Recording Your Entire Life

Scientific American has an article on Gordon Bell's 9-year-long experiment of recording great swaths of his life on digital media. The idea harks back to an article by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, which arguably presaged hypertext and the Web as well. Bell, the father of the VAX computer and now with Microsoft Research, first published a paper on his experiment in CACM in 2001. The goal is to record "all of Bell's communications with other people and machines, as well as the images he sees, the sounds he hears and the Web sites he visits." Storage requirements are estimated at a modest 18 GB a year, 1.1 TB over a 60-year span. Not a lot if the article's projection comes to pass — that we will all be walking around with 1 TB of storage in our portable devices by 2015. The article is co-authored by Jim Gemmell, who wrote the software for the MyLifeBits project.

Comments

robin williams movie anyone

[Loconut1389]

"The Final Cut" I think it was called?

the observed

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how he's changed his life based on the fact that it's being so thoroughly documented...

Re:Note to self:

[HTH NE1]

Turn recording device off BEFORE committing crimes!

Such as entering a movie theater?

Record your life, so long as your life doesn't contain any copyrighted works.

Instant messenger chat logs

[necro2607]

I used to make sure all my IM software logged all my chats by default - I saw it as a form of "recording my life" (I used to chat online a LOT). Especially in the event that something happened to me (some kind of fatal accident etc.) there would be some history or leftover "data" for family/friends to keep, I guess. Honestly if people had read the chats they would think so differently of me considering the things I discussed, but regardless I felt like I would want people to know either way. I imagine other people do this as well, although maybe not neccesarily with the same reasons in mind (no, I'm not hinting at anything).

Technological Children Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Consciousness is directly related to how much you participate in your life, and how much you perceive you are able to participate in your life. Memory is a direct result of that. I can remember years of my life where I was given no choice, and I would run around aimlessly like a robot doing tasks a retarded monkey could figure out, day after day. Then too much automation took root and I completely fell apart. I can remember crying because I noticed the grain in a wooden surface for the first time in ages.

Memory depends on your perception then and now more than anything. The reason some are going headfirst into this kind of research is because the kids with technology spend all their time in meaningless environments doing meaningless things, they grew up that way. Games are meaningless, TV is meaningless, this text; it's pretty much meaningless, as is the news and slashdot. They're all virtual things with no value to us. They feel as though their life is meaningless because they do meaningless things all god damn day long, and at the end of the day, when they go home, and try to get meaning out of their lives, they find themselves unable to feel like they have meaning. Living a meaningless life leads to a meaningless past. Hence, the reason they want to record it.

What isn't meaningless? Hugs and kisses from beautiful women. Cranking up an engine you spent 4 weeks rebuilding and taking a drive down to a pizza place 100 miles away to celebrate. Waking up in the morning after damn dear dieing the last day and taking your first breath. Sitting infront of the computer and grabbing a flab of skin and noticing you've lost a lot of weight.

Those things have meaning, and some people may want to record them or take a piece with them to prove they were here and they did this. Some of us have meaningfull lives that go places, and for us, there's no point to record it all; we've already got what we want right here, right now and the memories can be relegated to stories you tell buddies in bars at 2 am. For the rest of us, memories of the deceased are enough to get us through the day.

It's a technology for a sick culture.

Re:Technological Children Much?

[sorabji]

I have always wondered how anyone remembers what to remember. What subconscious sets of anxieties and biases determine what stories we tell about ourselves years later?

I'm reminded of a story in the New York Times magazine several years ago, recounting some of the content from a release of KGB surveillance records. Every moment of Soviet suspect citizen's lives were documented, with one passage recounting how a particular citizen approached a hot dog stand, asked for a hot dog, waited as the hot dog was prepared, paid for the hot dog, placed mustard on the hot dog, asked for relish, said thank you, walked away from the hot dog stand... I would think it mildly interesting to learn that my life had been documented in such a way.

I used to have webcams all over my place. Three of them at home, two at the office, taking photos every 5 or 10 seconds. I did it for years, and forgot about it until I found 50,000+ webcam pictures of me; photos of me sitting here, or sitting there, walking around. It seemed depressing at first, endless pictures of me gaping into a computer monitor and talking on the phone. Wasting this life is the impression I got when my own memories of that time have faded and only raw visual information about my activities was available. It's amazing how little that visual and other documentary information convey about the mental and psychological experience of a memory.

