Cory Strischek

Dear Craig,

I just saw that my new iMac has 1.88 free terabytes on the hard disk despite all my music and photographs.

I started to think, how many terabytes would my memories require?  (And then: “But I should probably limit that to visual memories.  But I should probably limit those visual memories to stills — maybe 72 dpi, 500 X 500 px JPGs.  But, are my visual memory stills even real representations?  They’re pretty blurry, foggy, and polluted with uncertainty.  Do I even have any memories?  It’s not like my memories are written on a hard disk and retrieved as exact binary files.  They’re fluid, maybe even assembled on the spot from infinite little … infinite little what’s?!  What is the unit of a memory?”)

I ended up with the question, “How many memories have I had?”  I’m thinking that, although you couldn’t possibly calculate the number of still visual memories you could “generate” in a given sitting, you could probably record a number off of a given rate of frames/per second … if, say, you connected someone’s mind up to iMovie.  (You’d probably get a lot of imagination in there as well but, we’ll just call it all memories.)

This all reminded me of you.  No particular memory, of course!  Not you on the blue couch on your old porch; or you, driving in the Geo; or you, leaning over the table at Casa.  Just a floating Craig head and shoulders, looking inquisitive!

Any idea who the big thinkers in memory are?  I might like to read up on it.