Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: How Would You Feel About Recording Your Entire Life?
skade88 writes "As I get older, I find the little details of my life slip away from my memory after years and decades pass. I find myself wishing I had a way to record at least sound and video of my entire life. It would be nice to be able to go back and see what I was like when I was younger without the fog of memory clouding my view of the past. It would be cool to share with my boy friend and future kids how I was when I was younger by just showing them video from my life. Do y'all know of any good way to do this? I would settle for recording what I see from a first person point of view. There is also concerns that range beyond the technical. If I were to record my entire life, that would mean also recording other people, when they are interacting with me on a daily basis. What sort of privacy laws pertain to this? Even without laws, would others act differently around me because they were being recorded with my life record? How would it make you feel if your friend or family member did this?"
Google's Glass might one day accomplish what you're asking. I saw a kickstarter about facebook glasses that recorded but I'm not going to link to that as I don't think it was very
If I were to record my entire life, that would mean also recording other people, when they are interacting with me on a daily basis. What sort of privacy laws pertain to this?
So personally, I would use this only on my property and public property. And then I would separate the data between data from the property I was on and public property and just be mindful if I was sharing that the people in the public property video did not give their consent to be recorded. I think this means different things in different states so if you would tell us your state/commonwealth you could probably get better information. Personally, people would act weird if they knew they were being recorded and since it was for my own personal records and on public property I wouldn't see how it would come to light that I own it let alone archive it.
If you wanted to be absolutely respectful of other people I would suggest only using it on your property and then bringing a stack of waivers with you for people to sign before you started recording. Good luck!
My work here is dung.
The conspiracy nut in me says this is a not so subtle Google Glass ad.
At some point after you die someone will throw the hard copy in the trash and delete the digital to make room for porn
one long YouTube video!!!
Karma: Bad
If it were a family member? I'd probably break their recording device. Seriously. And if it were a friend, I'd probably be hesitant to hang out with them. The fog of memory is a good thing, usually. It helps you to remember the things you really enjoy about your friends and family, and forget the things that really drive you nuts. Also consider the legal implications for yourself if you have such a recording device. If you ever are suspected of a crime, or investigated, sued, or anything else, they will subpoena the video / audio from this device. It could be very detrimental to your case, and even used out of context against you. There is no reason to record every second of your life. When would you ever listen to your entire life again? Just do what most people do. Record those precious moments that you know you're going to have, and keep a journal about the daily/weekly/monthly things that you think are significant to you at that time.
fuck my life, i want to record my dreams
would others act differently around me because they were being recorded with my life record? How would it make you feel if your friend or family member did this?"
Yep, I know I would. I wouldn't want to be around you, and I'd be extremely formal and business-only when talking to you. If a friend or family member did this I'd be extremely annoyed with them.
Wearing a recording device into homes and/or other buildings, or in work environments would be a huge privacy concern and legal nightmare.
Generally speaking, if you are recording people without their knowledge or permission then it will likely turn out bad at some point.
Personally, if someone in my family started wearing it all the time then it would annoy me and I would look to remove the problem (remove myself from the situation or tell them to leave it at the door).
...it's not a bad thing. It's not detrimental. The skill to forget is of extreme importance. You'll find that many serious psychological disorders stem from not being able to forget.
Consider modern-day home-security companies. "The comfort of knowing that you're safe." You'll find hundreds of companies offering you the ability to have cameras recording your front door, and being able to watch the video from your phone wherever you are.
Let's be very clear. "Feeling safe" doesn't mean that I get to watch my house all day every day. It means that I don't need to watch my house at all. I have no interest in viewing those cameras while I'm away.
As for your boy friend, and your future young goats, no one wanted to see your vacation slides last century. No one will want to watch your daily videos this century. It's that simple.
And, to be clear, no, I don't want you to record me.
A while back I saw an episode of Through The Wormhole that showcased just that. A professor and couple of students were recording snapshots of their lives for the last 3 years. Snapshots, because that's how our memory works and a picture is all we need to remember things and of course you would run into storage issues with 24/7 video recording...
If you saw the NOVA special Rise Of The Drones, you can see that it will likely be that everything on earth will be recorded from cameras in the sky in the future... so whatever legal issues are ironed out with that should apply to your personal version. You'll probably have to wait that long until the tech is convenient for you :)
"The Entire History of You" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Final_Cut_(2004_film)
I understand exactly what you're thinking about here, but I'm a huge fan of not second-guessing the universe too much. I have such wonderful memories of my own youth...all seen through the rose coloured lens that is time, and frankly I suspect my memories are better than the real thing was. Better the only record I can muster is my own rose-tinted view of things. Every once in a while I remember the excessive dumb-assery that accompanied the great memories and shudder. I don't need a record of that.
