Slashdot Mirror
Backing Up Your Brain
couch_warrior writes "Microsoft is now working on a system that will back up the contents of your brain.
The pilot project lacks a direct brain interface, but "MyLifeBits" will provide a simulacrum of actual memories.
No mention is made as to whether Microsoft will claim to own the digital rights to the content of your life, or what license fees you will have to pay to access your own memories." Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I figured others would be better suited to say.
So instead of going on a tyrranical rant about this and bringing CmdrTaco's mother into it, let's look at how we could avoid this in the future.
I don't know what the administrative interface looks like for Slashdot, hell, I haven't even been given mod points yet despite regular meta moderation. But I'll bet that if you plugged the domain restriction plus the title of the proposed article into your favorite search engine, you could avoid 75% of all dupes. So in Google, this article would be: site:slashdot.org Backing Up Your Brain And here's the link if you're lazy which results in some pretty good hits: Download Your Brain
Putting Your Brain into A Computer So two very relevant articles, maybe they're dupes, maybe they're not.
But what if it was possible for the admin to select keywords/phrases from the submission and have that generate search links to the search engine. Two obvious ones would be Gordon Bell and the de facto dupe finding token MyLifeBits.
And with that last one, we come up with Backup Your Life on a DVD and Recording Your Entire Life. Two very similar articles to the subject at hand (the Gordon Bell search has no dearth of articles either). A few minutes of linking this to Vannevar Bush and you find Your Life On a Hard Drive.
If this is an update piece and you want to update us on the project, at least link to the plethora of articles related to it! My god, how many times must we discuss this man's dreams to do this? Where are the results already? I swear every single time this comes up, it's mere speculation. The editor even says so after the summary!
My work here is dung.
That's why you hear a loud beeping sound!
Not a MS basher per say, but I am not sure I want MS messing around with MY registry...
Lets make up rediculous products, claim a company is working on, and then slag of the company for their behaviour managing the non-existant product that hasn't even been developed.
Apparently they still have bugs to work out... some people are reporting massive data loss in the beta program...
The world's only surviving livewriter.
A USB stick isnt as scary as a DLT tape.....
Mike18067
www.slipcoverhome.com
Yeah, nice idea. No really. But imagine the conflict with copyright laws... or even wiretapping! Any time you take part in a private conversation would you have to get permission to record or distribute - what about recalling a concert you went to?
Argh.
Does Microsoft really expect me to trust them messing around with my grey matter?
What happens when half of what is recorded is you looking at 'past memories' on your pc? Does this echo logarithmically through the storage system until you are considered dead when there are no new memories being added?
Does the management software manage to do what CmdrTaco cannot? Remove dupes?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This is definitely hooey. The article does the worst job of 'advertising' a technology that is nothing more than a glorified data collection device.
taking reservations for transatlantic flights in 1880
or selling land on the moon... wait a second!?
this microsoft brain dump is obviously hokum, but in all seriousness, our ever growing hard drive densities, and the ubiquity of cameras nowadays, means the day is not far off when a newborn will be born and given a tiny innocuous camera implant on the side of his head, and his entire life will be videotaped
this is appealing and horrifying on a number of different levels
and it is probably only 5-10 years off
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Microsoft wants to restore your memories. Do you allow Microsoft to restore your memories?
[X] Yes [] No
[X] Always trust Microsoft to restore your memories
are you supposed to back up your brain if there's no brain interface in the first place?
proud caffeine whore
I'm not going to wear one of those helmets Dr. McCoy put on, but I could never type fast enough to put all my experiences and stuff in a computer. Some of it would need to be spoken and have a very good interface to query me on details I may leave out. Microsoft is really good at this (Are you sure there's nothing else you'd like to add? Yes/No/Cancel)
Has anyone ever figured out how many, say, bytes an image in your memory takes up? How about sounds, tastes, touch feelings, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So how often will I be able to change my mind before I have to reactivate?
This is why you can't patent warp engines isn't it? Yeah, the idea may be nice... But if it's nothing but an idea you're going to squash any sort of REAL research in this area with announcements like that aren't you?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Clippy popped up during my honeymoon:
It looks like you are trying to have an*l s*x?
Do you want assistence with that [Y] [N]
Table-ized A.I.
Who's gonna control your memories when you die? Do you really want to record everything, even when you cheat on your significant other? Do you really want to record when you're jacking off? Or taking a dump?
