Your Life On a Hard Drive

Iddo Genuth writes to point us to his The Future of Things blog, where he has put up a rumination on the idea of recording one's whole life, beginning with Vannevar Bush's 1945 "Memex" (from the same essay in which he envisioned digital photography and advanced electronic computers). This serves as introduction to an interview with Microsoft Research's Gordon Bell, arguably the first man to attempt recording (most of) his life. From TFoT: "If humans may be viewed as the sum total of their memories, then at our doorstep may be a life changing revolution: the ability to store one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file. In this article, we examine this idea, as well as some of the problems involved in its application."

Comments

Memory != reality

[TheWoozle]

I can imagine that for most people, this would actually upset them.

People's memories are colored by everything from their state of mind at the time to associations with other experiences (that may not even seem related).

I think most people would be upset to find out just *how much* their cherished memory of an event differs from the actual thing as it was recorded.

There goes my sanity

[poliopteragriseoapte]

I actually happen to believe that one's sanity critically depends on the ability to forget things... I am not sure at all that the psychological consequences of a full-life recording have been investigated, and I somehow tend to believe they wouldn't be positive.

Re:It Happened Once & It's Over

[Lord_Dweomer]

but I wish their efforts were concentrated on something more helpful to society.

I REALLY wish people would stop saying things like this everytime a new scientific endeavor is underway. I mean, really, who the hell are you to judge what is more helpful to society? If you don't think people pursuing their OWN goals is helpful, then I HIGHLY recommend you watch James Burke's Connections series from the BBC because it will illustrate exactly how random human technological and societal development has been and what random quirks lead us to where we are now. So I applaud these guys. Who knows what future change this will inspire.