An explanation?

I drive a lot and tend to either listen to peace and quiet or NPR. Yesterday was NPR. As a result I came away with some info that explains how much I can/do remember. The guest was an inventor/author from Massachusetts, Ray Kurzweil. His current book is about the mind and how AI will help your memory. We humans learn in patterns and there are somewhere in the three million in volume. So by age twenty our heads are full of these patterns. From that age on, in order to retain a new pattern of thought we must "lose" an old one. It's an unconscious act, nothing we can preordain. Usually the one replaced is a duplicate from our store of good memories. If you like gelato that memory might be stored over and over thus replacing one is no big thing. Likewise as  you age memories of youth fade because it is no longer an active part of your life. It makes sense. So I'll fly with it!

If you see me and I don't seem to recognize you, it's because you were a part of my distant youth and I've misplaced that memory...not that I would ever have chosen, consciously to do so. My apologies and let's start a new line of thought, totally disregarding the poor victims of my memory being crushed by doing so!

The author feels that in twenty years, give or take, research will permit us to use electronic implants to aid our memory banks...you know sort of like those chips we put behind the ears of our pets. Maybe we won't actually remember more, but the days of "Silver alerts" are numbered! 

So the next time you read something on this blog and you feel that I already wrote it elsewhere, this is "my story and I'm sticking to it"!!!