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Backup Your Life on a DVD
matt20 writes "I've often wondered what it would take to condense the essence of my life and put it in a searchable format. Well, it looks like that may become a reality. Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write - in fact your every memory and experience - into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything. Here is the article found in New Scientist."
Sounds kinda redudant to me ... isn't this what the new dept. of homeland security is going to do?
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Will it remember where I put my @#$!$ car keys?
They're called "books". And unless you burn them, they generally have a 0% failure rate.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Now I'll NEVER be able to forget my ex-girlfriend!
do you really want to commit everything to a nice simple, searchable, disc that can be used as evidence against you?
Ok, so I fork over my money, I've got this shiny new DVD with the sum total of my existance on it. Aside from being horribly depressing, so what? What can I do with it? Store it for safekeeping in case of a terrible car accident which leaves me without my memory? No problem! A quick hard reboot with disc inserted (yuck) and I'm better?
Seriously though, aside from being incredibly cool, what's the use of this thing? To pass on to relatives after you're gone? Nefarious use in our legal system? Coaster ("Don't put your drink on the table, use Aunt Jenny instead...")?
What if I forget where I put the dvd?
It is part of a curious venture dubbed the MyLifeBits project, in which engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab in San Francisco are aiming to build multimedia databases that chronicle people's life events and make them searchable.
Anyone want to take bets on how fast MyLifeBits will be selling off your personal info? True if you doubt Microsoft's dubious motivation and believe they're working for the greater good, this still brings a new meaning to 'single point of failure'.
--- What
Since I have no life, mine could probably fit into a 3.5" floppy
Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write - in fact your every memory and experience - into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything.
I presume you must have to add stuff to this 'archive' manually? What happens if you forget? I know I probably would.
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Moderator's essentials
Now I'll Never have to remember names again! thanks, umm...
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
Does this mean I'll be able to bring out extended special editions? Deleted scenes could be amusing... Out-takes and a gag reel! Woohoo!
I could get my folks to do Director's Commentary... ^_^
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
Not very useful for people like me who are lucky to take 1 photo a year.. I think I've got a grand total of a few dozen photos from when I was born to now (that's 22 years, no wise cracks please! :P).
Email might be a little better, but considering my best reply time is in the order of 2-4 weeks, I don't get a whole lot of that either..
Tell me when they can download my real memories, then I'll be impressed.
-Nutter
I for one would read the licence agreement on such a thing really, really carefully...
Imagine... All the information submitted to the system becomes copyright of Organization X...
Or am I just being paranoid?
.: Max Romantschuk
It's called encyclopidiac memory, all they need is a way to give everyone what some of us have naturally, and it's done. :-)
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
No doubt with this being a microsoft driven development they will plant false memories of Windows 95 being a stable and enjoyable OS to use.
Oh and probably that billg invented the internet.
Where did you want to go to yesterday?
How long after this becomes avaliable will the first supeona for full access be issued - for example in a divorce court, patent dispute antitrust case...
Umm....Why do I feel that was one sarcastic comment in the article???
"Do something man. Right now."
i think it was arther c clarke that came up with this, apart from the cool ness factor what on earth would be the point, i suppose you could use it to download yourself into a robot /cyborg thing, and if you died in a road acidnet they could "download" you into a new body, but it just seems to be a bit of a gimic at the moment, whoo lookat me i'm on a dvd sorta thing.
dybia felly dwi a hampster (i think therefore i am a hampster)
There was a night in Tijuana I wouldn't choose to remember at gunpoint. Last thing I want is a surround-sound, THX enhanced f'ing DVD of it.
Knunov
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I already rely way too much on search engines for my computer life, now I'll be able to do it in real life, too? Pretty soon I won't remember anything anymore, I'll just know how to look it up...
Material costs are high, and duplication and storage is a bitch.
They deteriorate if exposed to sunlight, water, or any number of bacteria, insects, and even mamals, that enjoy the taste of paper.
If I'm storing my data around goats, I'll take CDs over paper any day. For the same price as thousands of books, I can have inumerable CD copies.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Dear God, I can just imagine my wife going back four months to pick out the exact wording of something I misspoke, and then playing it back. Men of the world unite, we must stop this now! *g*
Just kidding. This looks like some really interesting technology, but I can't help think that the investment of time you'd have to make outweighs the benefit.
What if someone steals my DVD? Ack!
