Posted on 04/13/2008 7:36:50 PM PDT by neverdem
How much would you pay to have a small memory chip implanted in your brain if that chip would double the capacity of your short-term memory? Or guarantee that you would never again forget a face or a name?
There’s good reason to consider such offers. Although our memories are sometimes spectacular — we are very good at recognizing photos, for example — our memory capacities are often disappointing. Faulty memories have been known to lead to erroneous eyewitness testimony (and false imprisonment), to marital friction (in the form of overlooked anniversaries) and even death (sky divers have been known to forget to pull their ripcords — accounting, by one estimate, for approximately 6 percent of sky-diving fatalities). The dubious dynamics of memory leave us vulnerable to the predations of spin doctors (because a phrase like “death tax” automatically brings to mind a different set of associations than “estate tax”), the pitfalls of stereotyping (in which easily accessible memories wash out less common counterexamples) and what the psychologist Timothy Wilson calls “mental contamination.” To the extent that we frequently can’t separate relevant information from irrelevant information, memory is often the culprit.
All this becomes even more poignant when you compare our memories to those of the average laptop. Whereas it takes the average human child weeks or even months or years to memorize something as simple as a multiplication table, any modern computer can memorize any table in an instant — and never forget it. Why can’t we do the same?
Much of the difference lies in the basic organization of memory. Computers organize everything they store according to physical or logical locations, with each bit stored in a specific place according to some sort of master map, but we have no idea where anything in our...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Seems odd that a sky diver would forget to pull the rip cord during a jump .... more likely he can’t get his hand on it before he hits!
I wouldn’t want a chip implanted — I’d rather have an interface implanted to hook up external memory. That way, you could swap chips.
Could they also put a little VIAGARA in that chip?
Yes, better personal control. ;-)
When you realize how much information can be encoded on a chip these days - you have to think: Okay, so the chip might perform as advertised - BUT, what else is embedded on that chip???
No thank you. I'll stick to good foods, good vitamins and minerals, maybe double up on the lecithin, get my unpolluted fresh air and my sunshine - and put post it notes everywhere...
Of faces (he should've made that clear, photos of a random number table don't work out so well.)
Save for later read.
And if the chip were programmed my Microsoft, you would have to stop living at least once a week to update yourself. Think about it. ;-)
They also suffer from recollections of non-existent sniper fire and fighting terrorists while getting blow-jobs.
“I’d rather have an interface implanted to hook up external memory”
I agree with you on that.
Good grief! Shades of “Johnny Mnemonic”
I’m trying to forget my ex wife.
You will also be sick from virus infections on a regular basis.
And how do they know? Do they ask the corpse?
An interesting legal question: You have the legal right not to incriminate yourself via testimony, but could a memory chip be subpoenaed and introduced as evidence against you?
Be very careful of those chips sold by BorgCorp.
Love mouse! ;-)
(Just a typical White, gun-toting, Jesus-loving grandpa)
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