Where is my "handy personal memory extension"?

For years, I have been asking when I would be able to buy a flash drive that I could plug directly into my temple, as a memory extension. Now, reading "Memex at 60: Internet or iPod?," by Richard Veith, I learn that this idea has been around for over 60 years. I admit it--I'm spoiled by my laptop with wi-fi, my iPod, my PDA, my flash drive, and my high speed Internet connection at home, work and school. Therefore, I'm taking this news a little bit like I took the news that flying cars have been possible for a long time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_car), but I just can't have one--that is, I feel a bit betrayed.

Yes, I have all these other gadgets, but they don't make up for my poor memory. I almost never delete email, just so I can go back and try to remember the strands of digital conversations. That is not, however, "an extension of one's own memory," as Veith calls the idea of the Memex (2006, 1239). What I need is the working version of Gordon Bell's MyLifeBits (see http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx), that attempts to store everything he sees or hears (Veith 2006, 1240).

I guess until I can buy a MyLifeBits device on Amazon for $19.99, I'll have to make do with my latest memory-extension tool: Google Desktop (http://127.0.0.1:4664/&s=r_07j9cPamQVuUuKgeqd4zb1IkA&q=). I really just started trying to use it within the last week or so, and so far it seems to have promise. Basically, you have a little Google search bar on your desktop. When you want to find something, you just start typing in the search bar, and it finds it with the speed of a Google Internet search. This is perfect for quickly finding papers that I wrote two semesters ago. If it doesn't locate your word or phrase on your computer, it offers to search the Web. It's a great tool, but it still doesn't make up for an operator's failing memory. For instance, I just spent 10 minutes being very angry that Google desktop wasn't finding anything about Veith or Vaidhyanathan...then I remembered that I was on a different computer when I viewed those.

Consider that my segue into Vaidhyanathan. Like pieandaphasia, I found "the better they are, the more dangerous libraries can seem," to be a powerful quote (Vaidhyanathan 2004, 118). Reading "The Perfect Library," Chapter 8 of The Anarchist in the Library (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465089852/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/103-0961424-3623008?ie=UTF8), I appreciated the insight that cooler heads don't make the news or inspire rallying cries. When libraries in Oklahoma came under attack for certain books in the children's collections, the fact that the libraries offer hundreds of thousands of "mainstream" children's books wasn't really newsworthy. It was only the extreme voices that were heard, though I think the majority of staff and patrons had the enlightened Vaidhyanathan response of "Slow down. Think this through. Talk this out. Don't rush to judgment" (2004, 115). In this case, what I like to think of as the "better" libraries were offering a variety of children's books, with a broad collection that attempted to serve as many segments of the community as possible. Unfortunately, this made those libraries seem more dangerous. For those already inclined to think so, the whole situation only fueled public libraries' reputation as "dens of terrorists and pornographers" (2004, 119).

Though such attacks are discouraging, maybe we in the profession need the opportunity for righteous outrage occasionally, to help us keep our purpose in sight, to inspire us to be "heroes." Without the USA PATRIOT act, would we have the rallying cry of being radical, militant librarians? I mean, would we have buttons (https://www.ala.org/ala/oif/basics/basicrelatedlinks/radicalbutton.htm)?