The Grass Moon Meander

So over the past six months, I've become increasingly dependent upon my Palm-pilot-like device. My failures at organization have been chronic, so this allows me to keep everything in one place (more or less), and even allows me to back it all up, so if I lose it or break it, I can recover. Sure, it's got its problems, but it's a step in the right direction.

The other day, while trying to teach myself to write programs that will run on these devices, I nearly managed to destroy not only all my data, but my backup as well. It's surprising how an event like that improves the circulation -- all my blood rushed up into my head, then plummeted to my feet. In any case, I restored from the other backup, and all was once again copacetic.

In the future, of course, we'll be able to synch such digital assistants directly with our brains' temporal lobes, and store memories directly. Advanced versions will be able to cache image data from the occipital lobe of the brain. The problem of forgetting will be gone forever.

A quantum leap in technology will allow us to remember beyond our experience. We'll have reconstructed memory of previous generations, or civilizations that have passed before our time, of species now extinct. Then someone will fixate on remembering the lost art of how to forget things, and we'll be right back where we started.

Phone in comments to 310.210.3347, meil 'em to the postal address skillfully concealed elsewhere on this page, or email 'em to samuelg@themeander.org

Around the Mar Vista hills, and the Quagg living room.
  • excerpts from Ride a Horse Foaled by an Acorn by Robert Hughes from The Fatal Shore : The Epic of Australia's Founding
  • excerpts from The Career of Jonathan Wild by Robert Hughes from The Fatal Shore : The Epic of Australia's Founding
  • excerpts from The True Story of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
  • "Always Marry an April Girl" by Ogden Nash
  • "Old Men" by Ogden Nash
  • "I Didn't Go To Church Today" by Ogden Nash
  • excerpts from My Uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
  • "I saw in Louisiana a Live Oak Growing" by Walt Whitman
  • "Animals" by Walt Whitman
  • "The Grass" by Walt Whitman
  • "Abiyoyo" by Pete Seeger
  • "Many Moons" by James Thurber

All misspellings, misattributions, omissions or errors in naming should be construed as Acts of God, directed through yours truly (for reasons at which we as mere mortals may only guess...)