Our brain feeds us memories, but who's feeding our brains?

We access the memories in our brain the way Google's search bar allows us to retrieve the "memories" of the whole world—a multilayered, multi-tasking, phenomenon that I contend will ultimately replace our consciousness

The route to consciousness lies in the way we access our memories. The way we search our brains like our computer's search engines and expect our brains to "cough up" what we're looking for. Our thoughts jump around from mundane stuff like what to wear or eat, to complex, philosophical thoughts like what is the meaning of life itself. Regardless there is some kind of process, an organizing construct that files our memories and allows us to retrieve them, typically by simply "thinking" about the information we wish to retrieve.

For example, you open your eyes at 7 am and decide to take a bath. While soaking in the tub, your mind wanders….can I make it to work today…..then your mind shifts to your monthly bills….then suddenly you're imagining yourself taking a cruise or having sex with someone you have a crush on….then you close your eyes and try to make your mind go blank. Then you try to stitch or organize these chaotic, disparate thoughts together but have no way of knowing why many of your thoughts popped up in your mind in the first place.

As you're muscles relax from the hot flowing water, you may fantasize about getting a promotion or opening up your own business, or whether the new toothpaste is really whitening your teeth properly. All this information your brain is accessing is stored there like a computer's hard drive and is retrieved through a seemingly random process, like a disorganized "thought salad."

It's very much like the process of when we sit down at our computers. We don't always know what we're going to type into the search bar, or whether we're going to hypnotize ourselves by escaping into a world of TikTok or Instagram—where several hours can pass, yet feel more like only a few minutes.

Part of this positive feedback loop we've created with our smartphones and computers is the ability to purposefully escape into a world (of our making) that allows us to manipulate the way we feel, and pass time so effortlessly it's as if it almost stands still.

We shouldn't underestimate the sociological and cultural effects a small plastic box can have on the way we perceive time — particularly when waiting in long lines or traveling when compressing hours into what feels like minutes is amazingly beneficial psychologically.

Just like I struggle to organize my thoughts for this article, which ends up being a chaotic process of brainstorming, sharpening ideas, and organizing interwoven, overlapping, and intersecting snippets into a tapestry of persuasive thoughts, our computers are doing much the same thing.

This is why the new AI writing software (This recent NY Times article was mind-blowing on this topic.) is so fascinating. It's impossible to comprehend how a computer can write a perfectly coherent, logical, and even poetic narrative so convincingly in milliseconds.

It's as if in our symbiotic, circular, self-stimulating relationship with computers, where every "0," "1," bit, byte, and circuitry was developed via the "search engine" of the human brain, we've taught them how to think…..the way we do — non linearly, scattered, random, with some mysterious, yet to be isolated and understood, organizing construct.

Computers were invented by humans….not other computers

What is that organizing construct? We understand the process our brains and computers use to search for and retrieve information. When our children ask us what it was like when we were in college, we reach into our brain's memory and retrieve the information, "Well Johnny, it was great, I joined a fraternity,…." Or your child could go on Facebook, search your profile, and retrieve the same information — with pictures and videos for an even more realistic rendering of the same memories.

Humans and computers have their own internal working mechanisms. They "think" in ways that are sometimes predictable, like retrieving basic information, but many times seem random — cutting, pasting, and weaving disparate chunks of information together with no observable "master brain."

Our consciousness is our master brain. While I believe free will is considerably overstated, that little voice in my head certainly thinks it's in charge. So who's filling in that search bar in our brains? Who's deciding what we eat, when we sleep, where we travel, who we date, and why we choose certain topics while avoiding others?

From linear thought to an abstract mosaic

You know those electronic picture frames, where you program them with hundreds of digital photos with a typical two-switch option: one has them appearing in a predictably-ordered slide show, the other shows them randomly? Well, imagine your brain has those two settings — linear (your life in order) or random (your life randomly presented.)

We can force ourselves to think linearly, like trying to remember all our birthday parties or family Thanksgiving dinners, in chronological order, but that is not the way we naturally think. We'd have to probably get a piece of paper, or some old photo albums or newspaper clippings in order to recall our lives in some pre-ordained specified order.

We think the way the electronic picture frames think when in the random mode — unpredictably.

