Knowledge

MassIVE© Pattern Storage

Cheap! Mass Associative Storage

Cheap!

Recognise situations more easily

Know what to do

Add new patterns and associations as you acquire them, low fees for memory and knowledge maintenance

Find more meaning in your life with deeper thoughts and the ability to see the ideas behind the patterns

Deal with problems faster and better as you draw from the accumulated wisdom of the ages

Feel closer to your friends and family as you associate them with more and more positive emotions

Hate your enemies with gusto, fix their face as a hate trigger-pattern

Become a god-like super-being^Note#8

We all have a memory, make yours a MassIVE© Memory

Fear

Grandfather never trusted the brain stores. Sure, he used them, just like everyone else, he had one of the latest models when he died, but he never trusted them. I remember sitting on his porch with him in the middle of winter (this was after he'd had it screened in so it never changed from season to season), listening to him inveigh about how the brain stores were going to take over the world. How they would alter our associations, and how that would mean they could control how we thought.

Grandfather was one of the old school, before the new psychology. He had been taught, and believed until he died, that there was no distinction between thought and pattern recognition. He was convinced that, by putting all the patterns we recognised into the brain stores, we were giving up control of our ability to think. He just couldn't see the difference between patterns of thoughts and patterns of events, elements and environments. There was no way to tell him that the pattern recognition systems we use for understanding patterns of ideas weren't the same as those we use for recognising the fact that something exists.

It was an impoverished view, of course, a view based on the idea that humans have no true thoughts, that everything we do is merely a complex pre-programmed reaction to stimuli. Gramps was one of what they called a behaviourist, meaning that he thought everything was learned, and nothing innate. It was a time when computers ruled the earth. What can you say, they were in love with the idea of blank slates programmed from the ground up.

Sometimes I wonder how much of the memory he gave to me is still hanging around. I know now that the distinction between "real" thought and "pattern recognition" was a chimera. The level of complexity of abstract pattern recognition is far beyond that of physical pattern identification, but I can't help wondering if maybe this response, this dismissal of the idea out of hand might have been planted in my memories by the woman transferred this memory. Maybe the difference isn't so much, and maybe they programme us to think it's different so we won't know what's going on. I'm not sure I trust the brain stores… I wonder if I should get my memory wiped.