My mind works like Google for images. When somebody asks me about something, it is the verbal equivalent of typing words into a search engine. Words serve only as the index tabs on all the visual images in my memory. People ask me, “How do you think?” I tell them that the basic way to understand my way of thinking is to give me a noun as a key word. For example, I will tell you how I access my memory for the word ring. The first picture that flashed into my mind triggered by the word ring was the ring in the movie The Lord of the Rings. Then I saw my aunt out at her ranch reading The Hobbit, which was her favorite book. (The Hobbit is the first book in the The Lord of the Rings series.) Then I saw all kinds of pictures from the good times I had when I visited my aunt’s ranch as a teenager. My associative way of thinking jumped from the word ring to my aunt’s ranch. If one were to analyze my thoughts by listing the “key word index tubs,” it would seem to be disorganized, but if the pictures were displayed there would be an associative logic (Table 1.1). My mind has the same associative logic that a search engine has. When I first started doing computer searches, I thought Google and other search

engines worked the same way as my mind. There are different associative branches. The word ring could have gone down a different branch: A ring can also be a riding ring. Then I would have been in the horse file in my mind. This brings up another totally different set of pictures. I see the riding ring I rode in high school, and the riding ring my assistant Mark built on the 126 acres that I own. If my mind stays in the riding ring file, I start to see images of horse shows, Grand Prix jumping, and other horse events that I have attended.