...is a terrible thing to waste.
It often amazes me the things that are locked up in my head. I thought I would share. And when I talk about stupid things I remember I'm not talking about the names of all the Klingons, or the phone numbers for my last three apartments, or the names of my ex-girlfriend's sisters. Most of those things I don't remember anyway - if I ever knew them at all. I mean really stupid things.
And no, lyrics to old songs don't count, nor do hours and hours of standup comedy. Also, nothing one ever really had to learn for a class, no matter how useless now can qualify as truly a waste.
Here, here is an example of a real waste of brainpower. For the rest of my life I will never forget the phone number for the Empire Carpet Company in Chicago: 588-2300. That is a real waste, is something I never needed and almost certainly never will. Right along side of that is the phone number for 1st Metropolitan Builders: HU(dson)3-2700. These are forever encoded in memory engrams thanks to local TV advertising on channel 9 in Chicago while I was growing up.
Now that's stupid. How about this? Can anyone guess what this is:
That is the key sequence that works to score a basket off of any change of possession on a Mattel Electronic Basketball game.
I remember the fingering to the 1st trumpet part to "The Blue Rock," which was the first song I remember playing that I liked in the intermediate band when I was in 5th grade.
Often I wonder about how much memory is clogged up with meaningless prattle like the next line in a Seinfeld episode. Being able to guess which Stargate episode I'm watching within the first 4 seconds often seems like a wasted resource. But at least I am somewhat likely to call on that information sometime in the future. How likely am I to be going to call Empire?
Do you think that stuff is just there forever? Does it take up space from other things? Make the recall of other information more difficult, like every time I am trying to come up with a number I need, do I have to search by HU3-2700? Do you think memories like that are displaced as other more pertinent things are encoded? Is there a business to be run deleting and de-fragging people's minds the same way one would do a hard drive? I wonder.
4 comments:
Ahh, but what things can you not remember? What's my sister's name? Whats our home phone number? How old are you? What did we have for dinner last night? What day are we getting married? Whats your sister's birthday? I could go on forever...
I think the human brain has an infinite ability to remember. The question is why can we pay attention to the stupid stuff and forget to pay the phone bill.
you aren't an ex-girlfriend, Marisa, why would he know your sister's name?
Did you know that Empire is all over the country? With the same phone number. Or maybe its just that Channel 9 is WGN which is syndicated on cable. But I definitely saw an Empire Carpet commercial on television, in Pittsburgh, since Thanksgiving.
i think the whole profile thing is rather fascist...as are blogs in general
Maybe our brains store information in a different fashion than computers do. Maybe the phone number of the carpet place is planted firmly in your brain as a signpost that your mental librarian uses to help him find his way to "strip club phone numbers, current" when you pick up a telephone.
R.
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