Hello, friends and readers,
As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted anything on The Memory Cache since May. I’ve been spending a lot of time over the spring and summer trying to make sense of the chaotic events swirling around us, doing a lot of reading, watching the news and YouTube videos, and reflecting on our fast-evolving political and technological situations. Many of you probably have been too.
The shocking AI-related events and developments that began with the Open AI-Hugging Face incident in July, where AI agents broke out of a testing environment, collaborated with each other and showed signs of independent intelligence and initiative, have made it clear to me that AI is coming for much of what we’ve done online for the past several decades.
I know many other writers and artists are going through a process of re-evaluating what they’re trying to accomplish and how to proceed in the face of these shocking AI developments, and I have been too.
I also know that the rise of Substack since the pandemic, and the many people now trying to write and publish opinions and news on it, have created the same kind of vast unedited and unmediated information environment for writing as YouTube has done for video, and Spotify for music, where huge numbers of people are trying to be noticed and heard on the same few massive billionaire-controlled platforms. It’s very hard to get attention, or grow an audience in these sorts of environments.
For many internet-based artists and content creators, they’re actually trying to make a living on these platforms. Fortunately for me, I’ve been able to write and share information about good books, movies and TV I’ve enjoyed over the past five years as a retirement hobby. I’ve done it purely for the fun of it, to keep my own mind engaged and active, stay aware of what's happening in culture, politics and technology, and share useful information I’ve learned with friends, family and readers out there.
But lately, it’s seemed that writing and publishing my reviews has ceased being very satisfying for me, given the amount of effort required, and the small relative value or impact it has. There are plenty of other sites with good user reviews, and also reviews by pro journalists in various media publications and online, about any content that might interest you.
Another discouraging factor is the manner in which individual web sites, like blog sites, are now rapidly disappearing behind AI summaries in web searches. I assume my entire blog site, and the roughly 300 articles I’ve written, have probably become part of the mass of data used to train AIs, which can now restate or reuse what I’ve written without even necessarily giving me credit for having written it. There’s not much incentive for a human to keep writing a personal blog in that situation.
On top of that, AI agents can now also easily whip up a short summary or review of anything, not that different from the kind I would write, but for me it requires considerable personal time and effort. And my list of readers is very small. Lately, it just hasn’t really seemed worth the effort. For me personally, it feels like the time for this fun project of mine has passed, and I want to refocus my thoughts and efforts on whatever is next.
Some of you may recall I signed off from this blog a couple of years ago, and then came back after a while, because apparently writing occasional posts for it wasn’t completely out of my system yet. But I’m older now, and I believe this time it’s different. Times do change, and ultimately we must change with them, and move on when it’s time.
So once again, I am ending The Memory Cache. As before I will leave it online for the time being, as a time-capsule from this time period. But I will not be posting here any more, nor will I be sending out any more posts from The Memory Cache via Substack.
I do still plan to continue writing and recording new music. All my music-related web content, my music web site and social media accounts will remain active.
In addition, I have copied my Substack emailing list from The Memory Cache account to another Substack account for Wayne Parker Notes, the “brand name” I’ve used for all my other creative activities, especially my music and video releases.
The handle of this new Substack account is @wayneparkernotes, just as it is on YouTube and my other social media accounts. I will continue to send email announcements about my music to my same mailing list, but from this new account. If you’re on my Substack email list, you’ll be hearing from me from the new account soon, at least to let you know it’s up and running.
If I should decide to do any other writing in the future (something other than book reviews), you will hear about it (or be able to read it) through my Wayne Parker Notes Substack account and email list, and not from the The Memory Cache Substack account, or on The Memory Cache blog.
Thank you to all my friends, family members and unknown readers on the internet who have taken the time to read and hopefully enjoy my posts on The Memory Cache over the past half-decade. It’s been a really satisfying and rewarding project for me, and I hope you’ve found something useful or amusing in it for yourselves too.
Best wishes to you all!
Wayne Parker
Seattle, Washington
October 26, 2026
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