and noise! Sunrise is not only the Sun’s first appearance over the horizon, but also the continuous clicking of camera, making tremendous noise in a hill station or in a sea beach. Sometimes, people push each other in order to capture the beautiful moment of the day in his/her own frame. The practice is not new.
Recently, new symptoms have been added to this practice. These symptoms are popularly known as Instagram or Snapchat. According to American scientists, these are dangerous symptoms. They have come to the conclusion only after conducting a psychological research. As a part of the research, the scientists asked three groups of people to see some paintings on a computer screen. The first group only saw the paintings, while the second saw the paintings and captured them in frames, and the third group posted the images on Snapchat immediately after clicking images of the paintings. After observing the activities of all the three groups, the scientists have found that the concentration level of the audience decreased by 20% (from the first group to the third). In other words, the practice of documentation affects our ability to memorise events. The scientists are of the opinion that people – who are addicted to the social media – lose the ability to remember events (or experiences) gradually!

Perhaps, ‘will’, and not ‘ability’, would be the ideal term. The habit of documentation discourages people to memorise events, scenes or the beauty of the nature. Instead of understanding their surroundings properly, people try to present them at the right place. For people who share their experiences with loved ones even before realising those, it is not important to memorise their experiences. The habit of documentation helps them keep their brains free. Before encountering the next event, they forget the previous one. Others, who don’t have the habit of documenting their experiences, keep it safe in their memory.
Gabriel García Márquez discussed this particular issue (from a different angle) in his 1967 novel, ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’. In the novel, Márquez depicted the plight of Macondo, a town struck by the dreaded insomnia plague. The most devastating symptom of the plague is the loss of ‘the name and notion of things’. In an attempt to overcome this insidious loss of knowledge, the protagonist – José Arcadio Buendía – “marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan”. Márquez wrote: “Studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realised that the day might come when things would be recognised by their inscriptions, but that no one would remember their use.”

The cognitive impairments experienced by Macondo’s inhabitants are remarkably similar to those observed in a modern society. Snapchat is also something like this. In the past, people had to go through each and every word (or every letter) while reading a book or typing a text in a typewriter. The invention of photocopier made the process of documentation easier. Now, smartphone replaces the photocopier, thus, making the process of documentation simpler. No wonder, forgetfulness will become obvious!

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das