Newsfollow.com
because after digitizing your life you'll probably realize how much it sucks
"It could let you listen to every conversation you had when you were 21 or find that photograph of the obscure date you had on summer vacation."
Oh great, recall umpteen years of tedium. Woohoo. In case M$ hadn't noticed there are very successful game and movie industries based around the fact that people wan't to escape reality, not have it recalled in high definition!
I remember reading about this in either wired or IEEE spectrum at least a year ago
I goofed up the question mark. Sorry 'bout that. I guess I need Microsoft Add-in Spelling Brain Lobe 6.0
Table-ized A.I.
That kind of mirrors the experience I have been having with the open-source alternative: GNU/Brain (its in the Debian repos). I get my head plugged into the USB port, mount my brain with GNU/Brain and cp -u /brain/* /dev/null, and after a couple hours it comes back with an exit status of 0, all fine and dandy. Yet, inexplicably, when I go to check on my backup, nothing is there. I lost the memory of my wedding day (although, mysteriously, my divorce is still quite intact).
This is the same thing that has been happening to my server backups. I think it might be time to give Microsoft a second chance.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
RIAA would love it. They could then file subpoenas because you had an unlicensed tune running through your mind.
there is a small chance an upgrade will corrupt your childhood.
Douglas Quaid: "Ever heard of Mikrosoft? They sell those fake memories."
Lori Quaid: "MIKROSOFT?! You went to those brain butchers?!"
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
Sounds like VR is on the way. If there is a machine that can BackUp our brain what will stop this machine to put information in to the brain. The times of the Matrix are coming.
Ever to excel
Slashdot, like most media, has to attract eyeballs. If they printed on the frontpage "no news today" they wouldn't be making any money. So the slashdot editors have the task of keeping a steady stream of stories on the frontpage. So that when you visit it, you get some new story to read.
But not yet any story will do, it needs to be a story that people will react to. So that they post comments, so that it looks like an active site.
A slashdot story where ALL you needed to know was in the headline and had no room for discussion, well, you could just get that from the RSS feed, no page load, no ad load, no eyeballs.
You posted a comment to this story, I posted a comment to you. Mission accomplished. All you have shown is that the story attracted eyeballs.
In Terry Pratchets discworld book "The Truth" the patrician (local ruler) makes an observation about a newspaper. "Ain't it nice how there is always just enough news to fit the page, no spaces left open or anything".
The newspaper needs to be full, it needs to get read. That is a newspapers mission.
If you really want to tell the editors to stop doing this. STOP REPLYING.
Oh, and there is another thing to consider, slashdot is NOT a news site. It is an intresting things site. Nobody ever claimed that intresting things have to be new.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I can see the Advertising Execs now...... "Here's a idea, lets store the memories for free if they let us inject Ad's into them!"
And what is to prevent them from ostensibly altering your memories, if they so wished? You wouldn't know the difference; you'd forgotten it, otherwise you wouldn't be asking for your old memories in the first place?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Can_Remember_It_For_You_Wholesale
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Recall_(film)
Alchemist: Be Thou For the People
He describes this as your memory, as an attempt to make it seem important instead of silly.
It is this artifical record he is talking about, not your real memory.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Now is the time for all brave IT lingo geeks who patiently preached the difference between hacking and cracking. It will be simpler from now on: If your head *really* hurts, it's being cracked. Simple. I feel a rap coming... ....so I was backin' up my brain - when da hackin' went insane..
and then something about "crackin'" and "pain"!! I could make a million. As a matter of fact, I think I'll change my nickname.
saying: All your brains are belongs to us!
Why don't the guys at Microsoft focus on what they're good at - Office and Database products.
Use what works.
It isn't a brain backup device, it's a little recorder that you wear around your neck. It takes snapshots throughout the day and records sound. The software on the computer also allows for archival of various documents, etc. Stuff gets associated and it essentially becomes a surrogate memory.
A good, extensive writeup can be found in Fast Company. The original article is over half a year old and this idea from Gordon Bell has been known for years: he started working on this project in 1995.
Bunch of drama queens on slashdot talking about "omgz vaporware" "Microsoft doign what neuroscience cant? omgz" Read the goddamned article, not the FUD summary.
Heh... you could "squirt" some memories at people
Me: Hey remember that time I went out with your sister and *squirt*
Friend: AAAHHHHH!!!!! TURN THAT THING OFF!!
fortunately the memories would disappear after 3 days or 3 "viewings" lol
First off the Fox article says the folks @ MS think that a 1TB drive will be less than $300 by 2010??? Uuuh..
