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.