WOW! A microsoft solution capable of recording all our actions for a year!
We all knew it was going to happen someday, Microsoft would own our memories. Can you imagine the DCMA violations trying to break the compy protect to view your own memories? What type of lawsuits are we going to get into when we just claim to remember doing it, and no we didn't reference the MyLifeBits database?
The media would have fun with this. We could have "Truman Shows" playing back the MyLifeBits database files 24x7. Imagine the pirated copies of the next serial killer, or thrill seeker.
Don't you love technology.
Gator/Claria is Spyware.
You can't fit all of alt.binaries on a DVD. Who are they kidding?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
The letter combination DVD isn't to be found anywhere in the article.
/. in a while...
There's talk about 1000gb harddiscs, but not DVDs.
One of the stupidest headlines on
As to the idea it self: why? I don't need to excatly what or how I said something to my friends or family. In fact I dont want to...
One good idea, that they don't mention, would be automatic transscription of the audio conversations, thrus making them searchable. Now, that would be nice...
TC - My Photos..
Are we entering a new era?
"I'm sorry officer, I don't remember. My memory crashed."
Be sure to check out todays Tom Toles.. Funny stuff. Here.
Hmm... I guess someone smoked a bit too much cannabis thinking about this one. They need to invent a DVD medium that won't rot. Sometimes CDROMS and DVDs get a fungus that renderes them unreadable. I've got a DVD with my family photo albums, even mpeg2 movies, and a backup of my resume and my wife's. But.. you need a backup of that because I had a cdrw disk rot on me.
- [...] engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab [...]
For those who can't be bothered to read the article (my advice: don't), a short summary: in a couple of years (like, five) 1-TB hard drives will cost ~USD300. A new trademark, "MyLifeBits", which is basically a (gasp) *searchable* database can be filled with everyPhotoYouEverTake, everySoundYouEverHear, everyTextYouEverRead (yadda yadda) as a kind of, er, diary. (For the yougsters: a "diary" is a private, dead-tree blog).No word on how you are supposed to get the information in there
What is this? MS anti-FUD?
(no, actually I'm having a *great* day)
yes, we have no bananas
Seriously?
Do the guys at Microsoft seriously consider the PC to be a most reliable of entities? Man, you think after years of running Windows you'd know better.
As for the database, that sounds like it would be an enormous amount of work to keep up, and wouldn't be that useful day to day unless you were carrying it with you. I forget to take pictures, how am I going to remember to upload the pictures I actually take? And has anyone ever gone back and reread their old email...BORING... unless you're narsisistic who cares what you posted on
This thing sounds good in theory, but in practice people just are not taking that many pictures or writing that many memorable letters. This will be a product for the vain, the famous and the rich who don't know what else to spend their money on.
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After reading the article (I know; not normal practice on Slashdot) it seems that the developers think that the interpretation of memories and events is unnecessary colouring.
Just the facts, mam
Let me put more words in their mouths by saying that they think they can improve by creating some search function whereby every piece of info will be examined. Now, I don't know about you, but isn't one of the most useful abilities of the brain its tendency to grade info from useful to useless and quietly discard the useless stuff by simply forgetting it. Even better, this runs as a background process. No intervention necessary.However, I think this project is a great idea. I just wonder if they can really develop something this complete.
I'd personally be more interested in a device that reliably and irrevocably deletes bad memories.
-Stephen
I've already done this. I have a CD (which friends refer to as "the football") on which I have backed up scanned images of my birth certificate, medical records, school records, every photo I have (2000+), every development project I've worked on, every short story/paper I've ever written, and a database in which I store daily entries of my activities.
Yes, it sounds obsessive compulsive, and maybe it is. I do it because I like to have my life backed up in case of household disaster. Also, I've found that having that data with me all the time is very helpful--I carry a floppy with it so I can open anything I'm working on and save it.
Another reason I do it (especially the log/database) is that I don't like the idea of not knowing about my own life. I found the days going by in a blur before I kept track of things.
The only drawback is that I'm relying more and more on this CD instead of memory, which may be reducing it.
Protect your life disk with CSS and use the DMCA to per^H^Hrosecute the living daylights out of anyone who accesses it without your authorization.
Simple.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In the compliance lab I work in, anything we do needs to be documented to prove that it happened. We always joked that we need miner's helmets with little cameras attached that always film what we do. That's what this looks like...
