Memristors For The Great Unwashed

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In the past I've written about how much the memristor devices intrigue me. Once in a while I insert "memristor" into Google to see if there is anything going on over at Hewlett Packard Research Labs. It's pretty slow going, at least as far as interesting news articles are concerned.

In my new web search, however, there was this youtube video that the inventor of the first prototype at the HP Labs explains how it happened that he was able to invent a prototype based on Leon Chu's mathematical proof that memristors actually exist in nature.

What's weird about my watching this video is how easy it is to fool myself that I understand most of what the guy is explaining. In the comment section below the video there was another person who experienced the same thing. He somehow sensed that he grokked the principles that demand that memristor theory be taken into account.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKGhvKyjgLY

My background for understanding what the video explains is fairly amateurish, but typical. I first became familiar with the principles of electricity and electronics in the schools I had to attend in the Navy. The first schools I attended taught vacuum tube circuitry. Later on I was introduced to solid state devices.

To write that my background is amateurish, but typical for me is that I made really good grades on all this stuff in the classroom, but practically failed the laboratory part with it's hands-on emphasis. Mind games is what interests me about electronics and gadgets.

The mind game part was mostly about feedback devices like portable EEG machines that ran off 9-volt, snap-on batteries. I wanted to make my brain waves a conscious part of my considerations. I might have gotten a lot more useful information if I'd gotten some external guidance, but I like to play with my gadgets alone. According to the Enneagrams, my selfishness in this arena is the bane of my existence.

My job in the Navy was that of a Torpedoman. When I first got into this rate by accident it was mainly because I was the only seaman available who had good enough grades to get into the schools they wanted to send me to. It turned out that I'd already been to the same school and graduated third in my class.

I had a knack for this electronic stuff. I could see it all in my imagination as if my imagination itself worked the same way, but it didn't. Not really. Aye, and there's the rub. Something was missing in the way the Navy was teaching me electronics. I got kicked out of the school and that provided me with a chance to do what I joined the Navy for. To see the world.

It is just something that happens with me. If I feel/think that I'm being taught something that ain't quite right, I stop the process and pretend to go along to get along. I do just enough to get by until I sense that I'm getting the straight skinny from the right source. I got a virtual list.

That is what I think happened with my electronic education. They were leaving something out, but not only did the Navy not know it, but neither did anybody else straight out. At least, not until the memristor was proved mathematically by Leon Chu, and a prototype created by Williams and his group at HP Labs.

When I listened to this guy in the video explain what memristors were about and why they "remember" previous behavior I knew right away he was talking about what had previously been missing in my education. When he explained why he thought that memristors would replace all digital storage devices as a separate unit I got it. I've written about it without a good framework for explaining myself to a mindful audience.

Some events happen the way they do because I plan it that way while alone in my room. To me this can happen because of the weak power of memristorical events in the human brain. Remember my disclaimer at the top of the page. I'm not trying to tell the God's own truth here. I'm just juking around to see what happens.


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