External memory is memory that uses cues from the environment to aid remembrance of ideas and sensations. When a person uses something beside his/her own internal memory tricks, traits, or talents to help him/her remember certain events, facts, or even things to do, the person is using an external memory aid. External memory aids are used every day. A large part of these aids come from technology; people use their smartphones to remind them when they have meetings and Facebook reminds people of their friends' birthdays. These aids also include taking notes in class, carrying a grocery list to the supermarket, or jotting down dates on a planner. Even people, or prompters, can be used as external memory aids.
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Human transience
The externalization of memory calls into question humankind's transience. "If memory is our means of preserving that which we consider most valuable, it is also painfully linked to our own transience. When we die, our memories die with us. In a sense, the elaborate system of externalized memory we’ve created is a way of fending off mortality. It allows ideas to be efficiently passed across time and space, and for one idea to build on another to a degree not possible when a thought has to be passed from brain to brain in order to be sustained."
Lifelogging
There are extreme uses of external memory aids. Individuals who constantly record their lives are referred to as lifeloggers. Gordon Bell is an American engineer and manager at Microsoft, but of interest here is his lifelogging. In a fight against natural memory deterioration, Gordon Bell has kept a digital "surrogate memory" to supplement his own memory. "Why should any memory fade when there are technological solutions that can preserve it?" His version of liflogging includes wearing a SenseCam around his neck that captures everything he sees on a daily basis. He also wears a digital voice recorder to capture the sound he hears. Bell also scans what he reads onto his computer and records his phone calls. He has digitized ll of his photos, engineer notebooks, even logos on T-shirts. At any given moment, with the help of his custom developed search engine, Bell has access to anything he has seen, heard, or read in the past decade.
Morris Villarroel, a professor of animal behavior at the Polytechnic University of Madrid, is another lifelogger. His version of lifelong includes a Narrative Clip camera strapped to his chest that shoots about 1,200 photos per day at 30-second intervals. When asked about why he lifelogs, Villaroel responds, " "It's nice for me that I have a whole series of photos, moments, that I can look back on, and maybe even share in the future. For example, I have a son who is 11 months old, and he has pictures of his mother, pregnant with him, hundreds of photos of himself the day he was born, and every day thereafter. I imagine him growing old, being 80 and deciding one day to look at a photo of how his mother looked when she was eight months pregnant, what we were doing when he was 120 days old, and how our life was. That motivates me to continue for a long time."