Would it record reality or my distorted perception thereof?
On the otherhand, if you are an existentialist and believe people are the sumb of their experience, then recording every waking moment would be equivalent to capturing you. But then again, I doubt the engineers are thinking of these philosphical issues.
When are they going to build a computer that keeps all that data intact for longer then the average human life span? Given how computers are cycled through every year or so this may not be so reliable because of backup failures, upgrades, and acts of god. I won't even go in to the ability of Microsoft developers to make something so precious and valuable safe, secure, and free from marketing exploitation. :D
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I use The Brain. It's the only way I've ever found of organizing all of my thoughts, emails, bookmarks, files, pictures, programs, etc. into a cohesive, useable unit. In my opinion, it's really how personal computers were meant to be used. I recommend everybody with a ton of bookmarks, sticky notes all over the place, and a ton of flagged emails to take a look at it and play with it for at least 10 minutes. What it does is really amazing.
Is it just me, or does this seem like an article you'd read in The Onion? It's obviously impractical at this juncture; one terabyte or two or three isn't nearly enough to fit a whole life's worth of information. It'd be interesting ot have all your personal data and stuff in one place, and being able to index-search your gradeschool papers might be fun for an afternoon... but what about when I'm trying to remember what that girl smelled like or how I felt when...
This seems akin to the article about President Bush wanting the Army to use Windows XP so we could have flying soldiers. Plus, as it's been mentioned before in this thread, isn't the Dept. of Homeland Security alread doing this for us? Should these DVDs be available as a tax-benefit? I'm in the military, does this mean that mine will be classified?
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
OK, so they have some database, that can store various files and you can search it - AFTER you tag it.
And that's the problem: adding meaningful comments to all the little tidbits.
I have bought a digicam a little more than a year ago: I have taken approx 2000 pictures since that. I could put together some little scripts that search the JPEG's EXIF tags for comments but I can not be bothered to type it in. No way, that's not something I want to do. Easing/automatating this process is the thing that should be addressed (which is, I do realise, is far from trivial), but it's not dealt with.
Then I have all the emails I have ever sent or received (minus SPAM). Grepping it is something that is useful but it can be frustrating to remembering the exact words, then realizing that a synonym was used or there was a typo: so there is also space for improvement, but this project does not seems to address this problem.
So, to have the obligatory SP reference, this project seems to be supposed work like this:
1. Throw all the stuff you have into a database
2. ???
3. Have your whole life easily searchable
Real life is overrated.
I mean, I've been doing this for years, on CD's though. It's called incremental backups, and I do one every few months. All my recent documents, pics, etc, go to CD (now DVD-R since I got a burner). The nice thing is, I keep what I only keep what I need, or what I know is "clean". I wonder how bad it would be if some nasty letter you wrote but never sent gets archived. What happens later if someone gets a hold of your "memories" and other data?
For reference I have most of my college career backed up on CD. I can go back and read class papers and read up on all the other stupid stuff I did over the years. As of now I already plan to sort through all those CD's and condense them all down to DVD. So, why is this software useful to those of us who already make use of such methods?
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Based on what I understood from the article they seem to think you could record someone's life by just recording everything he outputs or sees. Then, consider hundred million people who experience exactly similar events in their life and accidentally happen to output also the same content. Is their life similar? Not in my opinion. To my map someones life you should also be able to for example know what he/she feels like, etc and that may not be reflected in the output - atleast not in a form understandable for anyone else but the person him/herself. Stupid title.
Well in the digital future you could have digital memory aids that are cameras and audio recorders in your home, place of employment and car. These devices you could than download the info from and organise the days events at your leisure. As your local and federal government will be doing such also.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
I think it would be a lot cooler, albeit impractical with current technology, to actually record *everything*, i.e. everything you see, everything you hear, etc, from when you're born. You'd need a huge ammount of storage though:
Quick approximate calculations just for recording what you see at PAL resolution (720x576@25fps):
1 frame of PAL = 1.2MB
25 x 1.2MB = 30MB = 1 second
30MB x 60 = 1.8GB = 1 minute
1.8GB x 60 = 108GB = 1 hour
108GB x 24 = 2.6TB = 1 day
2.6TB x 7 = 18.2TB = 1 week
18.2TB x 4 = 72.8TB = 1 month
72TB x 12 = 873.6TB = 1 year
873.6TB x 70 = 61,152 Terrabytes (61.2 Petabytes)
Damn, that's a lot of storage!
