Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
The gesture by which a human designates, in the middle of an exchange with an assistant, a fragment that must survive beyond that exchange — and gets it out to a place that no longer depends on the tool.
Full definition
In computing, persistence designates a datum's property of existing after the program stops. The word is passive there: a datum either is persistent or isn't.
In the articles on this blog, it becomes a verb and a decision. To persist is not a property of the datum, it is an act: saying "persist that" about the paragraph that has just appeared in a ChatGPT conversation, and carrying on working.
Two traits follow. The gesture is selective — the point isn't to keep everything, but to settle the matter in the middle of a mostly disposable flow. And it is external — what is persisted leaves the tool, so as to be recoverable independently of whatever that tool will remember.
Usage in the field
Used to designate what moves a fragment of conversation from the flow to the durable, and to distinguish that gesture from automatic memory.
Synonyms and variants
"to persist", "to get something out of the flow". "To capitalize" when the emphasis falls on what it eventually produces rather than on the gesture.
Not to be confused with
- an assistant's memory — what a tool retains of its own accord, partially and with no guarantee of word-for-word restitution. Persistence asks nothing of it: it leaves that perimeter.
- backup — an automatic and exhaustive copy. Persistence is a choice, and that choice is its value.
- Outbox — the place where what has been persisted lands. The gesture and its landing point do not coincide.
Examples
In the middle of a conversation spanning several days, saying "persist our last definition": the paragraph leaves the flow and becomes recoverable five days later, whatever the assistant still has in mind.
Ambiguities / debates
The computing sense remains dominant and misleads: it suggests a technical property where what is at stake is a human decision. That is the reason this entry exists.