.. *sigh* nevermind
Second.. Can anyone say "Oh shit, my Windows OS just got infected and now all my memories are V14gr4 and c14115" ads..
Third
= Grow a brain...
"All of your ideas belong to us."
As a Prosecuting Attorney I would salivate at this.
Yes, sir here is your subpoena and the court order for your memories.
We don't worry about you telling the truth since we can just scan your memories
and submit those as evidence.
Hence why this will never happen. Defense attorneys are richer and have more lobbying power.
So when you die does the program give your memories the Blue screen of Death?
I was waiting for someone to mention that. Someone needs to tag this article totalrecall. I never read the book (from the same author that wrote the books that were adapted into Blade Runner and Minority Report), but the film was great.
Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I figured others would be better suited to say.
Honestly this looks like a bunch of hooey to me, but I posted it on the front page anyway.
There. Fixed it.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
That's ridiculous. Here's a good tip tho: for a good time, call 979 487 9868 :D
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'
s/technology/product/
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
* MS Memories Home Basic (TM) - You're told that you have memories, but this version can't restore them.
/. At least there will be once the next upgrade is released.
* MS Memories Home Premium (TM) - You're allowed to restore "up to" 10 memories, with a list of restrictions covering a page in 3 point text, notably that only individual, not shared nor professional memories are permissible.
* MS Memories Business (TM) - Restores any job related memories. As if anyone wants to remember them.
* MS Memories Ultimate (TM) - Any and all memories can be restored, or they would if the driver for your brain was functional. There's even "Extras" that will provide supplemental memories for those with exceedingly boring lives, such as readers of
Perscriptio in manibus tabellariorum est.
Article in Fast Company magazine one year ago this month:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/110/head-for-detail.html
It's not "bacing up your bran". It's "a near-total digital record" and custom software. It's not memory. It's look-up capabilioty.. and a h*ll of a lot of effort involved.
Backing up is easy, it's the restoring part that's hard.
TFA does not in any part of it say "backing up your brain". It does not say it gives you "a simulacrum of your memories". It does give some clear explanation of research they are doing, which is not new.
It is not "hooey" either, as the web really is a memory extender just try Google. Or ask Ted Nelson, whose work on Xanadu hypertext for example is tracable to his own faulty memory which he overcame by carrying ring-bound cards on his belt.
The only problem with this of course is that Microsoft is involved. They are inevitably going to spread their smarmy-feely corporate crap all over it. And you know what's going to happen, you will see people buy other people's lives (as a 100GB file download of multimedia clips indexed by time and location) and act all superior and shit.
They always describe these things in glowing terms that make you think of your Mom scanning in family photos to email her kids but in the end they end up owning your ass. That part of it wasn't hooey.
Now an open source version of this would be cool. I wouldn't have to write stuff down, just surf back a la Time Machine or if anyone has tried it, Gelernter's Mirror Worlds which was an interesting Java desktop demo that puts you in mind of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. If someone tagged bits of their lives meaningfully it might be useful, even restaurants might get better service.
...Microsoft's work has nothing on the original memex as envisioned by Vanevar Bush in the 40s. Chances are they don't even credit him. Everything old is new again. Blah blah blah. Not to mention, I have a ton of innovative ideas in a set of text files at home that would probably put most of Microsoft's ideas to shame.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
They're working on backing up our brains? Great! In the meantime, let me know when they actually get a backup solution for Windows Server that doesn't make me want to compulsively attempt to kill myself from alcohol poisoning after using it.
P.S. Whose idea was it to include Active Directory with System State and not let you restore one without the other, hmm? Maybe I don't WANT to restore the rest of my registry.
which should reduce the threat of HIV
It's not a backup if you can't restore it.
Thank goodness! Now I can finally erase that memory of the picture of goat.se I saw one time, which has been seared into my gray matter ever since.
Too invasive and too much access to sensitive information in my life from a company that can't even make a virus free operating system. When they can make an OS that isn't able to be compromised then maybe we'll start talking. Till then I'm running Mother Nature's OS in my head and only using the peripherals that the good lord gave me.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't mind dupes. Most(as in 9/10ths) of the time I've missed the first article and if I've read the story before I just skip it. In addition, I don't pay for Slashdot. I'm so cheap I even block the ads using AdBlock+ so that I don't even have to think about not paying money to someone. So give the admins a break guys...
