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MyLifeBits to Store Every Moment of Your Life
Dixie_dean writes "Microsoft researchers are developing a way to enable you to capture every moment of your life and store it on your computer. The principal researcher with Microsoft's research arm, Gordon Bell, is developing a way for everyone to remember those special moments. 'The nine-year project, called MyLifeBits, has Bell supplementing his own memory by collecting as much information as he can about his life. He's trying to store a lifetime on his laptop. He's gone on to collect images of every Web page he's ever visited, television shows he's watched, recorded phone conversations, and images and audio from conference sessions, along with his e-mail and instant messages. Calculating that he saves about a gigabyte of information every month, he noted that he tries to only save photos of a megabyte or less. Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage." This is a project we've been talking about for a long time.
To forget is human. To be human is important.
Just need to find a good editor for the film of my lifebits to play at my funeral and i"ll be happy.
"Persistance is Fertile" - Me. I can quote myself if I want to.
Finally, technology has caught up with narcissism.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
Just what we need...
To remember what all the pr0n sites we visited when we were 15...
at age 70.
Something witty.
CAT: No, this isn't the one.
LISTER: What isn't?
CAT: I'm looking for this dream I had last month on the dream recorder.
It was sensational.
LISTER: What was it about?
CAT: Me, three girls and a family-sized tub of banana yoghurt!
RIMMER: You know, cats have a very strange attitude to women if you ask
me.
CAT: Say what, Goalpost Head?
RIMMER: It's all sex, and no sense of settling down and having a long-
term relationship.
CAT: Hey, I want to settle down. And as soon as I find the right small
group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my
wandering days are over, buddy.</pre>
This sig is umop apisdn.
What happens if he goes to watch a movie? If it were possible to store every moment of your life, and use it to augment your normal memory, would you need a change in the copyright laws?
Who ordered that?
What about recording me watching a recording of me watching a recording of me watching ...?
... Unless you're one of those perpetually smiling people only seen in corporate clip art, life tends to be full of more unpleasant, uncomfortable, and completely banal events than positive. I could not imagine anything worse than watching high school all over again. I would probably want to strangle myself for being such a horrible, awkward geek.
Really... How many moments of your life do you really want to relive? And wouldn't re-watching your most pleasant memories knowing what you know now dilute just how pleasant those memories were?
Now they can own your life, too! I think Microsoft will be the first to prove people have souls when they begin research into how they can own them. Sorry. Had to. When I started typing, there was no other Microsoft bashing post. Mod me down for Flamebait, if you want :P
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Although, seeing the borg icon makes me doubtful about how long it will be optional for
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry, but this is just journalistic hyperbole. It's not every moment of your life. If you were to store every moment of your life as HD video, it would consume far more than a TB. And that still leaves 3 other senses we haven't devised recorders or storage formats for. Not to mention high-resolution PET scans for internal state, brainwave records and who knows what else. This project is a cute scrapbook instead, not full-time, automagic, all-encompassing archiving of first-person experience. But yeah, we have a lot of storage and a person obsessed with scrapbooking minutiae could have a field-day.
Google want you to store all your stuff on-line with them. Now Microsoft want to store your life off-line on your pc with them. Next thing you know your mobile provider will give you recording of all your phone calls you've ever made through them...(Well makes a change from them giving the recordings to the government!) :D
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
When I'm 53 years old and I'm carrying my grandkids on my lap, I want to be able tell them stories of the old days, like "You young whippersnappers think you have it tough? Back in my day, we couldn't just go out and buy unleaded gasoline. No sir! We had to scrape the lead out with our bare hands! And you think you have it tough with your complicated computers and what not. Back when I was a kid, we didn't even have computers to write with. We communicated entirely in ones and zeros ... written in PENCIL!
Imagine what would happen if they could just look up the past and say "Ha ha, Grandma! You're lying!"
Do not take away my golden years, dammit!
Wait till he gets his first subpoena. I'd love to see a court have to go through all of that just to not find anything of value.
But to make it a more useful measure, there should also be a way of adding "emotion" points to the total score (where users asign a level of emotion or fun to each event stored in their digitally stored lives) with a function such as {Adjusted true-life-years = life disk usage x total emotion points}. Then you can let the software do the calculation and tell you your ATLY score, perhaps as widget on your Facebook profile.
Finally we have a way of measuring who is more of a nerd than someone else, and all thanks to Microsoft. Who would have guessed?
Here are some possible problems... you can have the files subpeona'd for court cases. How do you secure them against someone who wants to know anything about you? Will your employer demand you submit the recordings each day?
I might be ok with it if the constitution was changed to make privacy an absolute right, and make the punishment for taking one of these files to be extremely severe.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"One Terabyte ought to be enough for anyone."