Thus why I don't like recording anything to begin with. If it's worth remembering, you'll remember. If not, who cares. Nothing we do today will change the fact that in five billion years this planet will be a burnt cinder hurtling through cold space...yeah, that VHS recording of my first child's birth is really something to cherish. Actually, it's pretty freaking gross and pollutes the otherwise overwhelming emotion I can remember from that day. It's like I was there.
On the upside, I leave little evidence for others to use against me later ;). One person's way to remember the good times is another person's ammunition to strike at you with when you're down.
--
~AC
A few years ago, I started keeping a very detailed journal. It wasn't long before I came to the conclusion that a perfect memory, or a near perfect memory is generally a bad idea. You begin to live in the past, you begin using the information in ways it shouldn't be used, as evidence, as weapons, as a way to obsess about events, mistakes, ways you were wronged... It keeps you from forgetting things that should be forgotten and keeps you from forgiving and moving on. Even the good memories can be used to take you to daek places. This is why I no longer keep a journal and I can only imagine a perfectly recorded life would be that much worse. Of course, everyone is different, that's just how I am and I just caution you to be careful what you wish for.
Thierry Guetta done this, it was later made into a film called 'Exit Through The Gift Shop': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Through_the_Gift_Shop about him following Banksy.
..how much less space would a recording of your life take up after deduplication?
I been writting a journal since age 12, and all I been using is pen and paper. Going through the pages is faster than rewinding with a digital device. When you read through memorable moment many years later you will notice the the memories will flood back in, and even the smells of the moment will make it back. You don't even have to read the whole to thing you wrotem just a few snipets and your brain will fill in the blanks. Also written journals are more collectible than digital files, so if your family does not read it after you pass some stranger will.
Well... some of us are. I've got a Twitter account, I blog and regularly visit forums and all of that records some aspect of my life and mood at the time.
Of these, I think Twitter may be in a way a "life stream" if you will, with photos moments of joy, terror, embarrassment and intrigue are captured for us (and the rest of the world) to see. Fleeting memories can be condensed (or expounded to multiple Tweets) to snippets of insight into who we are. That's still pictures and text though, if you're recording video, well YouTube is already there for you and storage is getting cheaper.
Now the tricky bit, as you say, is privacy. You can decide what aspect of your life you want to share, but by that very act, you're sharing bits of other people's lives; those you interract with even in some small way. Privacy as it pertains to a TOS is by and large unenforcable IMO as all one needs is the means to access a private stream and it's out for the world to see. The bigger problem is what other people can do with that stream.
I feel the inhibitions to being recorded as part of someone else's "life stream" will decline as long as we trust the platform we use can't distort that recording. Else we'll need to counter with our own "life stream". Lying will become quite a bit harder and maybe some of us will lose an inner monologue, but overall, we'll still be us.
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
.. someone else will have to be listening to it all. (not you)
Trust me, it won't be as nearly as interesting as you think it would.
...ambivalent.
It would sure help with arguments with my wife
Some people who go to sporting events (especially parents at kids games) or rock concerts seem more intent on recording the moment than they are enjoying or participating in the event itself. It almost seems they are more intent on collecting evidence on what great experience they just had, than actually having said experience.
Just enjoy life, snap a few pictures and save them, write stuff down in a diary (I guess they'd be online these days, or at least digital), remember personal anecdotes and practice retelling them to family and friends. Nobody wants a blow-by-blow account of how you spent the last 25 years. If they did, they're the kind of creepy people you wouldn't want around anyway.
Even in the "old" days we did it with camcorders, cameras and cassette recorders. You get that all in phones, portable games consoles or a laptop now. I would use something like google glass though. You'll look stupid, it's in the cloud and can disappear at any time and google is an advertising company so you'll no doubt be tracked and monetized.
As I get older, I find the little details of my life slip away from my memory 15 minutes after something happens
Fixed that.
Life needs more saving throws.
This kind of technology is considered in UK Channel 4's excellent series Black Mirror in an episode called An Entire History of You. It looks at the ups, the downs, and the irritating social faux pas that will certainly emerge if we have such a technology. Highly recommended.
My daughter is 2 years old and I don't know how many hours of video there are documenting her life. What I find is when I go back to said videos, my actual memory of her as a newborn is replaced by a memory of what's on the video. Sometimes it's just better to remember the experience as it was.