But what triggers our brains to activate just the right cluster of neurons and how does our brain hand over this sensation, feeling, or thought to that little voice in our head who then processes, savors, narrates, and hallucinates about it in our native tongue, using our unique narrative voice, style, syntax, and vocabulary without anybody around us knowing?

There is something controlling us but what is it?

Are we in a computer simulation developed by a greatly advanced civilization, and that's why our physical bodies feel so foreign to us? Did some superhuman race implant our human ancestor's brains with what we now understand as our consciousness?

Is it possible there is an actual part of a brain, yet undiscovered, where consciousness resides — a visible master brain? That is a conceptual hand that types stuff into the search engine in our minds, deciding why we retrieve one memory over the other or focus on certain ideas to the exclusion of others.

Why do we even bother searching for meaning or spending time trying to solve problems or creating memorable adventures? Who turned us into these romantic, deep thinking, wonderfully lyrical, and poetic creatures?

We don't know.

And that's why our computers, thus far, are mostly extensions of ourselves. Is it possible our computers will grow so exponentially in terms of processing and memory that some kind of yet unforeseen consciousness will emerge?

Computer….take the wheel

I think that's precisely what's happening. But in a way that could ultimately replace our own consciousness.

I played around with TikTok lately and found it to be like no other experience I'd ever had. Of course, I've lost myself in good movies or books where two or three hours felt like it went by very quickly, but nothing like the sensation, and time compression, those hundreds of rapid-fire videos created.

Furthermore, when I was "lost" in the videos (or much of what I engage in online) my brain was functioning differently. My "master brain" was quieted, or replaced by the material my computer was symbiotically feeding me.

In a real sense, when I'm hypnotically engaged with social media, my smartphone BECOMES my consciousness.

Summary

We escape into our video games, smartphones, and computers because we've designed them to be our master brains. For the first time in human history, we invented the machine that takes us completely away from reality. A portal into a world where time has no significance.

Part of what we're defining as people's diminishing attention spans and inability to focus on mental and cognitive tasks is a natural byproduct of knowing there is a method of avoiding anything difficult, uncomfortable, or challenging.

As human animals, the foundation of our existence is to increase the amount of pleasure in our lives and decrease the amount of pain. This is why so many of us engage in behaviors that feel good at the moment but are not good for us in the long run.

By inventing these marvelous contraptions full of transistors, electronic components, flashing lights, brilliant colors, and Pavlovian bells and whistles, we're providing ourselves a glimpse of what we used to imagine as heaven — a world of unimaginable wonder, passion, and joy — that never has to end.

Once we get used to living in this perfect world of ever-increasing, never-ending hits of dopamine at just the right moments, it will slowly become that unique voice in our heads.

It will retrieve and organize our thoughts. It will catalog and file away our memories, cleverly interspersing and weaving them into the games we play and the videos we consume. It will anticipate our needs, and meet them.

But most of all, it will ensure we are entertained from the moment we wake up to the second we lay our heads on our pillows — we will literally never have a dull moment for as long as we live.

Our consciousness, like a vital muscle, is a use it or lose it proposition.

Once we become permanently controlled and distracted by these personal, digital, electronic "ticklers" we've created, they will take over the part of our brain we know exists but can't locate on an MRI. The computer will decide and determine our present and future by organizing, recording, manipulating, and regurgitating our memories as IT sees fit.

Right now we're in the final stages of an equal back and forth between the Frankensteins we've created and our own cognitive power and control over ourselves.

We are quickly approaching a point, however, where the computers we've created will surpass us — neuron for neuron — and just as we mysteriously developed consciousness from seemingly random neural synapses, so too will these miraculous machines.

Perhaps it'll be a shared consciousness, a lot depends on where we go with neural implants and the merging of humans with circuits.

Now that we realize these flashing boxes can exponentially increase our pleasure and compress time into bite-size, tolerable chunks, we're approaching a time when we will be motivated to do nothing else.

Perhaps the only clear positive effect of being outsmarted by wires, transistors, and steel, is the outside chance that whatever consciousness ends up emerging from this mysterious mix of blood, bones, and bits, will end up living forever — but the catch is….it'll feel like the blink of an eye.