"It is well known that cultures develop varying 'recollection procedures'
(e.g. libraries or mediatheques[13]); perhaps
the question should be more precisely addressed as to whether cultural
recollection procedures are organized particularly in the form of stored memory
or data specifically because human memory does not function like a library and
memories may not be called up as from a database; yet to this day a topological
and functional equivalence between recollection/memory and cultural memory
storage processes is usually assumed. And finally, there should be a more
thorough investigation into the types of structural and processual
equivalencies between remembering and reading - as distinct from the reception
of audiovisual offerings, for instance. (...)
The venerable and still widely held notion that meaning is stored in texts and
transported through texts or other documents may hardly be theoretically or
empirically defended today. (...) Texts and documents do not store meaning, but
rather provide an occasion for semantic operations bound to the subject, for
reflecting and remembering. They provide occasions for objectifying perceptions
and experiences and make it possible to append further perceptions and
experiences."[14]
[13] Cf. Assmann, A. & J.: "Das Gestern im
Heute. Medien und soziales Gedächtnis", from: Funkkolleg Medien und
Kommunikation, Studenbrief 5, Weinheim/Basel 1990. p. 41-82
[14] Siegfried J. Schmidt: Gedächtnis -
Erzählen - Identität, from: Aleida Assmann & Dietrich Harth
(Ed.): Mnemosyne. Formen und Funktionen der kultureller Erinnerung, Frankfurt
a.M. 1991, p. 378-397, here: p. 390, 391