Slashdot Mirror
Software Backs Up Human Memory
CWmike writes "Ever try to remember who you bumped into at the store a few days back? Well, you're not alone. And IBM researchers are working on software that just may help you better recollect all the forgotten pieces of your life. This week, the company unveiled Pensieve, software that stores images, sounds, and text on everyday mobile devices, then allows the user extract them later on, to help them recall names, faces, conversations and events. IBM's project is akin to one that Gordon Bell and other scientists at Microsoft Research have been working on for the past nine years."
Did that have a meaning before harry potter, or did they have to license that?
I mean, great name and visual from the books/movies, but a quick search only showed harry potter realted results, and dictionary.com didnt know it either.
just curious.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
The human memory works by really, really remembering things that are deemed important by you at the time. If you know you can just save everyone's name and photo to a device, it'll get marked as don't remember. And then the device gets stolen or breaks and you didn't back it up and suddenly you're an amnesiac lol.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
good advice!
ill put that in my palm pilot notes right now.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
What were we JUST talking about?
Cool! Amazing Toys.
How much do you want to bet that when finished not one politician will own one of these. It would be toooooooo easy to be caught lying, conning and being a politician in general.
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
What?! By this time they should've built a direct brain interface, a la Johnny Mnemonic. I'll definitely need one of those if I want to live to be 1000 >_<
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
This was invented awhile ago... it's called a legal pad.
If only that were the case at the bar. This happens far, far too often. I'd love some kind of memory aid.
[talking to hot woman]
Me: "Hey. So, you're a biology nut and read Neal Stephanson in your spare time? Hey, what's your name?"
Her: "Alice, and you are?"
Me: "Dan. So, can you hold on a minute? I've got to run to the bathroom."
[thinking] ...
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
"Must remember name is Alice"
[comes back]
Me: "So, Emily how are you doing?"
Her: "Uhm, I'm Alice."
*crap*
But I am doing everything that I can to forget.
Nah.
I can't remember all the junk anyway, so I'm already living your worst case scenario. I basically do a paper version of this already. I'd keep my eyes out for a smooth software version. I haven't eval'ed The Feature Software.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
ever noticed that legal pads are such an awkward size, and that the business world runs on 8.5x11 memos? people faxing legal pad notes sludges our printer into using 11x17 paper.
Let's talk software.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
LISTER: (upon seeing a large needle that KRYTEN just removed the air from) Kryten, what's that for?
KRYTEN: It's a mental emetic.
LISTER: A what?
KRYTEN: A mind enema -- so we can flush out your brain.
LISTER: Nobody's flush'n out my brain.
KRYTEN: We'll transfer it back afterwards.
LISTER: You are not sticking that thing in my head.
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
They call it Homeland Security.
He's trying to store a lifetime on his laptop.
considering that he works for microsoft - he's memories are heading for a blue screen of death REAL soon. is that an electronic equivalent of alzheimer's?
You want to take the crap before you come back from the bathroom.
Blank until
I feel like with the advent of Google, Wikipedia, searching my old Gmail messages... it's been easier than ever for me to not remember things. Remember how ancient people used to memorize huge poems and religious texts? Granted, a lot of this relied on mnemonics and repetitive passages, but I can't help but feel modern human memory is poor compared to the way it used to be.
Just sounds like another way to Track and spy on people.. what ever happened to privacy? I wouldn't doubt it if there was a back door to listen in and spy on your "memories"
I mean im sure it would be of a use and could be handy at some points, but technology is full of trade offs.
I'll stick to my system of polaroids and tattoos
Technology reinforcing the illusion of identity.
Pensive like in harry potter!
Notebook and pencil
I would really like it to help me remember words.
Reminds me of the software agents that Manfred Macx uses in the book accelerando. Excellent read, by the way, if you haven't already.
And call it "A cure for marijuana".
I record my sleeptalking
...to turn it on?
I don't understand why some of you seem so negative about this. Yes it has the potential to make the mind "Lazy" but it also has the potential to have you remember so much more than you were able to before. I'm sure that the people who are important to you wil always be in your head but "bob, from accounting, his daughter's pet dog's name" can safely reside on some server somewhere as far as I am concerned.
Why would ever need to remember that kind of information? Well I dunno but it's just an example.
...Tricks me into reading something I could honestly give 2 shits about... thanks. Now back to porn.
Ok, we can now backup our memory.
But how do we restore it ?
... can it also help forget, because I have seen two girls and a cup and things that have been seen can not be unseen (for now).
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I worked on a very similar project but now I can't remember what it's called.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I just got something: It's "Read The Featured Article". I thought It was somthing else... Someone should really write these things out occasionally. My opinion of slashdotters everywhere has risen slightly. Consequently, opinions of me may lower... But I don't care what the world thinks of mw. FTW!
Recording everything that happens to you is easy, that techs been around for ages now. What I'm interested in, and what was only given glancing mention, is how it's actually searched through and retrieved. Most people get annoyed with me if I take two minutes to search through my email for something, and that's just a plain text search. I can't even imagine the problems of trying to search for "That guy...who had a hat...and who said...stuff. What was his name?"
