Maybe our whole approach to data storage is wrong. What if we were less precise?

If memory were more like instinct, where there were just a little bit of information necessary to get to the big idea, then that would be more natural. Birds don’t have a program in their heads to build the same nest again, and again, exactly the same as the last one -they build something similar to the last one. Why do humans have this weird need for perfect duplication?

What if computers had a small amount of the critical information saved, and then AI extrapolated off of that and produced the result. Obviously it would be hard to convince someone to use an external hard drive that offers to backup their data *sort of.* So my theoretical “instinct drive” would have to be for other applications. Imagine music retrieved in a way like this. A song played on repeat may sound just a little bit different each time if a machine were essentially improvising as it went along. Arguably that’s a more realistic music-listening experience.

I also recently learned that physical data storage has shrunken to the point where electrons are “jumping” through walls and the memory is essentially forgotten. That sounds like a sign of peak memory to me!

I also remember learning that the human brain has the memory capacity of a compact disc, roughly 1.7 GB. I think everyone’s first reaction is, “that can’t possibly be correct, I can think of way more stuff than what will fit on a CD.” But there’s an important distinction to be made between what is “thought” of  as a new idea, and what is actually recalled.