I'm looking forward to seeing the new tag "hooey" become the most popular at Slashdot. And, if measured by Google hits, the very definition of "Slashdot" (the noun).
--
make install -not war
Should have the Monty Python style bare foot icon.
Please feel free to join me in protesting this silly story. This is certainly not biotech, no matter which way you slice it.
So, my father held a PhD in Chemical Engineering from CalTech, and had a wonderful life full of rich experiences. He passed away 3 years ago, and in the subsequent time since then, I have come to realize I really didn't know my dad. He did leave a lot of information behind (life story, records of important events, etc), but (while this article is a dupe, and MS isn't getting anywhere near my noggin, etc) the idea of being able to crawl through the data / memories in his brain is admittedly very appealing.
There are huge moral implications to consider here though - what portions of a brain are private/public, can you retrieve (or should we even try) data from folks who have passed on, etc..
I for one am intrigued by the idea.
--Kimball
http://www.kimballlarsen.com/
OK, forget that fact that there is no interface, but what about 'yang' to the 'yin'? Can't have backup without restore, right? And what about brain formatting?
First, would you let a M$ product restore your brain? Maybe read-only, but write privileges, I think not!
Second, don't you normally experience a 'crash' in order to need to use a backup copy?
Third, assuming a crash of significant proportion, not just some slight amnesia, there would have to be either a dead body to restore to, which doesn't do much good, because, um, they are dead for a reason, or, you would need the ability to transplant a dead donors brain, be able to "format" it, and then restore it. This is assuming the hard crash of your brain wasn't the result of a severely traumatic injury that killed your body too.
I guess what I am really saying is, WTF? This is a stupid thing to even talk about, let alone spend any money on. Dumbasses.
We're sorry, but your brain does not appear to be genuine. You will now be placed into limited functionality mode.
Well that was fast, 1TB drives for less than $300. We can now welcome our new unforgetful overlords. $289.99 $279.99 $279.99
"Dude, the sky sure is a pretty shade of blue!"
"Uh, we're indoors. You're brain just BSOD'd!"
Wow. Poetic justice will be when the good commander's remains have been "assimilated" into the earth and trace mineral remnants of his body are dug up in a million years and used by Bill Gates future relatives as an ingredient for a future Microsoft organic interface. If I can write a book and save it to Word on my XP machine without Microsoft having any claim to it, then why would they have a claim to an original thought in my head that I happen to save to a Microsoft device? I understand his statement was in half jest, but it's a dumb statement nonetheless. You penguins really need to get over your Windows envy.
Well its a microsoft project. Which means when I goto restore the back up, my brain goes into safe mode
Someone claims they are innocent of a crime and requests their memory to be backed up, screened for the time of the crime and viola! Innocence or guilt proven on the spot! Of course privacy advocates would go bat s&^% over the very idea. Periodic backups could be done and in case of head trauma or mind altering events, perhaps a restore? Walks down memory lane could be as easy popping in a DVD. Eyewitness reports of a crime would no longer be so dodgy. Of course this is only theory now, but in 20 years, who knows what is possible.
"Memories are meant to fade. They're designed that way for a reason" -Mace, Strange Days (1995)
-Cnik
Brings a whole new meaning to "blue screen of death".
If you smoke after sex, you're doing it too fast.
DH: What's this! What are we looking at?
CS: We're looking at now.
DH: So go back to then!
CS: It's too late, we've passed it.
DH: We were just looking at then!
CS: That was then, this is now.
DH: So when will then be now?
CS: Soon.
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
Now let's get this out of the way: I don't have a criminal record, and I've never committed a (nontrivial) crime. But I don't like this idea, because it would reduce my ability to commit unobserved future crimes if I ever found it necessary to do so.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Ray Kurzweil. We don't want to get him too excited.
The issue is not backup up, but how to access it. I'm pretty sure I have many, many more bits of data in my brain than I can easily access. If anyone comes out with a product that improves recalling ability, I'm all over it. But not if it has Windows written on it.
-Lars
I wonder if those particularly nasty memories that I have of having once been forced to use windows, and not liking it at all, will be stored verbatim ? Or will they be re-interpreted in transit as some sort of WOW moment that made my whole life seem worthwhile ? No thanks. If I need to backup my brain, Ill just write a cron job myself to rsync it to another standby brain that I keep in the fridge (just in case).
