Our brains are large partly because we carry around with us from childhood a huge amount of general knowledge – of history, literature, geography, music, you name it.

Will the collective human brain shrink in the coming decades? I ask this because, with an unprecedented amount of information available at the touch of a Google, there is no incentive to remember anything.

My wife tells the story of a university student who, taking an introductory economics (of all things) course at Georgetown University, was asked to divide 24 by 6, and had to resort to a calculator.  By eight years old I for one knew my times tables up to 12 and my spelling was pretty accurate – from memory.  In those days you were required to learn and publically recite Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth, not to mention boring historical dates.  It wasn’t for nothing.  It trained the memory, improved your comprehension, got you used to standing up in public, and were pegs on which to hang other facts and ideas. Now you can look up anything you need and can, if lazy, remember – nothing.

You can’t take this concern in isolation. Scientists and engineers are developing thinking, reasoning robots with capabilities far exceeding normal human ability. The results are coming thick and fast.  In the future citizens will have no democratic control over the uses of these machines, and maybe fewer jobs into the bargain; we don’t know.

Would our positive, forward-thinking, confident and reassuring young readers put my mind at ease about these developments?  I can’t see why they are necessary or desirable.

Last February an Alabama police officer was indicted on a charge of using unreasonable force against an Indian man, Sureshbhai Patel, 57.   Patel had come from India to help care for his infant grandson; he was stopped by police on the morning of Feb. 6, after a neighbor reported what they thought was a suspicious figure. When police approached Patel, who speaks little English, he was unable to answer their questions about what he was doing in the area, and was suddenly slammed to the ground, suffering severe injuries.

Last Friday a judge declared a mistrial of the police officer, after jurors failed to break an impasse.  The defense attorney said the confrontation was an unfortunate escalation of police tactics and not a criminal offense. Half the jury agreed, despite the fact that Patel was quietly minding his own business and couldn’t understand police questions.  US district judge Madeline Hughes Haikala had asked the jurors to consider how important the case was ( apparently, not very. Ed.), how expensive it has been financially and emotionally for everyone involved (especially for Mr.Patel! Ed.) and the possibility that it’s not certain a retrial would result in a stronger prosecution or defense.

Advice to foreign visitors: do not visit Alabama; if you have to and have dark skin, walk with your hands in the air and have comprehensive medical insurance.  You are apparently not “secure from unreasonable seizure, which includes the right to be free from unreasonable force by someone acting under color of law,” to quote the Justice Department.