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Budrys nails down the problem with our always on computer memories, in our smartphones and computers that we seemingly can't live without.

Even with a dozen safe places to put it down within easy reach, he still kept his memory vault chained to his wrist. Fay had spent the trip playing his memory on the plane’s excellent equipment, alone in the comfortable but small compartment forward of the ship’s big cargo cabin. Somewhere in the graceful furniture behind him, a photoelectric relay clicked, and his high-fidelity set began to play the Karinius Missa. The apartment had not forgotten his moods. No, he thought, the machines never forgot. Only men forgot, and depended on machines to help them remember. He stared at the vault, and a familiar sophistry occurred to him. “Well,” he asked the box labeled PLAY ME, “which is my brain — you or the gray lump in my head?” The answer depended on his moods, and on his various audiences. Tonight, alone, in an uncertain mood, he had no answer. (The memory vault from 'The End of Summer' by Algis Budrys) But his glance had fallen on the memory vault which he had unchained and put on a coffee table. It faced him with the ageless, silent injunction painted on each of its faces; PLAY ME, and underneath this the block of smaller lettering that he, like everyone else, knew by heart: If your surroundings seem unfamiliar, or you have any other reason to suspect that your environment and situation are not usual, request immediate assistance from any other individual. He is obligated by strict law to direct you to the nearest free public playback booth, where you will find further instructions. Do not be alarmed, and follow these directions without anxiety, even if they seem strange to you. In extreme situations, stand still and do not move. Hold this box in front of you with both hands. This is a universally recognized signal of distress. Do not let anyone take this box away from you, no matter what the excuse offered. He laughed at the vault as he kicked it shut on his way to the bathroom. “Not until tonight," he said to PLAY ME, and then teetered for a breathless moment as he struggled to regain his balance. He set his foot down with a laugh, his eyes sparkling... PLAY ME. Like a music tape, the memory vault held his life tightly knit in the nested spindles of bright, imperishable minitape...

Technovelgy from The End of Summer, by Algis Budrys. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1954 Additional resources -

After the protagonist Fay disdains his automobile's automatics, he runs over a dog out in the country. A small boy is devastated; his parents opt to edit the boy's memory vault:

I’ll edit the dog out of his memories tonight. My wife and I’ll clean the place up, and he won’t notice anything.” He paused, reflecting, his eyes dark. “Guess Madge and I’ll cut it out of our own minitapes, too.”
Fay clenched his teeth in sudden annoyance. Nobody ever believed a Dilly. “No,” he said. “I wish you wouldn’t do that. I meant what I said.” He shook his head again. “I don’t like editing. There’s always a slip somewhere, and then you know you’ve got a hole in your memory, but you can never remember what it was.”
The man looked at him curiously. “Funny thing for one of you people to say. I always heard you went for editing in a big way.”
Fay kept his face from showing his thoughts. There it was again — that basic lack of understanding and a complete unwillingness to check secondhand tales. The very essence of his kind of life was that no memory, no experience, not be lived and preserved. Besides, he’d always heard that it was the Homebodies who had to edit whole hectoyears to keep from going mad with boredom.
“No,” he contented himself with saying. “You’re confusing us with the Hoppers. They’ll try anything.”
The man curled his lip at the mention, and Fay reflected that the introduction of a common outsider seemed helpful in circumstances like this.
“Well . . . maybe you’re right,” the man said, still not completely trustful, but willing to take the chance. He gave Fay his name, Arnold Riker, and his address. Fay put the slip of paper carefully in his memor\vault.
“Anytime I lose that. I’ll have lost my memory, too,” he commented.
The man grinned wryly. “More likely, you’ll remember to forget it tonight,” he said, some of his distrust returning at the sight of the spooled tapes.

Thanks to SFFAudio for putting me on the track of this item and this story!

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The End of Summer
  More Ideas and Technology by Algis Budrys
  Tech news articles related to The End of Summer
  Tech news articles related to works by Algis Budrys

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