Static Memory

The average person is exposed to more information in a day the a person in the 1700s would face in a year.

-- Brian Roemmele

I saw this today and would even go as far as saying that the amount of information you consume in an entire life in the late 1700s....would probably equal what you go through in a month of your present lifestime.  

Information overload?  That's something that I tend to find curious.  Someone did a survey in 2016 to find that most people had no real recognition of the vast majority of news from a previous week.  Whatever was consumed....was flushed out within days.

I worked in a vaulted area which had a hundred-odd mechanisms and power panels.  There were probably over 200 3x5 inch cards of information that I had to retain about vault door, the security alarms, the way that cables came into the facility, and differing aspects to daily operations.  For a guy in the 1700s, this would have been near-impossible to retain or remember. 

But the more I thought about the farmer in the 1700s.....the more I realized that he retained as much information as I do today.

He knew the various vegetables and fruits that he grew on the farm....when planting mattered or harvesting would occur.  He knew every medical issue that a mule would have or a cow.  His wife had over 500 bits of knowledge over practical day-to-day medical procedures.  

So the truth of the matter is that we've swapped memory around, and certain things don't matter anymore, while other things matter a great deal.