MARCH 7, 2026 – Lately I’ve been in what I’d describe as a “knowledge-informational funk.” Part of the problem appears to be the shortage of storage space inside my cranium. If part of my brain is a storage room with floor-to-ceiling shelving, all the available space is metaphorically crammed with exposure to issues acute in their immediacy and magnitude, as well as matters more latent but of potentially overwhelming long-term concern, such as climate change, transformational AI (not to be redundant), the next killer pandemics and the build-up of non-performing assets held by under-regulated financial institutions around the world. Stacked haphazardly throughout the storage room are uncounted and for the most part, unlabeled, boxes stuffed with analyses of how global systems work and the disturbing prognostications that accompany these analyses.
Not that we’re looking for any additional trouble, but in an adjoining store room many times the size of the one labeled “Current Affairs” inside my brain’s knowledge center. Inside this additional storeroom, called, “Ancient History,” are all the books and papers to which I’ve had access over my lifetime and that contain the knowledge and information through which I’ve rowed my leaking boat of consciousness over my lifetime (thus far).
As I suggested at the outset, at first blush, one could fairly conclude that I need to expand my storage space; add shelving, straighten out the stacks of boxes, build more storage rooms. But increased storage space doesn’t address the underlying problem: most of the enormous volume of information hasn’t all been downloaded, as it were. Only an insignificant sliver has adhered to my “hard drive.” The rest of the “information” is merely stuff to which I’ve been exposed to one (mostly) superficial degree or another. If I were equipped with a photographic memory coupled to an aural one . . . that is, if only I could access everything to which I’ve had some kind of exposure, however cursory or tangential, I could hire myself out as “Wicked Pete,” functioning as an “AAI” (for “Authentic Anthropomorphic Intelligence”) alternative to just plain old “AI.”
Because very little of the contents of my memory storerooms have been downloaded—or ever will be—very little is actually organized in any serviceable form beyond fairly elementary brain schema for a person of my age, experience and education. In other words, apart from everyday requirements—doing legal work in my area of expertise, driving a car, designing and building a “Pergola-on-a-Platform” with a basic set of familiar tools and throwing my shoe at the TV screen when watching Pam Bondi testify before the House Oversight Committee—I’m challenged when it comes to drawing on the storerooms of my brain to develop a cogent response to the unpredictable course of current events.
Lately, I’ve felt I’m losing ground, even, in attempts to draw upon, synthesize and analyze the vast wealth of knowledge and information to which I’ve had access and the continuous cascade of new knowledge and information to which I have daily access. At the current rate, within a distressingly short time, I’ll be dumber than a post, however much control I might still have of cognitive processes and traditional memory, at least by standard empirical measure.
I suppose on some level, my anxiety in this regard isn’t unique. Everyone with at least a flicker of self-awareness shares my uneasiness over the fast reducing ratio of knowledge to ignorance: the more you know, the more you know you don’t know. In my case, this realization is morphing into regret over how my formal education was squandered—by me, in particular, but also by those with a hand in guiding it. Yet, what’s done is done, and little is to be gained by wishing changes upon one’s past.
What I can control is my approach to knowledge and information gathering, synthesis, analysis, storage and access going forward. The best place to start, I think, is a regular and methodical review of sources—books, articles, presentations by bona fide thinkers with substantive credentials—coupled with reading or listening to the most useful sources for gaining a better understanding of how the world works and how it might be improved for the common good.
With the start of daylight savings time and the spring equinox right around the corner, I think now is a propitious time of year to embark on this new approach to knowledge and information. I’m quite enthused about this undertaking. Periodically, I’ll provide updates on my campaign to improve my grasp of how the world turns.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2026 by Eric Nilsson