- Gordon Bell
I've already got the best storage medium possible for my life: my brain. Keeps not only video and audio, but also stores the other three senses.
Who is this for? Those with Alzheimer's or amnesia?
Interesting concept, but it seems to be more marketing fluff than a useful product.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
Anyone who ever saw that icon on their Windows desktop that says "My Computer", and picture Bill Gates saying it, not themselves, should think about giving Microsoft that kind of complete access to their entire lives.
If the source were open, it were stored locally or encrypted at customer-selected third-party networked datacenters, this app could be wonderful, a lifesaver. But trust Microsoft with one's entire life? That sounds like putting it all in once place to be ruined or stolen.
--
make install -not war
I'm seeing more and more projects that simply have me saying, "why?"
Seriously. I think filling my drives with random bits and seeing if there is anything readable would be more interesting.
This project is trivially achieved but the product is doomed to be uninteresting: "I spent all my life taking and organizing photos of myself".
After all, the recording work must be recorded, and so must the recording work of the recording work, the recording work of the recording work of the recording work, ad infinitum. Get a life, microsoft.
"Honest baby! I'm not shooting home porn. It's a LifeBlog(tm). I film everything. No... Come back.... Come back!"
Unless you're dating someone with the IQ of Paris Hilton... Or the exhibitionist streak of Paris Hilton... I see some problems here. And if you are dating Paris Hilton, good God man, you've got problems enough.
Guess not anymore! Now how long until we are able to back up our brains into hard drives?
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Ahhh once again MS changes the definition to suit their marketing needs. "Everything" now means a small selected subset of everything that they have chosen and decided is important. Does it record your mood? Does it record your vital signs? Does it record your dreams? Your aspirations? Your fears? No we're talking low res images of trivial crap like what web site you've visited. Shit I can do that now with File->Save As and get original resolution to boot. Would be nice to automate that with a firefox extension or store history permanently, but it's not life changing, revolutionary or a complete record of anything.
Even if you had high def video of what you saw for every second of your life, you'd still be missing many many important things, visual and otherwise that are going on around you. Not to mention privacy concerns. I simply don't need detailed video of me taking a shit on April 5th 1983. Wouldn't mind having video of when I proposed to my wife, but that's not something I'd want to share despite it being G rated.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
how long before everyone is REQUIRED to wear one of these at all times so they can be checked on for terrorism or pedophilia 24x7x365? Microsoft can go die
I have a strange feeling that somebody is already documenting my life. Every page I visit, every step I make, every breath I take. And they never gonna let me down.
All you need to do is just ask for your personal copy.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I built many of my college papres on this technology, and even cited this project in several papers.
Finally, technology advanced enough to allow Vannevar Bush's Memex to come alive. I would like to see how well this fairs with the public. Much of the public does not want tracking of every little digital movement...
We've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.
I predict a service selling clipart LifeBits to people who have really boring lives. It's called MyLifeStore. You upload a picture of your face and for $25 you can buy a LifeBit of you doing exciting stuff like bungy jumping while saving rain forests in the Amazon. Use it to overwrite that day when you just stayed at home and read the newspaper.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Seriously...
"Taboo, like anything else, goes in and out of style."
Sorry but a TB...wtf? I don't want some low res windows paint shit version of my life. I'd prefer everything to be in HD just as it was created. Why I'd ever want to remember the "good ol' days" in artifact compression is beyond me. But this is just so typical of their line of thinking.
Will they own the rights to the playback of my life?
I would guess the people who would be interested in this would be reeaally boring.
Ipso facto, their saved record/video/photos of their life would be reeally boring.
I seem to remember reading once that almost nobody ever used their web browsers history, so I'm guess this will never get off the ground.
Frankly I do not feel like I need my own black box, but I guess there will be some sound medical reasons why some people might want one (dementia?)
I have 36GB of digital photos and countless VHS-C and miniDV tapes lying around. I still can't decide on how to organize it.. I can't imagine having to figure out how to organize clips from my entire life....
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Wasn't there a lame movie about this starring Robin Williams... oh yea it was called The Final Cut
WGA_LIFE has detected that your not authorized to view YOUR_LIFE; YOUR_LIFE failed Genuine Life Validation. Please contact Microsoft for a Genuine Life license fee to access YOUR_LIFE. Your access to YOUR_LIFE will fail in thirty days if not authorized via Microsoft Genuine Life Advantage.
(EULA) YOUR_LIFE License is non-transferable to non Genuine Life supported platforms. Once you start YOUR_LIFE service with Microsoft or authorized 3rd parties, Microsoft owns YOUR_LIFE. Microsoft reserves the rights to upgrade YOUR_LIFE to version 1, 2, or 3 without notice.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
That's all I have to say about anyone that can store then entirety of his life in one terabyte. Shit, that won't even store the copies of Windows that he has installed.
