Baxter used five parts to create parallelism and cohesion. He started the paper with simple phrases, to pull us into understanding information and the memory process that humans possess. This was shown when he spoke of his brother and how his brother saw himself. Another area where this was shown is when he spoke of memory in description of the two women from Ann Arbor.
When reading this essay, I thought initially that Baxter was trying to place the reader into a setting that focused on the difference between the memory process and the importance of data. Data being experiences as well as information. After reading it a second time, I tried to take on a more indepth understanding. In doing so, I came to the realization that his focus is really the importance and significance of what we take in, how it is placed and the need to use or delete.
When Baxter talked about is brother and the connotation he gave to himelf of being considered the dumb brother (p. 141) was the beginning of using a play on words. Significance of words is given again when Baxter speaks of how much memory one has (p. 144). One initially assumes he is speaking of the mind but in reality it was the computer memory. Later on in his passages he speaks of Reagan and Clinton and how competencies were and were not measured in their need to use memory and data to be effective.
With the play on words shame was used as a strength and a weakness. It helped to redefine the importance of how what information matters. Baxter eluded to the quality of innocence and boyishness gave forgetting a means of power. So is there shame in forgetting? And, is forgetting a hinderance towards the use of data? In my opinion no. With the degree of information at our finger tips and the extensive ways we have for retrieval, there is not a need to place extreme emphasis on data remembrances.
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