There’s a new radio show going on in my head. It’s called “Where Was I?” and it is growing in popularity. Not only is it trending with me, but millions of baby boomers have picked up this habit and tuned into the same station.
I’m not talking only about losing your train of thought. No, that would not be so bad. I am talking about losing the entire train, as in you don’t know where the hell you are or where you thought you were going with a specific thought.
If you’re worried that this is a sign of early dementia, I would ease up on that idea. There’s heading into the kitchen and forgetting why you wanted to go there, and then there’s going into the kitchen to make a meal and forgetting the basic steps to sandwich making. I still know how to make tuna salad or a salami sandwich and I’m damn sure you shouldn’t put those two things together between slices of bread.
I prefer to think that we just have input overload and that our brains just can’t process that much information as rapidly as we once did. If that’s the case, then as much as I sometimes despair that AI will rot everyone’s brains (never mind replace millions of jobs and plagiarize art), then maybe AI will be useful after all.
Alexa, Siri and ChatGPT cannot make a sandwich but if we tell them what we have in the pantry and refrigerator, they can come up with reasonable options for a tasty meal.
The key takeaway here is that memory lapses are normal and are not the same as dementia. Putting your car keys in the oven? That’s a problem. Driving for hours with no destination. Problem. Missing appointments that are on your calendar. Problem. Using the wrong words and wrong names for friends/family. Problem. Feeling lost or overwhelmed doing things you used to do with ease. Big problem.
Where was I? That’s just a hiccup in my train of thought and I’m sticking with the theory that we have just too much stimulation in the form of things that appear on a screen – large or small. My guess is that we had less memory lapse when we had a lot less media directed at us.
Since it’s too late to reduce our digital consumption, we will just have to trust our instincts that occasional bouts of “where was I” are not the endgame. The robots taking care of us will see to that.
Jay Harrison is a writer and creative consultant for DesignConcept. His latest mystery novel, Rio Puerco Demise is available on Amazon. His first mystery novel, Head Above Water, is also available on Amazon. But that’s not all. You can also purchase the Best of BoomSpeak on Amazon.
