抽象的人类生物记忆系统已经改编成使用技术文物来克服这些系统的某些局限性。例如,在执行困难计算时,我们使用笔和纸来创建和存储外部数字符号;记住我们的约会时,我们会使用日历;记住要购买的东西时,我们会使用购物清单。本章着眼于记忆伪像的历史,描述了从洞穴绘画到虚拟现实的演变。它首先表征了记忆工件,内存系统和两个主要功能,这些伪像具有,这些功能是为了帮助单个用户完成内存任务和文化继承渠道(第2节)。It then outlines some of our first symbolic practices such as making cave paintings and figurines, and then moves on to outline several key developments in external representational systems and the artifacts that support these such as written language, numeral systems and counting devices, diagrams and maps, measuring devices, libraries and archives, photographs, analogue and digital computational artifacts, the World Wide Web, virtual reality, and smartphones (section 3)。之后,这对记忆伪像的文化演变的累积性质提出了一些简短的观点,并推测了记忆伪像的未来,认为很难超越五年多的认识论视野(第4节)。