Science Fiction Reality & Memory

I seem to be living in a science fiction novel. Too many of the dystopian elements in science fiction are now happening. Our amateur president, Donald Trump, may have the world in a Doctor Strangelove or Fail Safe situation with his braggadocio and saber-rattling for the idiot in North Korea, Kim Jong-un. A disastrous war is one thing to make me shiver, but I also felt a Big Brother shiver when I read that some companies are considering implanting microchips in their employees’ hands, thus doing away with keys or identification protocols within the companies. That at first sounds like an innocent reason, but it also smacks of Orwellian possibilities. Would employees agree to this in fear of losing their jobs? And what would this lead to? Tiny GPS chips to show their locations 24/7? Chips that could hear and record their every conversation? Whoa! I just felt another shiver. I also read an article about Amazon’s Echo with Alexa to do our bidding and answer all our questions. The article went on to suggest that Alexa may also be listening to, recording, and evaluating our conversations. This business giant Amazon already keeps track of our on-line purchases and searches and automatically dangles similar items when we visit the Amazon site, hoping to tempt us into buying their wares. Many of the futuristic predictions that science fiction writers envisioned have already come true or will be true in the near future. Houses that take care of themselves was seen in Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains.” Artificial intelligence, robots, and androids were seen in Asimov’s I Robot. The dangers of overpopulation were seen in Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar and Harry Harrison’s “Make Room! Make Room!” which was later made into the movie Soylent Green. Our reliance on mood-altering drugs was seen in Huxley’s Brave New World. And all these scientific and technological advances (or maybe “regressions”) have happened in my lifetime. I can’t even imagine what other mind-blowing things might be here in the next five or six years. Yeah, we’re all living in a science fiction novel.

I’m now old enough to be worried about dementia and Alzheimer’s, probably the ugliest way to slide down that slope toward death, to remain alive but totally without memory or even physical abilities. So far, I haven’t experienced too many memory lapses, although I do every now and then lose a word or an old friend’s name or the title of one of my favorite movies. Usually, after a head shake or two, it comes back to me. And sometimes I have to search on-line for an answer. Thank you, Wikipedia and IMDb. One of my check points is to see how often I can remember the name of the classical composer of the music that was used for the Broadway musical Kismet. It was Alexander Borodin. I keep it in my memory for that time when it comes up on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, that bit of trivia that will astound my wife and any friends who may be around. Remembering the lyrics to the songs of my youth is another way to test my memory. One curious aspect of the way the mind and the memory works is that in a semi-asleep state, my memory is much clearer than during the light of day. I wonder if that means I’d be better off in a slight daze during the day. My wife might say that’s a usual state for me.