MEMORY (Distributed) 2)
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The redundant sharing among numerous elements interconnected in a complex system of parts of the total available information present within the system.
Better than to speak about memory as a global function, we should consider different types of memories: visual, auditive, lexical, semantic, etc…, which work in different conditions and at different time scales.
This type of distributed memory is found in complex systems under the form of intercommunicated nets among numerous elements.
The brain, or human organizations and societies, or populations from the genetic viewpoint seem to be good examples.
No single element does possess the total stock of information of the system, much less so. However numerous elements do share some data, or characteristics, or knowledge. The positive aspect of this kind of holographic or heterarchic arrangement is that the destruction of a part, even important, of the system does not lead to the loss of much information, since the surviving elements (neurons, genes or individuals) still possess most of it and are able to retransmit it within a reconstructed net.
In order to maintain (or create) coherence in such type of distributed memory, some kind organization in levels is however needed. We have thus a mix of heterarchic and hierarchic order.
von FOERSTER introduced the concept of "memory without a record ". Memory is not a set of records stored in some specific place in the brain: the computer memory is an incorrect metaphor.
L. M. ROCHA comments: "By utilizing functionals to change the functions of state-determined systems, von FOERSTER formalized the idea that memory can be observed in systems which are able to change their own structure and therefore its dynamics and attractor behavior. Today we name this kind of memory distributed, and the kind of models of memory so attained as connectionist. The categories that a distributed memory system classifies are not stored in any particular location, they are nowhere to be found since they are distributed over the entire dynamics established by some network of processes (van GELDER, 1991). They exist however in the form of attractors (eigenstates) which are nonetheless discrete" (1996, p.377)
This model of memory is closely related to organizational closure, characteristic of autopoietic systems.
It leads to "distributed memory selected self-organization" (Ibid)
Categories
- 1) General information
- 2) Methodology or model
- 3) Epistemology, ontology and semantics
- 4) Human sciences
- 5) Discipline oriented
Publisher
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science(2020).
To cite this page, please use the following information:
Bertalanffy Center for the Study of Systems Science (2020). Title of the entry. In Charles François (Ed.), International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics (2). Retrieved from www.systemspedia.org/[full/url]
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