I spent the past weekend “drinking from a firehose,” as someone aptly described it. Cramming two plus years of changes, policy updates, horrible warnings who inspired new training requirements, technical information, and “things that need new or renewed emphasis” into 18 classroom hours is intense to the point of brain overload. It is also necessary in order to maintain one of my professional licenses. If I were still immersed in that world, it would not be as difficult, because I’d absorb the information as it trickled down from the source, and would use it daily, or hear about it daily. Since I’m on the periphery of that world, it all comes as a giant gulp, all at once.
Glug, glug.
No wonder sci-fi has a trope about fast learning, or implants that allow people to download information and process it almost as quickly. Even studying some things in advance, it is still difficult to absorb everything after carefully shelving it for, oh, a year or so. Toss in a lot of new technology (or new applications for existing tech), and my ears were releasing brain smoke by the end of the days’ tests.
I need to give characters more slack when they emerge from a learning experience and feel overloaded. They need time to process the data, to fit it into what they already have, then sort through and figure out how best to use it, or not use it. And when they can’t recall something off the top of their heads, because, oh, it was three years ago when they needed to know that obscure medical reference, or the last time they looked into that particular corner of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s laws about usufruct* of water was a decade before. It takes time to access those data banks. Do we allow our characters that?
I sort of would like to have that recall chip, or data download capability at times like this past weekend. Although, with my luck? I’d hit a bad link, or accidentally tap the entire Federal Register instead of just what I wanted.
*Usage of a resource without diminishing or harming it for other users. So, for example, watering animals from a stream, but not irrigating with it, and not dumping household waste into it.
Mad Genius Club 
11 responses to “Old-New Knowledge”
I believe Andre would refer to this as the “Emm-Gee Experience”. 😇
I use other cheats when it comes to information processing in organic brains. Genetic modification and longer lifespans take up some of the load. Expert systems (not AI) are supposed to organize the raw data into easily accessible form. That said, it’s the apocalypse so those tools are going to be wonky at times…
The MC being a bit of an arrogant prick at times (curse of intelligence falling in love with its own magnificence) means he thinks things will be so much easier than they actually are- a trait of young minds- creates opportunities for him to learn that ain’t actually so. Failure humanizes our characters and dealing with it gives them depth and opportunity for character growth.
The sort of character who is motivated by a hubristic “now, let me figure out how that works so I can solve the problem” twitch can have a different sort of reaction to disaster than you might expect.
I’m finding that my personal version of that is engaged in watching how my own brain surfs through the ever-so-irritating Alzheimers carnival ride, as it exposes for my contemplation the subjective details of how memory focus and retrieval actually work (or stop working). The salt in this observational front-row seat is that I am kept busy in my usual way constructing theoretical work arounds for each failure point, almost none of which can actually be implemented in reality by the available mechanism, since it self-forgets the aids in the process.
Believe me, characters at the mercy of my inventive fingertips are going to be reflecting on the inutility of their clever solutions in the face of the inexorable. I’m used to providing a good bit of “unavoidable disaster” for my heroes based on any number of causes, as a springboard for change, reflection, improvement, and so forth, but it’s with a happy conclusion in mind. The character who dies heroically is one thing. The character who quietly accepts increasing incompetence is new to me, and I’m learning a lot about it for fictional use. (Assuming I can remember what I learn.)
There’s quite a bit of writing about accepting the steady loss of physical competence. I can’t say whether it would be any help in your situation. A related problem is the Parkinson’s patient who loses executive function, the ability to look ahead. He or she also can’t really formulate solutions. It’s a very tough place to be.
Good thing I cherish black humor… 🙂
“Usufruct” What a great word and exactly what I need for one of my characters to say!
You never know when you’ll pick up some useful tidbit. Too bad I can’t remember them when I need them.
It’s a very useful term. There’s a medieval document where a widow gave her son “of love and free will” the title to her estates — but she retained the usufruct.
Or Jefferson’s argument “I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living : that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. “
Thank you!
Unfortunately, most folks not familiar with the word will assume it’s something obscene. 😃
Sadly, you are probably correct. However, don’t eBooks come with built-in dictionaries? Maybe some reader will get educated!
Some do have dictionaries in them, some don’t. I bought a German dictionary for my Kindle.
If you have the e-reader in Airplane mode, then the on-line look up function is disabled.