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Moderator's essentials
yeah, what about "rip mix burn" :)
-- james
Factoid could remember every place that you went, every person you saw, where you put your car keys... This could hit hard storage for you. Never again would your recall of "what was a I doing on that day?" or "have I ever met this person before?" be an issue.
I backed up my life on a perishable dvd. Damn you Atlantic, Damn you all to hell!!!
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
While analysing the pacing of internal-monologs in Joyce's Ulysses, I calculated that 70 years of transcribed thoughts should fit in 37 gigabytes.
How long before Bush is pushing for some law that requires the gov't to be given a copy of every one of those made?
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
First of all, this seems like a multimedia digital diary. Neat idea, but how many people actually keep a diary or journal and keep it up to date? Next, the article makes it sound simple when they talk about recording your "every memory and experience" as if you just plug into something like in the movie "Brainstorm". How do they accomplish this one? If this technology existed I am sure we would have heard something about it (at least here on /.)!
That's what Pointdexter's about to discover. These guy too. That my brain can store a 100 terabytes of data is almost immaterial if its all undifferentiated.
Running a Google search engine on an ever growing mass of data data is not enough.
The data has to be corelated. The engine has to understand, (read that word again, understand, an AI problem,) what its looking at and the appropriate level of granularity to use when parsing the data when extracting the memes it contains.
Our computers are damn near deaf, dumb, blind and stupider than cockroackes and we're having systemic, Korzibskian semantic anomalies and pattern recognition failures as it is.
I'd be happy when one has the information processing capacity of an annoying Pomeranian. It'll be about as useful too but I'd be happy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
But, imagine getting a scratch on this. If you think it sucks when your favorite CD skips, or your LotR jumps because of a scratch; think about what happens when your memory skips.
On second thought, it'd be like getting drunk and forgetting what happened, only much cheaper! Bring on the memory DVD!
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer.
Hmmm, sounds like the Farleyfile.
(copied from Jerry Pournelle's page): Big Jim Farley was a New York Tammany Hall politician whose success was partly due to the "Farleyfile": a collection of facts about everyone he ever met. If you went to see Big Jim, by the time you got into his office he knew your name, your birthday, the names of your spouse and children, and what you liked for lunch. It was all on file.
Also, there's a program (Lifesigns?) that's based around a chronological history of data (there's a PC version, and there was a Newton version). You don't go searching for "Letter about Enron", you remember that it was 7 or 8 months ago, and look at email then. Clever premise, loved by all the people who adopted it. Never could get the hang of it myself.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
They're called "books". And unless you burn them, they generally have a 0% failure rate.
Did you write this post to slashdot on a book or a computer?
Understand?
"And like that
I'm just wondering how they are working on a system to archive memories and experiences when the neurobiologists still only have inklings as to how and where the very, very simplest things are learned (I'm talking classical conditioning learning), and have NO idea how or where things like memories (as most of us know them) are stored.
But I guess technology must be moving faster than the underlying science.
There was an article here a few years ago about a BT researcher who estimated you'd need 15 petabytes to store your life's experiences. For some reason I can't figure out how to get the search engine to show me anything older than a year... maybe somebody can find a link to it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The writeup makes you think they are sucking memories out of the brain and capturing them to disk. Simply not true. There is nothing at all revolutionary about what they are doing. They are basically designing a sort of journal or ultimate blog. Non-computer related experiences must be fed in and probably commented on (photos, etc). Some computer experiences may be captured automatically (this wasn't very clear, the article was more hype than substance), but nothing too difficult. The 'revolutionary' part they are claiming is the organization and search engine, and maybe some of the computer-auto-capture stuff (again, I can't tell if this is a claim or just an example..). This is not worthy of a Slashdot story, its just another blog...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff.
Yes. Now Microsoft can make us 'remember' things as they 'really' are. Remember that trial that we THOUGHT was against Microsoft for monopolistic practices? Well, it was ACTUALLY against Linux for being commie bastards. See how our memories decieved us?
Oh. And your brain is now covered by the DMCA and digital rights management. Don't try to remember anything without paying for it first.
'These people we're stealing the music, replaying it in their MINDS! Clearly, this theft must be stopped so I...I mean artists...can get the money they deserve. See, these people have in their back-up brain. Artists need compensation.' - RIAA, coming soon!