I can't say that my impression of discovering those thousands of pictures has changed, either. Life looks pretty damn boring when all quotidian endeavors are documented like precious information, but under certain influences I find it inspiring, too. It's the stuff of comedy, after all.

I think this sort of thing will never be mainstream, but I think it could become more common. I would liked to have a video camera in my eyes, sending video out to a web server somewhere, when I got mugged last year or when I witnessed a hit-and-run accident a few months ago. Anxiety and other circumstances effectively prevent me from clearly remembering what happened.

Then again, I think most memories should fade.

Re:Note to self:

[jamie]

Presumably you would encrypt your observations before storing them. Then it's just a matter of whether and under what circumstances the government can force you to reveal your passphrase.

My guess is that, faced with this novel situation, a judge might rule that if the police have probable cause to believe you were involved in a crime at a particular time, the court can demand your observations for that time period be decrypted, but aren't entitled to view your entire life. Failure to comply might keep you in jail for contempt of court.

A very strong argument could be made, though, that the 5th Amendment entitles us to refuse to disclose our passphrases. I confess I don't know the state of case law on this.

Re:Note to self:

[vrmlguy]

John Varley's "Steel Beach" looked at this from the other side. Soon, your household computer will be a reliable witness to every act of abuse committed against a spouse or child within your home. As a result, in the book both the law and their programming forbade computers from giving evidence against their owners. You can probably guess the eventual result.

Everything has meaning

[spun]

In fact, everything has only and exactly the meaning you give it, and for you, no other meaning is possible. You chose to give certain situations in your life meaning, and you chose to say that others had no meaning. That was your choice. But it is not entirely up to you, your choices are never made as freely as you think. As a child you had little choice but to accept the meaning-templates that society provided you. You can choose to move on and redefine your templates, but that is a hard thing, and most never do it.

I'm glad you've found more meaning in your life, though. That is always a good thing. Just don't shut out those "meaningless" parts, they may have more meaning than you thought at the time.

Re:go directly to jail...

[I7D]

Today on the train ride home i'll finih 'The light of Other days', a book by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. The book is about life with wormholes, where everybody can see anything they wish at any time. Its very interesting, a good read. Somebody else on slashdot recommended it and I bought it for a penny on amazon. If you do happen to pick it up, let me know what you think.

SenseCam info

[autophile]

Here is where you can get more geeky information about the SenseCam that Bell uses. It senses body heat and changes in light level to take pictures which are considered "interesting".

--Rob

Re:only 18 GB ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds rather bogus, yes.

Simple calculations: Assuming standard xvid quality "rip" (700 kbps video, 128 kbps audio):

Seconds in a year: 60*60*24 * 365.20 = 31553280

Be conservative and assume he sleeps half the day. That's 15776640 seconds left. Times 828 kbps makes
1.31e10 kbits, or 1.52 terabytes. Per year.

subpoenas

[drDugan]

When I showed up in Washington for my job, I had lunch with the big boss, who was the former chief of staff to the US VP. Big big cheese in DC. The #2 to the #2. I still had on the west-coast, happy-go-friendly naiveté slathered thick.

It was the first week, and the first time the big boss took some interest in me. Lunch was expensive - he paid.

We chatted, dug in. He said a connection I needed to remember and follow up with.

I pulled out 'my book', the latest leather bound notebook I had kept religiously throughout my graduate life and after. It was just the latest book, like the 4 others before it that I had filled and put on the shelf. At any meeting - the date at the top, notes in delicate print, people, emails, good points - all the things I needed to recall later. Two years later, if I needed the name of that person in the 5th seat from the right from BigCo, Inc., ... yup, in the book.

The boss's eyes widened, his head tilted -- he said, bluntly: "What's that?"

"Oh, I keep a book with notes."

"Oh" he said, pausing, "we don't do that here."

There was then an even longer, more awkward pause. I scrunched my brow furiously trying not to look too stupid. My eyes darted. "Huh?" I'm thinking, like "What? Write notes in a restaurant?"