Yes, I know that is not the kind of thing you save, but from what I've seen when people have digital space to store things, they collect more things. They never worry about space until they run out.
"... oh, well then do you think I should get the 300GB drive?" says one little lady I know who just wants to have room for her 'stuff'. Yes, most of it is pictures and jokes. She is 65, has the address of some 3500 friends and letters and stuff she has written, including the manuscript from a book she had published. If she were to collect everything... well, 1 TByte isn't going to cut the mustard. Only the FSM knows how much room she'd need if she had grandchildren.
Yep, he must be boring as hell.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
It's called the federal government
"He's gone on to collect images of every Web page he's ever visited, television shows he's watched, recorded phone conversations, and images and audio from conference sessions, along with his e-mail and instant messages. "
Sounds like a new electronic form of Compulsive Hoarding Disorder...
http://www.helpinghoarders.com/
Guru Meditation #6d416769.21610a21
... from Mircosoft's point of view: staring at a blue screen. Waiting for Vista to boot.
Have gnu, will travel.
Didn't Clarke depict something like this in the final Odyssey book, 3001? Except that he predicted that it would require a petabyte, I think. Of course, that was to record an entire human consciousness and a lifetime of experiences.
I already can replay the most embarrassing moments in my life in all the detail I care to muster, thanks.
If you post it, they will read.
If you insist in continuing to remember those good moments you enjoyed that time at the cinema you'll probably receive a cease'n'desist letter.
mylifebites.com wait what was that again? oh *bits* ...
I have a hard enough time getting my friends to sit and stay for the 300 slides of my trip to Gary, Indiana.
Is this a joke, or are you serious? I drove through Gary once; the only thing you'll get slides of there is boarded-up buildings downtown and winos lying around begging for money.
Recording your life is easy. Making it easily searchable is the real technical challenge.
"Show me that conversation from a few years ago when Kelly told the clown joke."
so what's he going to do when he documents everything up until the point he started documenting. will he document the fact that he spent all his time documenting his life? its kinda like when you turn the webcam towards the screen and watch the live video feed - its like going into a tunnel to nowhere!
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
If only David Boies had been able to subpoena the MyLifeBits of all the Microsoft corporate management. Honestly, can't this crowd see fifteen minutes into the future????????
Nokia developed my idea into lifeblog or something, but here is how mine went: GPS Cellphone with camera and maybe video: You can then send pics/text/voice/video to your blog with your GPS coordinates showing up later when you released the security on them(in case your not home and people use it to rob you). Anyway, the storage is on a server computer instead of the cell phone, so you can basically store unlimited things on your storage place. Instead of getting every mundane detail of your life, you get the cool stuff all organized.
God spoke to me.
Simon Illyan had one of these in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan series. In Memories, it went bad due to a bio-weapon. The consequences were pretty well explored. In short, it's hard to function with random HD memories popping up at random moments. What's current, and what's history?
12:00-13:00 -> start using MyLifeBits
...
13:00-14:00 -> using MyLifeBits to record starting using MyLifeBits
14:00-15:00 -> using MyLifeBits to record using MyLifeBits to record starting using MyLifeBits
Oh
He said the trip to Gary. Depending on where he lives, that can be enough to fill 300 slides.
Not interesting enough to watch those 300 slides, though, as we can see by the reaction of his friends.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know about yins, but I try and forget about 70% of my Day-2-Day life... Otherwise my beer consumption would be a pointless investment.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
If a person using an app like this started seeing his future in it.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
FTFA:
Just goes to show you don't have much of a life if you could store the whole thing in one terabyte.
Just do the math: 1 terabyte (1024x1024x1024x1024)
divided by 80 year lifespan
= 13743895347.2 bytes
divided by 364 days
37,654,507 bytes/day
16 waking hours/day
2,353,407 bytes
divided by 60 minutes
39,223 bytes/minute
divided by 60 seconds/minute
653 bytes/second.
There's no way you'll record everything about your life in 653 bytes/second. And that's ignoring that lossy compression isn't an option, since then you *aren't* recording *everything*, and ignoring your dreams, etc.
All this is is an "enhanced blog" - big f*cking deal.
I'll bet it won't seem like such a cool idea anymore.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Think how easy it will be to prosecute criminals though! Or remember people after they die (Robin Williams can make your life video, a la Final Cut). Then again, I don't think anyone alive has never broken a law....
Still sounds awful; I sure hope the final arrival at Gary wasn't the high point.
His trip sounds about as exciting as a trip to south Chicago, or a trip to Newark, New Jersey.