This a eastern philosophical concept that every action and thought of a sentient creature is recorded (where?). This record is then used for karmic "justice" in future lives. This idea is not unlike Christian Judgement Day where your entire history is replayed instantly in God's mind when he decides to admit you heaven or condemn you hell. A talented psychic can supposed "read" the akashic record.
An variation of the "akashic record" is that "time" is an illusion of material reality. In an alternative reality all events are simultaneous. Therefore all events relating to soul's incarnations are operating together. This hypothesis bypasses the issue what is the cosmic "recording media". Interestingly, some western physicists don't believe in the independent existance of "time" too.
The description "surrogate brain that never forgets anything" strikes me as overblown. It's more a big personal library. It's not remembering anything, just storing and retrieving information in response to human input. Of course, I'm sure that the hyperbole isn't hurting news coverage of this project -- and probably helped the story make it into /.
It's Rudy Rucker's Lifebox! See "Saucer Wisdom" for Rucker's prediction-- people backing up their brain stuff on a box similar to this.
Will really busy people get a two-disc collectors' edition, possibly with commentary from their mother and ex-significant others?
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
There's +s and -s for recording my life, but what I want is editing power. I'd like to forget the stupid comments I made in meetings. I'd like to forget that 1800 number from an ad in the 1980s! Most of all I'd like to delete/edit out all the negative comments in my life.
Of course the possible abuses of this kind of tech are too numberous to mention. Why would we need prisons if we could edit the criminal mind?
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
"That was close honey, that chick's butt looks just like yours."
At least generally I can tell which one is her, by the three orbiting satellites.. (children)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Hopefully the interface to this will be kept private, or someone will write a Brain Googlism program. I can see it now..
My boss is an insensitive clod.
My wife is a skanky nagging whore.
My secretery is not.
Josh Woodward
This sounds kinda familiar...
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
She did a sequence of short stories (not too many) focusing on a group of sysadmins in training to admin huge data banks of a central computer, where everyone, regardless of age, class, etc., could access the computer and keep diaries, notes, etc. It's been a couple of decades since I read them, but as I remember much of the stories focused on ethical responsibilities of the admins similar to lawyer-client confidentiality or the sanctity of the confessional.
One floppy should be enough for everybody.
-- Cheers!
... until we are all REQUIRED by law to use this system, and regularly submit our updates to the Office of Homeland Security.
No problem, right? Surely you have nothing to hide?
"Do you remember the Americans,
where did they go"
- Steve
use the DMCA to per^H^Hrosecute the living daylights out of anyone who accesses it without your authorization
That won't stop law enforcement. From 17 USC 1201:
Will I retire or break 10K?
The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC.
Yes, it's called BEING HUMAN. Through the years, pain fades from memory, the irritating things that lost loved ones did are forgotten, fun times seem more fun than they really were, memory of past loves becomes mellow and sweet, most of us geeks almost totally forget high school, etc.
So how is this bad? We want to remember every idiotic thing that ever happened to us WHY?
I want to do this about as much as I want to live forever. It sounds to me like the work of a group of people obsessed with mortality.
..as it failed to be recognized as an original work, so you can't copyright it and DMCA don't ally ;)
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well - I dont spend to much time around goats, however here on slashdot you may be frequently exposed to goatse.cx - in which case I want to keep my brain, dvd or otherwise, as shielded as possible.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
It's paramount to silly.
...
"The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC."
Yes, let's junk our minds and rely on computers instead! After all, we all know that computers are exactly like human brains only better! Haha, I will now power up and defeat you with my powerfull... hands!..
I have no idea why I just said that.
Likewise, I have no idea why this is inovative or impressive. People have been doing this for years.. with photos, diarys, letters and such. This, much as the artical says, is just a large database.
And frankly, I completely disagree with their premiss that having such accurate data on our past will give us a more true picture of what we were. We can only see the world through our own eyes, even if we have a perfect time line of what we *did* it still isn't likey to change how we'll think about our actions. We're still tainted by our own predjuices and momentary feelings and everything else, that relationship one had a year ago is still going to seem like a silly thing, and we're still going to say "oh, I wasn't really in love with her" even if we can see exactly what we did...
Besides, for the important things (well, what I consider important anyways, I'm sure as hell not going to suggest any of you need believe what I do) there's somthing to be said for just a memory. Sometimes a remembered smile between friends during a metor shower is more special than a video tape of the whole night.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Interesting that you brought this up.