I would like for a way for videos and and photos to be locked up for many years and only be accessible when the distant memory of her as a newborn is all but forgotten.
Two reasons:
First, I like to remember my life the way I remember it - not from some video recording. It just seems cold and impersonal - nothing can capture what I was thinking and feeling at those moments.
Second, oh my God it would be boring. There is so much down time, so much wasted space, so much mundane. Have you ever heard someone singing with headphones on - live? Have you ever compared that to the final, fully produced version? I don't care how good a singer you are (and I know some very, very good singers) - there is no may it will measure up.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For starters, recording every part of your life would be every bit of your life. Sure you could put off the recording device at some moments, but come on, at one point, you will forget to put it off in the toilet and then there is that great memory on tape. Never mind the many other embarasing things you do.
Nor do I think a little bit of fog in your memories is such a bad thing. Time heals all wounds, who of us doesn't have moments in time they rather forget? I don't think I would want to go through a bunch of bad memories to be sure that awesome memory was that awesome. If you played games or watch movies, ever returned to one you played or watched years ago, especially as a child? I have, and only few stood the test of time. Most of them turned out to be rather bad.
In my opinion, if I am getting recorded, I will act very, very differently. Nor would I go on any vacation with you if I know the whole thing is going to be recorded. Get a few pictures or a small clip of some nice bits, but don't record the whole thing. I probably wouldn't share many other moments with you out of fear something stupid happens. That stupid thing happening and later talking about it is fine, but having the whole thing on tape is a step further.
How about legal things other than privacy? Every bit you record is potentially evidence for something wrong you did. Imagine the record of a particular moment is needed for a criminal case one day, if they have the whole thing, they will be able to find many other illegal moments, for everybody does something illegal at one point in time, no doubt. Watching a downloaded movie? Downloading music? Hit a pole with your car? Fleeing from breaking something while on a drunk night? I am sure many people can relate to at least one of these and can think up plenty more moments that could have at least landed them a fine.
Let me end by saying, that once I read that democracy can only happen if not everybody is under constant surveilance, for everybody does something wrong. And if everything is seen, it means there can be selective enforcement of the law. Don't start on it on a small scale, don't give them a chance to start it on a big scale.
Steve Mann has been doing this for a while, and has documented his experiences trying to record (at McDonalds, and other fine institutions).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann
You'll find he's already addressed many of the questions.
My did got a VHS camcorder in the 1980s and spent a significant amount of time and money on tapes to record as much as he could of my and my sisters' significant life events - proms, sports, graduations, weddings, etc. To this day, those VHS tapes sit there decaying, never watched. It seems like everyone is too busy living their current lives and experiencing the present to have time to start delving into even the "important" moments of the past. Photos? Sure. Video? Hasn't happened yet. Maybe I'll be proven wrong some day.
As I get older, I find the little details of my life slip away from my memory after years and decades pass. I find myself wishing I had a way to record at least sound and video of my entire life. It would be nice to be able to go back and see what I was like when I was younger without the fog of memory clouding my view of the past. It would be cool to share with my boy friend and future kids how I was when I was younger
So are you talking about showing your kids this archive when they are older? Or are you talking about kids you've yet to have? I ask because if you are still young enough to have kids and are already forgetting so much you may want to seek professional help. Or are you more concerned with how getting older changes your perspective on things? If so, then you could simply do what people have done for hundreds of years (or longer), start keeping a journal. Or do a frequent video journal or something.
That being said, I'd like to do this too. That way I can replay what I said to my wife to finally prove to her that what she thinks she heard is not what I said. Or so I can know once an for all if I'm nuts and my memory has gotten even worse than I thought.
starring Robing Williams.
skade88 writes "As I get older, ...
isn't it a little late to think about it at 88?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
When I am old and decrepit, I would like to look back fondly through my revisionist memory and think of the good times - whether I had them or not.
As my grandmother once said, "Don't confuse me with facts - I know what the truth is."
I'm surprised that this has not been brought up yet....Robin Williams starred in it:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/
and gave it up.
http://blog.withings.com/en/2011/12/13/mylifebits-%E2%80%93-storing-every-moment-of-your-life/
Most people's lives are incredibly monotonous and boring. This would probably only help them realize the enormous waste they are making of their lives.
where would you keep it?
Documenting your entire life sounds interesting until you realize you could spend the entire REST OF YOUR LIFE reviewing it recursively.