... what will happen when the government subpoenas your MyLifeBits box for something minor, then discovers every other objectionable thing you have ever done? Or what if they want to use it to profile people based on propensity to commit crimes? Think about all the illegal stuff most of us have done, but have gotten away with because no one was watching. It's kind of like the "black boxes" Uncle Sam wants so badly to install in everyone's car, but brought to a new level. It would have been fun to record my life in childhood/adolescent years, though. Many of the memories are still fresh or at least semi-fresh, but seeing stuff happen again on a TV screen would be really cool. Or just to remember where you put something last week! As long as the data can be kept private, this could be kind of fun.
I'm sorry, your memory format is no longer supported. All Microsoft Brain products only work with Remembers4Sure stored memories. We understand your need due to head injury but we are unable to assist you at this time.
I'm guessing it'll be released shortly before Duke Nukem Forever...
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
That's crazy. I wouldn't want anyone having a copy of my memories, let alone Microsoft.
Here how it works: Using your Microsoft Windows powered PC, write down everything you did today using Microsoft Office Word.
Next, store it online using Microsoft Live backup. Then you can search it using Microsoft Live Search. Pay a monthly fee so Microsoft can datamine you based on your personal memories
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
The contents of your brain would NOT be backed up with this device. Rather, the raw audio and video it received as input would merely be recorded.
This thing (obviously) does not record the associations made by a person's brain based on the raw input the brain receives. And it also does not record other inputs, like taste, smell, and touch.
The idea is basically to wear a camera and an audio recorder and have a way of searching through the recorded data. Nice, but this is no where close to backing up the contents of one's brain.
Blue Screen of Brain Death.
The idea of recording one's entire life has been around for decades, and people have been doing this on and off for at least a decade before Microsoft got in on the act. It's really mostly a question of cost, (electrical) power, and privacy, not any particularly fancy technology.
If you haven't seen the movie "the final cut" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ check it out, interesting look into the possibility and what it would entail..
You have failed to register your baby's mind. Your new user will not be allowed to form memories using Microsoft Thinking Suite Home Edition.
They plan to fit it all in 640K.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Ignoring the lack of point to the parent story, I have to wonder how many people would embrace and how many would be fearfully wary of direct-to-brain communication. Seriously, once we reach the point where it is possible to have bi-directional communication with the human brain, society is probably going to have some major problems?
Think that the situation with computer viruses is bad now, think that lack of a voting trail is scary... how about what happens when somebody managed to "hack" the brain of a political leader. How about your own brain?
And how about military and warfare technology. Pre-program your soldiers, while in the meantime the enemy is simply encoding civilians to become suicide bombers.
How about the Starwars kid. The next one won't be caught on video-tape, he'll just have his most private thoughts downloaded from his brain while sleeping, and then uploaded to the internet by malicious pranksters.
While I think that it would be cool to experience truly immersive VR in the way that only a direct-brain connection can achieve, I'm way too afraid of what the consequences could be in giving outsiders the keys to my mind.
President Bush is very excited with this technology and already purchased a floppy for his backup...
It was found that the average Slashdot user's brain could be backed up using a 11x8" sheet of double wide ruled paper.
Clippy: I see you are trying to have a thought, would you like help with that ? (sound of gunshot and MicrosoftBrains(tm) splattering over the walls)
come to the dark side, we have penguins.
For backing up our brains there aren't big enough computers or hard drives out there. Since the brain is a lot more complex then just the sum of his memories.
My understanding is that Microsoft will treat your brain as another "removable storage device." Then it's just a simple matter of launching NT-Backup...
will the open source version involve a spoon and a soldering iron?
if so, sign me up for beta testing!
must think in Russian
must think in Russian
ether that or XML/ODF to stop MS reading your brain
http://how-to-spell-ridiculous.com/
backups are useless without restores.
the good news is, you can use all your write-only memory for this.
the bad news is, the major collection of write-only memory is the human brain. test takers of the world, am I right or what?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
. . . if you try to unlock it with a red pill . . .
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/20/2121236
Um, yeah, that's a pretty safe prediction. Here's the latest price on a 1TB hard drive from my local computer store:
Maybe they meant flash memory? Maybe portable hard drives? I don't know... but still, good job, Fox News.I don't know how much $272.39 is in worthless American money, but in real Canadian money, that's not that expensive. (I only get to use that for a few more weeks, as our dollar rapidly retreats back down to parity... please let this poor Canadian have just these few more moments of undeserved pride).
640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Does that mean you were less fulfilled than someone who got a few volumes out of theirs?
