Information creep
| This article is about the condition that affects Transformers. For Crosscut's piece of experimental theatre named after it, see Information Creep. |
- Information creep is an illness from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.
Information creep is a malady that afflicts robotic lifeforms: i.e. Transformers. It consists of the corruption of data in the Brain module that results in memories being subconsciously (or rather, unconsciously) re-interpreted.
Fiction
IDW Generation 1 continuity
While rummaging around in Overlord's brain, Chromedome commented that Overlord was showing signs of eidetic decay, or memory fatigue: in Overlord's memory of a crowd during a gladiatorial battle, most of the crowd was the same color, and one out of every three or four faces was missing. He estimated that level of imperfect recall meant Overlord was about 4.2 million years old. Chromedome doesn't refer to this process as "information creep," but since it involves the gradual corruption and loss of old memories, it's possible that memory fatigue or eidetic decay are the same or related to information creep. Remembrance Day
Following the disappearance of the Lost Light and the necessity of 20 'bots cramming into the Rodpod, they began talking amongst themselves. During one of the conversations, Ammo, Riptide, and Getaway told Nautica about the "Ten-Step Program" that MTOs had to pass in order to be declared "world-ready" (which Riptide hated), Ratchet weighed in with anecdotal info about the high percentage of MTOs who claimed to have had mystical experiences, which he claimed were neurological hallucinations that were a product of their virtually-newborn senses. Swerve took offense, pointing out that faith wasn't a new idea, but Skids countered that with a brief lecture on a condition known to affect long-lived robotic lifeforms known as "information creep"—over a long period of time, the corruption of brain data results in memories being unconsciously reinterpreted. Nautica was familiar with the condition, which was known on Caminus as "blurred data". Twenty Plus One
During a conversation on Earth's moon, Optimus Prime cited information creep to Alpha Trion as the reason why present day Transformers were unable to remember "legendary" figures from their past like the Guiding Hand, despite having been alive during that era. The Crucible
Notes
- In real life, human beings are subject to "memory errors", which includes memory loss, remembering events that never occurred, or remembering them differently from the way they had actually transpired. They can happen for a myriad of differing reasons, including emotions/stress level during the particular situation, expectations and changes to environment. This sounds much like "information creep" in robotic lifeforms.
- "Information creep" is a term used by Wikipedia to describe the slow feed of information into an article that winds up shifting its perspective and/or readability over time.
External links
- Memory errors at Wikipedia
