"...before death had been indefinitely postponed, it had been thought that memory would turn longevity into a Greek gift, because not even the human brain could remember a practical infinity of accumulated facts. Nowadays, however, nobody bothered to remember many facts. That was what the City Fathers and like machines were for: they stored data. Living men memorized nothing but processes, throwing out obsolete ones for new ones as invention made it necessary. When they needed facts, they asked the machines.
"In some cases, even processes were wiped from human memory to make more room if there were simple, indestructible machines to replace them - the slide rule, for instance. Amalfi wondered suddenly if there was a single man in the city who could multiply, divide, take square roots, or figure pH in his head or on paper. The thought was so novel as to be alarming - as novel as if an ancient astrophysicist had seriously wondered how many of his colleagues could run an abacus.
"No, memory was no problem. But it was hard to be patient after a thousand years."
-James Blish, Earthman, Come Home IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), CHAPTER FOUR, p. 319.
Make of that what you will. (What is a Greek gift?)
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
We are not told much in THE BOAT OF A MILLION YEARS how or by what means the "immortals" handled the problem of memory overload. Apparently, after several centuries, the quasi-immortals suffered thru about sixty years of "senility" and mental confusion before their minds cleared up. During these periods the immortals were helpless and depended on whoever cared for them for survival.
In WORLD WITHOUT STARS and FOR LOVE AND GLORY, we learned that after about 900 years the people who took the antithanatic (WORLD) or periodical life extending treatments (FLAG) underwent medico-technological procedures which removed excess memories from their minds/brains. FLAG mentioned how this was followed by exercises designed to preserve continuity of the personality and adjusting to a drastically "sharpened" mind.
I don't know if drastically life spans are possible, but Anderson gave thought to problems live memory overload. Incidentally, Anderson mentioned that problem as long ago as his early story "Pact."
Ad astra! Sean
I forgot to type "extended" after "drastically" in the last paragraph of my comment above.
Sean
"(What is a Greek gift?)"
I'm pretty sure that is a reference to the Trojan Horse & the phrase in the Aeneid, "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts"
Jim,
Right. Thanks.
Paul.
Kaor, Jim!
I thought of that as well, but was too lazy to say so!
Ad astra! Sean
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