Don't Worry, Help is on the Way

(image from lifeimgyx.pw)

Aging has made me modestly [peanut gallery: modestly?] hypochondriacal.

Dictionary.com: [bold added]

It wasn’t until the 19th century that hypochondriac described someone who suffered “illness without a specific cause.” This sense is still widely used, though today we diagnose modern hypochondriacs by their overuse of the website WebMD.

(Wonderful! I use mayoclinic.org.)

Mental mistakes have been occurring more frequently lately, and I've become worried that they are harbingers of an underlying condition like dementia or Alzheimer's.

For example, I had booked a trip to the Islands a month ago. I thought that I was flying on Wednesday and informed everyone accordingly. Today, Monday, my iPhone chimed an alert that I was leaving on Tuesday. I checked with the airline, which confirmed that the trip was indeed tomorrow. I started packing immediately. Technology saved me from making a serious mistake.

I'm actually an optimist. Technology seems to be advancing faster than the cells are degrading. Once upon a time I had committed to memory over 50 telephone numbers. Now I know eight (8) but don't need to know any, thanks to my phone's address book. Similarly, my phone's calendar with advance notifications obviates the necessity of memorizing dates and times (like with itineraries).

In the near future, a robot equipped with artificial intelligence will have blown past the Turing Test and could fool interlocutors into thinking that they are communicating with a specific individual, for example, me. (And the robot might well be a better conversationalist than my healthy self, much like a man with artificial legs can outrun someone with intact limbs.)

So this budding hypochondriac needn't worry: technology will compensate for mental deficiencies until that moment when consciousness flickers out, then I won't care any more.