The New York Times had a couple of articles over the last few days that deal with short-term memory loss.
David Brooks' 11-Apr-08 commentary called The Great Forgetting summarizes the Bad Memory Century best with:
In the era of an aging population, memory is the new sex.
In addition to taxes and death, aging is something that none of us can avoid. I was born in the later part of the baby boom, so over the last few years I have become acutely aware of these short-term memory challenges. Remembering to write down thoughts and lists has become essential. And I'm still young, relatively speaking anyway. Like the other inevitables, you never think it's going to happen to you. But it does!
The 13-Apr-08 Sunday Magazine's Idea Lab Total Recall speculates about embedding a computer chip in the brain in order to improve short-term memory. I know that short-term memory loss is a problem, but who would have guessed that "sky divers have been known to forget to pull their ripcords — accounting, by one estimate, for approximately 6 percent of sky-diving fatalities." !!
Interestingly, the brain is a particularly effective associative memory system:
..., studies suggest that if you learn a word while you happen to be slouching, you’ll be better able to remember that word at a later time if you are slouching than if you happen to be standing upright.
Neural prosthetics are a long way off (see here), but the concept of embedding a Google search engine in your brain is certainly intriguing -- and scary to most.
In the mean time, you can follow the suggestions in How to Cope With Short Term Memory Problems.
