Memory as a Usable Resource: Correlations, Records and Complete Endpoint Accounting

How does a physical past become a capability of the process that carries it? Our proposal is that records become usable history through their role in later action: they retain distinctions relevant to that action, enter an implemented control, and are interpreted through a readout that can be calibrated. A diagonal-pointer feedback task makes these relations precise. Its maximum gross work gain is accessible classical information times k_(B)T; history compression loses exactly its task-conditional information, and a wrong posterior has a relative-entropy price. A statistic preserving today's value can nevertheless lose the relation needed for tomorrow's update. Reference calibration can build the required readout model and pay through reuse. Two partially mixed record ports give a concrete read–harvest–reset realization, while the complete endpoint balance locates the correlations, environmental stock and control energy that support it. Backflow, autonomous recurrence and readable memory remain different mechanisms. The resulting memory–self–introspection route begins with task-defined internal use; forming a participant that maintains and revises its access across changing tasks requires the further organization studied in the rest of the series.

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