ABSTRACT

Memory as a collective act is evident in our daily experiences with computers, which do make their memory seem—against physics—permanent and ubiquitous. Digital switching devices, based on the reduction of all processes to true/false propositions, insatiably demand memory-less memory. The Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer was to increase the speed of calculation by putting some of those values inside the memory organ, making porous the boundaries of the machine. Memory underlies the emergence of the computer as we know it: the move from calculator to computer depended on regenerative memory. To contain or localize memory, von Neumann organized it hierarchically: there were to be many memory organs, defined by access time rather than content. The conflation of memory and storage is dangerous because it fosters a misleading ethos that forgets the collective care and effort—good and bad—that goes into any memory.