Hear more about author James Vlahos's experience in the Army's new smell simulator on the PopSci Podcast.

Humans naturally have the power to remember almost two bits of information per second, or a few hundred megabytes over a lifetime. Compared with a DVD movie, which holds up to 17 gigabytes, that’s nothing. Worse, you might easily recall the 40-year-old dialogue from Hogan’s Heroes yet forget your mom’s birthday. Or memorize reams of sports stats while spacing out on work you completed just last week.

It’s a problem that’s been bothering Gordon Bell for almost as long as he can remember.