Anyways, this story is superb. Fantastic prose, wonderful characters, an interesting structure (intertwining two plots related by concept), exploration of themes like science, technology and language.
One of the plots in the story explores the role of writing in preserving memories and compares this with memories preserved by oral traditions. There is a moment of disagreement when a native man's statement about the past differs from a written record (written by europeans). The story helps us to understand that (western style) written records and native oral memories correspond to different views of life. The first view values accuracy while the other looks for validation of "the community’s understanding of itself".
The other plot looks into an implanted memory aid technology, which can record and play any single moment of a person's life (that has been recorded). The memory aid is sold as an improvement over the recording of written memories as it records the real events with out any bias or filter.
Would you like to have all your life in a record?
The 2004 film Final Cut, with Robin Williams, touches on the same theme.
The first plot reminded me of something I read this week: The Social Leap by W. von Hippel. About the concept of self-deception. Apparently, we evolved the capacity to deceive ourselves in order to deceive other people. And this deception is used as a "social weapon" to achieve our goals. Deception doesn't need to rely on objective reality. In fact, a great deal of value in the social world is created by consensus rather than scientific observation.
This short story is included in Exhalation, an anthology by Ted Chiang. It was published online, for free by Subterranean press a while ago, but it isn’t there any more. I found a copy somewhere else. It's easy to find on Google if you are interested.
