We've reached a critical mass point where the amount of memory we have externalized in books and databases (to name but a few sources) now exceeds the amount of memory contained within our collective biological bodies. In other words, there's more memory 'out there' than exists inside 'all of us.'...Given this new situation, the presumption of the existence of the notion of 'history' becomes not necessarily dead but somewhat beside the point. Access to memory replaces history as a way for our species to process its past. Memory has replaced history...
-Douglas Coupland, Microserfs-