"That is a subpoena waiting to happen", he continued. We then talked at length about how things happen in the real world. That was 4 years ago. I learned a lot from him. I don't keep books any more...

Since then I've quit a few times, been fired a few times, sued, been through 2 trials, won one, lost one, hired and fired a bunch of people, and now I'm running a startup. Fun times.

Long story short: IF I ever did record anything, I'd certainly never tell anyone that I had it. There is simply too much risk of it being used against me in the current litigation-crazy world, both from other people and from the state.

Re:subpoenas

[oblivionboy]

Although at first I wished I had mod points to mod you up, I realized after that no, his point did have more than just slight relevance. Specifically its about all the issues that can come to haunt us later if what has happened in the past is recorded accurately. It can be used against us by others, and probably in quite unexpected ways.

What I did take issue with was how the original poster somehow slanted his post in a condescending manner (hey this is slashdot, so why was I surprised :) to make it seem like he learned something from "the real world". Where as what he really learned was just that this "big boss" told him that political people in washington don't take notes because it could be used in a legal way against them down the road. Make of that what you will. I especially don't think that Washington is in any way "the real world". .o.

Re:Weblogs ... speaking of wives

[ancientt]

First, I assume your blog is secure, if it wasn't you should have corrected that by now. Second, a whole lot of you people seem to be missing one of the fundamental benefits! Being able to say "I told you so" and prove it. That would apply to auto insurance, malpractice, shoddy customer service and arguments with your oh so significant other.

Here is how it should work:
I wear glasses (used to have contacts) and I can easily imagine a pair of glasses where the spring in them is just a little longer and one side includes a microphone and the other side has a camera. I'm not sure about powering the thing but if you could get it broadcasting wirelessly (yes heavily encrypted) to my cell phone which in turn uploads periodically to my glife (google's next product) then you'd be able to have an audio/visual recording of practically everything I see/say/hear.

All the video/audio is stored temporarily on my cell where I can also set the cease broadcast, cease recording or cease upload options. It is pretty handy to control it from there, but it also has the "instant replay" option for whatever storage capacity I can afford/prefer worth of time. I imagine that at home I'd put it on cease upload but at work and driving I'd be on broadcast/record/upload constantly. I imagine Progressive or Allstate would offer a "certified driver" program and I would enable the same sort of technology in my car but on a simulcast to trusted third party option for a hefty discount. I'd certainly opt for the "dump last hour of data to police on death" and the "call the frigging ambulance if you crash" options.

The next thing would be a password to access archives beyond my cell phone replay option. I would memorize 24 hour, 30 day, 90 day, 1 yr and 7 yr passwords which would lock the archive for those periods of times if I used them. You could set your archive with whatever default lock period you like and nobody would be able to tell if you deliberately locked it or not. Some people would doubtless like to record their lives but don't want them pried into until a statute of limitations would apply so you could always plausibly say that you were one of those people (or that you only know the 7 yr lock password if you're a doctor, lawyer etc and then rely on third parties, possibly pairs of other people.) It would be trivial to change the lock/archive periods so that what you do at work is locked for 7 years, driving for 24 and home not at all and not stored at all when you're feeling private.

Heck, the politician who has the longest period on record of "share with third party ethics auditors" would be a shoo-in for office. Call the other guy a liar and stand on your "Really moral and honest guy" rating if you can get it. If not, then maybe somebody who can will run.... that or a talented hacker.

I cannot imagine how many arguments I wish I could have solved with the "Wait, lets check out an instant replay" option. I can go a step further and say that it would doubtless have my wife agreeing with me far more often about what was said. She insists on debating what she or I said, and while I'm sure she is occassionally right, I am really good at that sort of thing. On the other hand I imagine that I would almost never argue with her about what she told me previously. The thing is that both of us know that the other person is better at some types of recall, but there is no way to tell how often or how much better quantitively. Even if we knew the likelyhood was that we'd be wrong, we could "check the replay" if we thought this might be the time we were the one who was right.

I would never need to tell people in the service industry they suck again, if they suck then I can post the entire episode on youtube! Yes, I mean you Sprint, Wafflehouse and York Tire!