Is It LIve or is it Memorex?

Is it Live or is it Memorex ?

       The above question is a line from a 1982 television commercial, touting the auditory quality of a VHS tape and wondering if listeners can tell the difference in sound quality between a vhs tape and a human voice. Today, most people under the age of forty don’t know what a vhs tape is or indeed have ever even heard of the name Memorex.

      I remember the commercial line every time I access my fading memory banks in search of information that I have accumulated over the last 65 years that I have inhabited the planet. Sometimes, the memories seem as real to me as if they were but yesterday. But sometimes, what I remember and what I find out after further research, are divergent forms of the same reality. How does this happen I wonder? Does some infinitesimal memory circuit in the brain cross over the chemical trail of another circuit and blend the information into some confusing amalgam that sounds right but just isn’t so?

     And if that happens to me, how many others does it afflict? The Lord knows I have witnessed my share of bar room altercations disputing the correct answer to some ridiculous bit of trivia that two people assert conflicting interpretations on. Do nations do that as well? Can national remembrances and impressions be a function of faulty memories or misunderstood interpretations? Maybe we need a Wikopedia computer available for everyone to check on the validity of all of their interpretations and statements of fact. Then of course, some doubting Thomas would posit that the person who programmed Wikopedia, with the required information, did so incorrectly, either by accident or design, depending on the level of your personal or national paranoia?

         So what are we left with here? Is the correct pronunciation potatoe or pottato? Multiply that confusion with the translation of a given message into the planet’s one hundred plus languages and you begin to see why the United Nations is so useless. No one believes anything that they hear and even suspect what their senses tell them, fearing manipulation by special effects, professional actors and other means of manipulating sensory input. No wonder everyone is wary of everything they hear or see.

         That doesn’t hold true of course for the media. Whatever you read in the papers or hear on the radio or see on television is absolute gospel, delivered from the mouth of the creator. How did this ever happen? We can’t think for ourselves any more? Do we need to be spoon fed by a series of talking heads who feed us plausible theories about complex situations in a soothing and well groomed manner that will make us nod appreciably and say” Ahh, now I understand.”

       Where are the Nuns when we really need them to give us the word from on high and threaten us with eternal damnation if we question the proffered dogma? Life seemed much simpler then. And none of the information really mattered much outside of the immediacy of a child’s need for food, shelter and recreation.

         I think from now on, I will cross check any assertions of fact that I proffer with available computer referencing materials. In that way, I can at least be assured that my facts are just as correct or as warped as everyone else’s. And if we all believe in the Wizard of Oz, then he certainly must exist on some plain of existence. Or maybe Wikopedia finally got it wrong for a change !

                                    -30-

                              (598 words)

                         Joseph Xavier Martin