Everything will be taken away from you.
Now if BMI could only come up with a system to remember acronyms... In all seriousness, this seems to be the new paradigm. I admit that a camera phone and evernote have turned me into a compulsive forgetter. I agree with posters above that there is simply more to remember than ever before, but I also agree that we don't use memory as much... it is considered bad education to use rote memorization; we value creativity above skill. Interesting books on the subject -- 'The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci' and 'The Mnemonist'.
The "pensieve" is a stone bowl that the user can put their memories in for viewing later, and was used to reveal some important plot points.
Admit it. You post strawman arguments as AC so you get modded Insightful for refuting them, rather than Troll
Recall is. All of us have vast, insane amounts of memory, but we can't always recall the things that are stored there. And then there are cases when you don't remember something and then it all comes to you in vivid, minute detail.
As long as nobody comes and forcefully installs the electronic devices into my body and connects me against my will to a network, I'm cool with it.
Computing devices and the human brain work in very different ways when it comes to storing and recalling information.
Perhaps we are simply offloading the tasks that are better suited to electronics and freeing up more of our consciousness for things it would be better at.
So, like the subject says,
I RTFA... was like wtf, went to IBM now I'm meh...
The ComputerWorld article does a poor job to
relate the key idea behind the software and the
goal that IBM is trying to attain.
So, as I RTA, I thought... so what... Gordon Bell's
project is way ahead of this concept. Just opening
a word doc on a WinMobile phone and then taking a
picture, is roughly the grasp of the CW article.
So, knowing that IBM couldn't be involved in such
a pittance of an idea, I RTMFA from IBM themselves.
Press release from the 29th,
[ http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24750.wss ]
'TURN DOWN YOUR SPEAKERS! Very rude audio beginning to the vid.'
So, after the video, I'm kinda, meh.
IBM is behind the curve, behind the game and just
behind with anything about life storage. Sad but true
MS and its minions are way ahead. And given my adoption
habits, a MS v IBM showdown in this arena will have me
turning over more of my devalued dollar to the empire
in Redmond.
-AI
_Plugged-in, just enough_
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
IBM copied from Microsoft. Microsoft copied from Streav. http://streav.sourceforge.net/
Just a matter of time before one of them patents the idea and the startup which thought of the idea is doomed.
Kinda of an interesting idea to have our phone, PC, wearable gadgets to constantly monitor and record every moments of our life without us knowing it.
Sounds like the movie The Truman Show.
Duh...that's my dad sex life I'm looking at. :D
Last December the Daily Mail had a story that Microsoft were creating an imaging camera that digitally forces an image onto the mind every 30 seconds.
It was said to be a possible cure for Alzheimer's, but this IBM Pensieve is even cleverer than Microsoft's camera, and if it can artificially force itself onto someone's mind then it and that drug that was on here on Wednesday might be able to stop Alzheimer's altogether.
Don't try to out-weird me, three eyes. I get weirder things than you in my breakfast cereal. - Zaphod Beeblebrox
I cannot help thinking that controlling governments and lawyers would love us all to have something like this.
"according to you pensieve black box you were at the location of the crime at the time of the crime!"
"oh futz!"
After reading TFA carefully, I realized that they didn't said anything. AT ALL. A dumb photo camera or sound recorder performs exactly as their described "genius" invention. It doesn't need to have anything to do with the brain. Harry Potter references, are you for real?? ... it's not 1 April. So my question is: WTF ?
At first, I thought its April fools, but wait
Is it just me?
CWmike writes "Ever try to remember who you bumped into at the store a few days back? Well, you're not alone. And IBM researchers are working on software that just may help you better recollect all the forgotten pieces of your life. This week, the company unveiled Pensieve, software that stores images, sounds, and text on everyday mobile devices, then allows the user extract them later on, to help them recall names, faces, conversations and events. IBM's project is akin to one that Gordon Bell and other scientists at Microsoft Research have been working on for the past nine years."
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Am I missing something here? It seems that the projects are essentially databases for media. GPS information is attached to everything, so your can cross reference by location. Microsoft's project has hardware associated with it, but I cannot believe that this would be popular outside of the lifestreaming set.
They can't call it "Pensieve", software as innovative as this requires an equally innovative name... "Scrapbook" perhaps?
You can remember it only 3 times because you are using the demo version.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
These systems store media, not human memories. This may be an improvement on the traditional album/scrapbook, but media is a far second when compared with real memories of experiences, ideas, and insights.
Well, obviously, otherwhise there wouldn't have been anyone to bump into.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Well, if you don't want to carry a heavy book around with you (shame on you, you should always have a book around), just buy a PDA with a cam function, or use a personal wiki. You even get the latter ones for free and even open source, so why buy or torrent commercial software to do this for you?
A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
Look at your slashdot ID. 157947 can be written as 1 - 57 - 9 - 47. Its all downhill from there.
47 is easy if you are a Star Trek or a Hitman fan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/47_(number)
9+1 are 10. Which is how much you need to add (as you are going downhill, or backwards) to 47 to get the SECOND PAIR of numbers.