Old news. The Romanian secret service was performing this service for free for most people with a university education. Now, you can apply to see the old secret service files of yourself and any of your close dead family members. Complete with transcripts of every word you utter in your own home (courtesy of bugged telephones), your radio and preferences (to make sure you weren't listening to Western subversive material), and transcripts of the twice in your life that you went out to a restaurant. And there was the added bonus of testimonials from your friends, with a special emphasis on the things that could later be used against you (extramarital affairs, unhealthy sexual preferences, subversive rhetoric, etc.).
I went to a lecture by memory expert Tom Coughlin, who predicted that lifelogging would dramatically increase consumer memory demands in the coming years. He pointed to a product Vievu. You can read a more thorough discussion of the lecture here
Why? So when someone steals your identity, they can steal your entire life history along with it? So the government can come along and seize it from you, tear it apart, and twist it into whatever foul thing they decide you should be guilty of? So every person who can get their hands on it can Monday morning quarterback every experience you've ever held dear and important decision you've ever made? Thanks, but no thanks. Somebody please round up all the people who think this is a good idea, put them up against a wall, and shoot them dead.
The brain already stores much of this information. Maybe they should work on an app that supplements the brain and uses a information life cycle paradigm to offload old memories into physical storage. Disaster recovery is a nice application too - just in case.
Cool now all Microsoft needs to release is a second life so that you have time to sit there and go over you're first one.
A nince year project that /. reports on every 2 months!
It's retarded and no one will ever want it.
Just one question: unless you are Einstein or Galileo or Hitler, who cares about your life? Much better to be remembered by your good works than how you brushed your teeth in the morning every day for 90 years.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Microsoft has too much money, and Gordon Bell has *way* too much time. Look at what excesses of those two commodities has done for Paris Hilton.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
Here's a link to a copy of the article in Personal Computer World magazine, November 1996 which describes the research work done by Chris Winter and others at British Telecom's Martlesham Heath research labs on such a device.
http://www.pcw.co.uk/personal-computer-world/features/2045102/cutting-edge-futures-brain-drain
Every 2 months this rehashed news gets tossed out like it's some new development. It's retarded, no one will ever use it, espeacially if it's branded by microsoft.
Google is already doing this for me... well at least, my virtual life :P
Ha, maybe a terabyte could store everything about YOUR life...
stuff |
I like the link to Gordon Bell. It says Extended Biography and it's one page of HTML. He says he stores 1GB per month. Not very extended.
America, Home of the Brave.
Considering that these days you get in trouble for just having the same name as a terrorist or even just looking middle-eastern, I'd rather be able to prove with something like this that I'm not a terrorist. But then again, I'm kinda biased since I'm middle-eastern :-)
True, but there are some things we shouldn't do because they just scream "*I* *need* *to* *get* *a* *life*!".
There are plenty of people who already waste a significant amount of their lives updating blogs and communicating almost exclusively via MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/Friends Reunited/MSN and the like. As a result their lives are pretty well documented, and if any further effort were required, they wouldn't be left with enough free time to actually do any living.
Finally, I think there's something government has covered for me.
And to think how you hated it when the neighbors invite you over only to show you a slideshow of their vaction!
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
They have this concept of a "cosmic tape recorder" that records everything that happened in the universe. When you reach enlightenment you can replay all your past lives at will.
There was a TV story last month about a radio announcer who can remember what he did most of every hour of his life. You could give him a date and ask what ate for lunch, the weather, and the top news stories.
Funny, he didnt do above average in TV game shows like Jepordy which requires fact and trivia memory.
On the flip side the Greeks believed when you died the soul eventually forget its life. That was considered in some ways a blessing. The goal of a hero was to perform a feat that would be remembered for the ages.
:::shudders:::
Kinda doubtful Gordon is entirely forthright about "every website he's ever been on". Besides wouldn't that violate the DMCA or something?
Google to Yahoo! ad sales reps: All your client base are belong to us!
Could this have anything to do with this?
"We want to help you catalog your entire life on your hard drive. Oh, and on a completely unrelated note, we're going to use the contents of your hard drive to serve you contextual adds." <Jedi Mind Trick>This isn't the conflict of interests you're looking for.</Jedi Mind Trick>
it'll be a nice little metal band around our heads. tamper proof of course. sort of a mark 9 ankle bracelet, but positioned to get good video/sound. of course, it'll have to have a 'kill switch' in case the person has to be taken out, hope that never get's hacked. and don't worry, you're innocent until proven guilty, if need be, we'll eventually get around to fighting for that in this country.
He's trying to store a lifetime on his laptop. He's gone on to collect images of every Web page he's ever visited, television shows he's watched, recorded phone conversations, and images and audio from conference sessions, along with his e-mail and instant messages.
What a goldmine that might be for inquisitive Customs or FBI agents.
C'moon maaaaaan, the waaay is the gooooal. Seize the day, man... can ya spare a nickel, I wanna get loaded.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.