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Software Backs Up Human Memory

Posted by timothy on from the where'd-I-put-my-pda dept.

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."

10 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Pensieve? by deft · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  2. Exactly what we don't need by MeditationSensation · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Exactly what we don't need by Yold · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is a hell of a lot more stuff to know. In ancient Africa there were people who recorded the oral traditions of their culture with songs. That was there job. People still memorize the Quran, front-to-back, in fact it is all that is taught in some schools. A few people had the job of memorizing considerable amounts of information, while others toiled in the fields.

      We are a hell of a lot more educated than any generation before us. It's common for people to spend 16-20 years in school. You'd be middle aged about 300 years ago by the time you were entering the work force.

      I think that any college educated person has the same amount of information in their brain as someone who recored a hundred hours of oral history and song.

  3. Just what we need by kissaki · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Technology reinforcing the illusion of identity.

  4. software agents by VoidEngineer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Reminds me of the software agents that Manfred Macx uses in the book accelerando. Excellent read, by the way, if you haven't already.

  5. Re:More spying? by naglep · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if they will be offering ads and related links we might find interesting aka Google MemoryAds??

  6. Re:BAD IDEA! by ShakaUVM · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's true.

    While some people claim this is evidence that computers are making us stupid (or stupid-er), the way the brain works, if it knows something is being held somewhere else, it doesn't bother to remember it. 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. (Uh, maybe 2 8's? And theres a 6 in there somewhere?). It kind of pissed her off, but I said, "Hey, that's what cell phones are for!" Didn't fly so well though.

    The brain actually can incorporate external objects into its sense of self. In this sense, a PDA, computer, or, (shudder) Wikipedia becomes a form of external memory. And you're precisely right - losing these things (as I did with a PDA once) does make a person feel precisely like an amnesiac.

    It's also why I think that people in olden times had less trouble memorizing stuff like the Illiad than we do. (Another part was that it rhymed, and could be set to music, which also greatly help -- have you ever thought about how many thousands of song lyrics are stuck in your head?)

    Anyhow, I don't think it necessarily makes us stupider, as long as we're able to think and reason on our feet. As long as own brains have cached the most important information, who cares if we have to reference the internet to figure out what year the Dawes Act was signed?

    (I'm most amused by the name, as it's obvious someone at IBM is a Harry Potter fan.)

  7. Re:Well, memory isn't really a problem by Kaeles · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm not so sure about that, in the research I've done in psychology, most of the evidence points to forgetting at LEAST 50% of what you've seen/studied in a day unless you repeat it several times. This is why its so important to write, speak, and look at things when you are studying. It also helps to visualize putting things in "rooms" in your "brain house". That way the memories are organized and made to seem more important. The more important something seems, the more likely you will remember it.

  8. Re:BAD IDEA! by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you want clinical studies on this look up the work done by Prof. Steve Mann at the University of Toronto. He has been a "cyborg" for years now. One of the co inventors of the Wearable computer (Thad Starner was the original inventor, Steve worked with him and went a different direction with it) Steve has several system in place that will pull up info on people, bring up reminders, and gps tag memories.

    Not too long ago he unplugged himself and discovered that he had created a HUGE reliance on the technology, causing a large number of problems.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  9. Re:Order of operations by Spokehedz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wow... I bet that XKCD will have a blag about that soon.