Or you can start at 15, the first 2 digits, divide it in half like they are integers and get the 7, add 2 and get 9, add the 2's you used so far to get 4, and either subtract that 2 you added to the 9 earlier to get the final 7 or just remember that 1337 starts with 1 and ends with 7.
Yeah... I know... I've been confusing people with my number mnemonics for years.
I've looked at my fiancee's phone number thousands of times since we started dating 7 years ago, and all I remember is that it has like an 8 in it.
Or, why don't you try spelling it?
Or use some other mnemonic
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Just put a shiny button with a "Don't press this button" sign on it.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I'm remembering all (since I was born) with Facebook!
You post on Slashdot yet expect us to believe you have a fiance? I call BS.
Now all i need is a life.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Or perhaps I read it first on some other tech site a while ago?
however, it's just that: A step. The better solution would be to develop an interface that actually "talks" with the human brain rather than just taking movies of the surrounding environment. Strange Days, anyone?
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Why bother remembering anything, you will just forget it in 5 seconds anyway. - Professor Hubert Farnsworth (Futurama)
....well, if its happening that fast, you absolutely could get locked out of future operations...
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
yes, having what could be an almost unlimited amount of memory space available would be nifty.
But as our reliance on technology grows, so do new ways to game the system.
I "remember" getting a $200 loan from some acquaintence, I better pay them back.
I "remember" that he's a bad person, even though I don't recognize him at all.
I "remember" that Linux doesn't have DRM or Trusted Computing, so it can't be trusted with helping me remember.
I can't wait for the first politician to "remember" having a sexy 3 way with a donkey and a horse.
Evernote is a similar application for several platforms. It too is touted as a "backup for your brain."
Its claim to fame is a nice OCR engine. Say you are at a wine tasting event and want to remember a particular wine. You pull out your cell phone, snap a shot of the label, and email it from your phone to your Evernote account. There, the photo goes through the OCR engine, and all recognizable words are added to the indexing.
Later you can do searches on those words to retrieve the image.
review: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/21/extend-your-brain-with-evernote-private-beta-invites/
When they have a USB port I can install in my head that will allow me to backup my mind, before that just don't bother...
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD2ggMnjgbg&feature=related
You wouldn't wan't your "memory" that you come to depend on confiscated at the border...
all the best,
drew
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free
Am I the only one who thought the parent post was song lyrics?
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
It's a good thing this isn't software to help dyslexics.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
If you lived before writing was invented. Humans have been inventing new ways to keep track of information since the dawn of time. What's so special about this?
Because they're making software into which you manually enter notes, pictures, names, dates...
People do this already. It's called a PDA. This is neither special nor news.
I have a huge reliance on my PDA, which has had a huge effect on handling my organizational issues. So should I go back to being as disorganized as I used to be, instead of being the guy who does the organization? I'm just as dependent on my PDA as Steve Mann was on his Wearcam. If you use a cellphone or an addess book or a paper organizer, well, you have the same problem. This isn't a new problem, it's not a high tech problem, I'm sure Himuralabima of Babylon would have found himself just as lost without his clay tablets and stylus as I would without my PDA and stylus... heck, my PDA is almost exactly the same size and shape as his clay tablets.
In Charlie Stross's Accelerando, in Chapter 3, Manfred Manx loses his wearable and the result is, well, not good for a while. But all ends well...
Refusing to use a tool because you'll become dependent on it is only a problem if you plan on stopping using it. Steve Mann decided he was engaged in an experiment. For some of us, electronic memory aids from PDAs and Google on up are a lifestyle, not an experiment.
The only number I can remember is 42, and it took me seven and a half million years to do that.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson
Ted Nelson published a book "Computer Lib/Dream Machines" back in 1974 where he talks about this very concept if I remember correctly. There is a lot of neat ideas in that book.
Ted also invented Hypertext as a way to store and retrieve information.
On the recording all events around you.
I had proposed this very idea 10 years ago to the head of a large rap music label, this is to record everything around him 24/7 to be able to provide proof to authorities every time he is accused of wrong doing so he could prove where and what he was doing at all times. A perpetual alibi. GPS with Date time, audio and video.
He probably would have spent less time in jail had he listened to me. Or maybe more?
There have been discussions amongst my friend into wearable computers for just this sort of thing, but it hasn't yet materialized. Many concerns for security as well as it just being awkward.
Think Nixon here.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
I've had that for years now.. it's called GMail.. I regularily put anything I want to remember in it and I never delete. If I want to find something I search for it.
GMail is my extended memory.. works like a charm.
Is Arnold in on this?
Actually the business World runs on A4.
only the US and Canada along with a couple of other small countries use 8.5 x 11 (US Letter)
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
So they've been working on recreating farleyfiles for nine years now?
Hasn't this idea been around for decades now?
It reminds me the movie of "Six Days" by Arnold Schwarzenegger where they can record your memories via the optic nerve and implant it into a clone of yourself. Freaky stuff.
I've always considered a "legal pad" as any pad of paper with college-ruled lines (the narrow-spaced lines, guys), that was colored yellow. If it ain't yellow, it ain't a legal pad.