I was talking to this guy who was a highway patrol officer - and had been one since the early sixties.
He was telling me about our records - and how they are "cleared" after a certain amount of time. Some things go away after you meet court stipulations, others after 3 years, others 7 & 10.
But that regardless of any "clearing" everything about you is permanently held in a NCIC (National Crime Information Center) Database. And this thing holds a ton of info on you. I was asking about acessing your own personal records. He said "No Way. This data is *only* available to federal law enforcment. There is no way for the public to get their records."
I think this is BS. I think that there must be some way you should be able to get to these records to ensure 1) they are correct 2) they dont contain data that isn't pertinent to actual law enforcment....
anyway - if anyone knows how to get this info (like can you hire a PI to get it for you?) let me know.
i) human memory is not a fixed capacity. it varies with how much you make use of it.
ii) also, there is a QUALITATIVE difference between events AS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM, and as they are recorded on a videostream. the *experience* you recall when someone snapped a photo of you (it was hot, and uncomfortable), is not the thing that is recorded in the photograph. the external image and the inner experience are qualitatively different - one is full of MEANING, and one is a DIGITIZATION - so no database of this type could really be a replacement for the type of experiential memories that we inherently contain.
iii) memory is like a muscle - the more you force yourself to remember all the stuff, the better your memory gets - and the more you rely on exeternal gadgets to 'remember' stuff for you - the more your inherent memory power Atrophies.
so if you want to have a bad memory - rely on external devices to remember things FOR YOU - you'll end up dependent on them, because you will have given-up your inherent abilities to do so. than you will be royally screwed if your external device gets the screen of death - you won't even know what you lost!
cheers!!
john
Besides, who needs moments of quiet introspection when we can just use grep to find the patterns in our life?
I think they're being overly pessimistic here. A 250GB drive is already $300. Expecting only a 4x increase in GB/$ in 5 years is certainly pessimistic. I'd expect it in 2 years, max.
I don't even own a DVD-R drive yet (Santa's coming though) and already it's looking small.
But the annoying parts are the security considerations. Obviously, I don't want anyone but myself to access it. And requiring huge storage, and being to important to lose, it would need to stay somewhere safe (probably in a fire-proof cabinet at home, or at some other secure location).
To communicate with it, I would need encryption. Not such a big deal, it could be a really secure private key system, and you could carry around a personal encryption device to communicate with it. The encryption device would need some way to authenticate me as a user (a fingerprint scanner combined with a password would probably do the trick).
The carry-around gadget would need some really nifty acquisition devices. Ideally, those would be whatever you sense, but that is probably too hard. So the device I carry with me would need a high-definition camera and audio recorder. Ideally, it should record at all times, but I would be willing to accept something that would only record when I told it to. And it must be small enough and invisible enough to not bother me (or other people I communicate with) It should also be possible to plug it into any computer system I use. And it would need some decent amount of temporary storage (for at least a week), since it can't possibly be connected to the real storage at all times.
The carry-around device would also need a way to show me the data it stores. Since any information there is potentially sensitive, I should not be forced to show even fragments of them unencrypted on the computer system I happen to use, unless that is what I want. So I should be able to browse the memory-bank in fully encrypted mode, and extract only the pieces I need.
For searching to be effective, it would need at least rudimentary voice-recognition and OCR capabilities (it doesn't need to be perfect, but good enough for searching to be possible). Simply going through days of video to find what I want wouldn't be much fun.
Ideally, such a device should also be tamper-free (again, some type of encryption is needed, but this time to protect it from it's owner). That means that one could extract bits from it and use it in the court as valid evidence. Of course, such evidence must be provided by the owner (if the courts could order it, nobody would want such a device). But it would be really useful to be able to show live video of the guy mugging you.
I'm sure you could build something much less ambitious that would still be useful. But damnit, this would be the ultimate PDA. And I want that! (Anyone take a guess as to how long it takes before we can find this in the stores? 20 years perhaps?)
I think he's more likely to go with the soft chewy paper.
To copy a book takes a good deal of effort, but you can copy a CD for a quarter a piece. If equal ammounts are spent on preserving & making copies of books as are spent on making copies of CDs, those CDs will make AOL cds look like a minor annoyance.
Just pulled an unpredictible disaster waiting to happen where the property damage would be the sole concern.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You haven't been paying attention, have you? :-)