ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, Merlin Donald provided an agenda-setting approach to external memory when he distinguished between biological memory that resides within the brain, and external memory that may reside in a number of different external stores, including visual and electronic storage systems, as well as culturally transmitted memories that reside in other individuals. This chapter discusses some of the properties of the new E-memory systems concentrating on totality, autonomy, social entanglement, and incorporability. It describes ways in which they contrast and complement biological memory. The chapter presents Wegner's framework for analysing how memory is socially distributed amongst human beings: transactive memory. It also discusses how some have used this framework to analyse human/technological systems, and one controversial claim that the Internet is a "supernormal stimulus" disrupting normal human memory distribution. It examines the Extended Mind (EM) hypothesis which suggests that external resources may count as parts of our minds.
