The rising of collective forgetting and cultural selectivity in inventors and physicists communities

Abstract

How long until this paper is forgotten? Collective forgetting is the process by which the attention received by cultural pieces decays as time passes. Recent work modeled this decay as the result of two different processes, one linked to communicative memory --memories sustained by human communication-- and cultural memory --memories sustained by the physical recording of content. Yet, little is known on how the collective forgetting dynamic changes over time. Are older cultural pieces forgotten at a lower rate than newer ones? Here, we study the temporal changes of collective memory and attention by focusing on two knowledge communities: inventors and physicists. We use data on patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and physics papers published in the American Physical Society (APS) to quantify how collective forgetting has changed over time. The model enables us to distinguish between two branches of forgetting. One branch is short-lived, going directly from communicative memory to oblivion. The other one is long-lived going from communicative to cultural memory and then to oblivion. The data analysis shows an increasing forgetting rate for both communities as the information grows. Furthermore, these knowledge communities seem to be increasing their selectivity at storing valuable cultural pieces in their cultural memory. These findings provide empirical confirmation on the forgetting as an annulment hypothesis and show that knowledge communities can effectively slow down the rising of collective forgetting at improving their cultural selectivity.