Wired for Thought

CHAPTER 5

Creative Destruction

ON WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1965, Brad Williams ordered a hamburger at the Red Barn restaurant—an experience he remembers with pinpoint accuracy. That might not seem extraordinary, except that Williams was eight years old then and now, at fifty-two, has no particular reason for remembering it. The fact is, Williams remembers almost every detail about his past. What happened on November 7, 1991? Williams replies, “It was a Thursday, a big snowfall had hit a week before . . . and Magic Johnson had announced [a few days earlier] that he was infected with HIV.”¹

Most people don’t have that kind of memory. Our thoughts work more like this: you are driving and hear an advertisement on the radio. It gives a phone number ...