Now, I have no doubt at all that we can look forward to wonderful advances in observation and analysis of brain function (some but not all of which, Professor Kaku, could be called "thinking"), and that certain structures of brain impulses might be reconstructable from stored representations. But I'm not convinced that something called "my memory" actually exists.
Michio Kaku has serious credentials in theoretical physics and can be very stimulating when he applies his mind to other areas. He's a populariser of science but he tends towards the sensational and has been accused of weird mysticism.
I have a memory. It goes something like this.
I'm in a bus, an express bus, from London to somewhere in the north - probably Chorley or Preston, maybe Wigan. I'm with my girlfriend, but I don't know which one. And I'm sitting towards the back, on the left of the aisle.
There's nothing visual, except what I can fill in generally about what sitting in a bus is like - no colours, no movement inside, no scenery outside. It was probably pretty full.
A woman is on the back seat, on the right hand side, with two children, probably both between her and the side window. One is little - two? three? - and the other is older, a boy (I think) of sevenish. I think I register them because there's more audible talking in that corner - trying to keep them under control and maybe interested on a long journey.
There's a squeaking of brakes. It must come from our bus because it happens more than once. Then there's a squeal from the younger child, and another. The woman tries to hush him/her but fails. The squealing continues, then the older one picks it up and starts squealing back. The woman isn't happy, but eventually (I have no idea how or when) it stops.
The main part of the memory is my thinking and emotions at the time. I realise that the small child is responding to the brakes, being at an age when sound input is of huge importance and the mind is working to make sense of it and produce answers (I am, or recently have been, a linguistics student at the time). The older child is certainly responding to the younger, and might possibly have worked out what's going on and that they share a new way to annoy mother.
I'm pleased with myself for identifying these connections, and probably tell my girlfriend.
Also attached to the memory is a doubt, a worry that I've got the wrong end of the stick, that I'm making up the whole analysis out of nothing.
I've told this at some length, because I want to consider what this "memory" is. The episode has no meaning to me without my pride in a small intellectual achievement. Without that the bus ride would probably have faded completely, along with hundreds and thousands of others. On the other hand, if someone said "Remember when you went to X?", other parts of the journey might suddenly come back, with or without the knowledge that those two children were travelling with me.
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We don't store everything that comes into our eyes, ears etc. We don't retain every fleeting emotion. We couldn't, or we'd be full up and useless well before school age.
We select what to see (as is demonstrated beautifully by the Monkey Business Illusion) and we select what we remember (otherwise I'd be able to recall the sound of every keystroke I've used to type this short piece - I'd go mad). Above all, we reconstruct memories when we retrieve them. It's not just a matter of pressing Play and giving over body and mind to reliving a certain number of seconds from the past.
My bus memory is a single thing, not a period of time replayed. I don't remember it as five minutes of nothing much, punctured by a few sounds and a flash of inspiration.
Of course we don't always retain what might be useful in later life, and we also sometimes store more than we ever realise (if somebody gives you the right prompt, you might be able to spout large amounts of what you learned at school, or remember an old friend who hasn't come to mind for decades).
And whether and how we remember something depends on our state at the time. Am I stressed or relaxed? Am I with somebody who prompts a memory or someone who should never hear what is suddenly clamouring to be let out?
"Remembering" is a process of construction. The story doesn't always come out the same, and sometimes the process of telling a memory might change what is associated with it, so that it's different next time you tell it (see my feeling of doubt above, which was probably added some years after the day itself). And sometimes we remember things that didn't happen that way (consider newsman Brian Williams' recent bout of false memory).
How then, Professor Kaku, do you propose to upload, store and reproduce "my memory"? And how might you converse with something which contains lots of information (or at least data) but has no current sensory and intellectual state and no reason to construct memories for your satisfaction?
