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About this painting This painting, entitled 'Job Lot Cheap' was created by the Irish-American artist William Michael Harnett in 1878. At first glance it appears to be just a pile of old, worn-out books reduced to clear in the corner of a bookshop. But look closer. The books sit on a packing case containing new, recently published books - which will ultimately replace them. This picture is an example of a memento mori: a work that aims to remind the viewer of their own mortality. The typical memento mori contains several gothic icons (a skull, a tome, a withered flower, a burnt-out candle, an empty hourglass) meant to symbolise the passage of time, one's life and works, and our ultimate fate. In omitting the traditional gothic totems this innovative painting has a modern, more subtle message, it is a reminder that information does not live forever either. Inspiration This transience of information is the motivation for the Memento project. Consider this: you've just learnt a few facts about a stylistic composition known as a memento mori. If I asked you to define this term later today I suspect you'd give me an accurate answer. But what if I asked you a year from now? What you need is somewhere to store information that's more reliable than your memory. You could write it down, but paper is not immortal, it is particularly good at being mislaid. You could ask Google (try it), but at time of writing the top hits aren't definitions. Consequently you'd need to 'hunt and gather' snippets of information in order to synthesise a new definition. Aside from the sheer effort required just to organise this information, I bet you miss out the reference to Holbein. You could bookmark this page, but will it be here next year? Will you even remember you have it bookmarked? Will it be lost in the thousands of other bookmarks you've saved since? Or have you long since given up bookmarking and now use Google to find things instead? This is not a new problem, describe this scenario to an academic computer scientist and they'll identify it as a knowledge management problem. At issue is how we can better store, retrieve and use the information we deem useful. This is the objective of Memento: to provide somewhere to store what you know in a way that's more organised, more accessible, and at less risk of being forgotten. If you're curious to find out more, I'd recommend starting with the Memento white paper. This document explains the design principles, theory and architecture of the Memento system. |
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| Last modified: August 04 2002 14:10:42 | |