Can you do incremental backups over time or is each backup slightly larger than the previous one?
If I'm using a memory during the backup do I get a "memory-in-use" failure?
What If i fail to remember something one time but remember it another time? How do I reconcile that?
Can I screw with other people's backups?
The questions only multiply...
JB
it is the fist time that I've seen it, I don't give a shit.
... I really don't see any innovation here. Isn't this what youtube already does? I mean, I basically post everything I've ever seen and heard to youtube already. Backing up my brain would just be redundant.
[signature]
No, I'm not making this up:
> Man Dies After Getting Stuck in Girlfriend's Cat Door
> Report: Mozambican Woman Gives Birth to Baby With Two Heads
> Man, Toad Arrested in Drug Bust
After all this _is_ FOX News
Tony
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
Its backed up on tape somewhere.
Have gnu, will travel.
"All your brain are belong to us."
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
Consider if we could walk around with a miniature HDTV that could record what's in our field of vision (as well as audio). This LifeCam might be integrated into a pair of glasses or a pendant around our neck. A constant stream of video and audio would be delivered wirelessly to a remote server or something like a beltcliped memory device. Maybe this LifeCam would also capture the other interfaces around us as we interact with them, like video monitors, TVs, mobile phone displays.
So wherever all this data is collected, a program is run on the data, something that's an evolution and merging of products like Apple's iPhoto, Time Machine, Spotlight, and Nokia's LifeBlog. This program is constantly analyzing, indexing and arranging the info in the stream. It's keeping all the video and audio intact, but it's indexing info that's ripe for databasing like contacts, conversations, transactions, GPS data, things we did. What if we could download widgets that provide focus on what interests us, that can also datamine our past life data as well?
I could see a whole new twist on the surveillance society where we all have a camera and system that's datamining away. I'd go for the LifeCam 360 with iris scanning, so if I get mugged the cops will know who did it within minutes and maybe even find and arrest the guy; that could be a crime deterrent. If I wanted to review a conversation from a month ago, I could time machine back to it, and retrieve a person's name and contact info if I had forgotten. I could run a diet and exercise widget that could help me stay fit, telling me if I'm running enough or drinking too many mocha lattes. An alcohol widget could inform me if I might have a drinking problem. The girlfriend widget might tell me if the woman I'm dating is ok or a bitch, and maybe tie into a forum of peers who could comment as well. I could see financial widgets, work aids, program elements that integrate into things we use like photo and video software, desktop calendars, project management software, where when we use a desktop computer, it'll have calendars, address books and such that are built from our experiences in addition to what we might manually enter.
I think it would be cool if the GUI were in our heads (Terminator style, but with improved graphics), but that might take awhile yet, along with true brain interfaces.
I think a life recorder/indexer is more likely in the foreseeable future, and more practical. I also think it would be better to have a true record of one's experiences and actions, not a product of our minds that could be distorted over time due to things like emotions, opinions, perspective, or just bad memory.
I know a good tattoo artist who's doing my "backups".
$> cd
$> more beer
Well it's cool to read about my work on Slashdot! I've read nearly every one of your comments, thank you, they made me smile, but many are so far off the truth about this project.
I invented the camera technology for MyLifeBits, The Sensecam in 1999 when I worked for Microsoft. I then approached Gordon Bell as I thought it would enhance MyLifeBits. I last spoke with Gordon about this approx 10 minutes ago. I have left Microsoft now to create my own start up business, much more exciting than Sensecam, a new type of image sensing. And yes I am recruiting.
The real story behind mylifbits www.lyndsayw.com, Mrs Lyndsay Williams
Microsoft RAMDoubler for Humans!
And all this time you thought they were after Connectix for VirtualPC...
8==8 Bones 8==8
of course possession of memories of you engaging in any sort of sexual activity before your 18th birthday would be illegal
"The Microsoft team predicts that by 2010, a 1-terabyte (1,000-gigabyte) hard drive will cost less than $300." A typical-unconnected-to-the-real-world-MS-commment: http://www.eaglebit.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=EB-300-00317&Click=14 ..... it's already down to $268 and dropping fast!
Remind anyone else of the Ray Bradbury short story involving the mechanical video/audio recording wasp that follows its owner around wherever he or she goes?
I just think its cool that this thing is tagged under 'hooey'.
Look at the whole picture, not just the hole in the picture.
Digital rights would be awful! I should be able to share my memories with whomever I want!