To me, that sounds like a dumb proposition. Or perhaps incredibly egotistical. I might've been interested in a few interesting things my late mother did, but honestly, I prefer her description of it with her interpretation and memory. I wouldn't want to even see what happened, as that would ruin it.
However, some folks have set up webcams in their houses which could get recorded (I know of one that started nearly 10 years ago), and even Google glass is taking beta applications now for everyday life stuff. Just be aware of the privacy considerations.
... I had really bad constipation. Listen to me grunt and groan on the pot!
At least you can explain to your kids exactly why they should be getting enough fiber.
I'd love to do this myself, if it weren't for the social backlash. I wouldn't share the stream, and in fact would never view most of it myself; it would act as a secondary memory, searchable on demand. I don't buy the 'forgetting is good' argument. To actually remember everything may be a problem, but that's not the point here; it's about gaining the ability to choose what to remember and what to forget, and that is incredibly powerful.
St Peter will have all the recording you need...
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The denial of death is what I am referring to when I mention denial.
Most people who ever lived were quickly forgotten.
Most people who are alive today will also be quickly forgotten.
Recording everything won't change that.
Best to live NOW while you can and enjoy your life. It is the only life you will ever get.
Oh ,and Ray Kurzweil ? You're gonna die too, dipshit.
A device has been created for this. You are looking for the http://memoto.com/
This is what diaries are for. Primitive I know but it's amazing how those little narratives jog the memory.
It would take a life time to watch again. It would take 2 lifetimes to find the interesting stuff you do remember and want to see again. It would take 4 lifetimes to review and edit out the 99% crap that you just will never care about (in your life time).
I just don't think anyone has the time for this.
One of the best things about growing up is being able to forget (or deny) what an idiot you were when you were younger. Surely, our mistakes make us what we are today, yet people persist in judging others by the mistakes which were made and not what someone may have become after having committed them. We too often presume a person *is* the mistakes of their past and that a person can never be more than he is today. What a pathetic way of seeing things... but then again, most people see things through their own eyes... the eyes of a person who lacks the ability to change, improve or to learn.
When I travel, I almost never take pictures. This is probably an over-correction on my part, but I cannot get over the way so many spend so much time taking pictures that they never pay attention to where they are, to what they're doing. If too much effort is given to it, the need to record everything can overcome the very experiences one wishes to record. The best things cannot be captured in stills or in video, but even if one is there it may be missed if one neglects the world for the sake of a 1.5" LCD on the back of a camera.
For the one who wishes to record everything, I would wonder if he has fully considered why. I would be concerned that it derives from an unaddressed discomfort with mortality and this inhibits present unhappiness. The one who records everything is anxious about the future, lest he should then forget or be forgotten in it. When he reviews the past, he forgets the very moment he lives in. Either way, the present, the only thing we can really do anything about and the only moment in which we can find happiness, is neglected.
I can imagine a handsome young man who marries a beautiful girl. He is captivated by her and they take many pictures together. But as he gets older, their youthful beauty fades. The man looks continually at the pictures with a sense of loss, not having learned to love what he has in the moment he's in. The girl he married is in those pictures and has passed away long before either of them die.
We can never find happiness in this life unless we have peace. We can never find peace until we accept our mortality. And once we realize that we will die, and that no amount of recording will change that, then we may understand the importance of the moment we're in. When we've paid attention to the life we're in, however, we have some hope of being ready for death, for we may then know we've lived life for what it was worth.
Marry someone, and spend the rest of your lives helping each other remember who you are and what you've done.
Fifty years from now, you'll be able to look back at everything you've done together --- and realize what a terrible idea that was in the first place, but at least now you have someone to commiserate with.
You could buy that Looxcie and record everything. But, as others have said, don't live in the past. Besides, the vast majority of a person's life is meaningless drivel. That's why I don't get the appeal of those Go Pro cameras, either. Just enjoy the experience!
Your wish could turn into a nightmare
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od#3327868
I know it sounds pretty harsh but I would find it uncomfortable to be around someone recording at all times. Over time I would find more and more reasons just not to come by and eventually would not see you at all anymore.
I don't really like the idea of being watched all the time and I don't like sharing personal information that I don't have to share. I don't do facebook, twitter, or any other social networks and being around someone that was recording constantly would just be way too invasive.
If my family did this I would probably only talk to them over the phone or email.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
A shameless plug, but check out my android app: Tiny Travel Tracker http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rareventure.gps2_trial&hl=en
You can store your GPS path for your entire life in an encrypted database on your phone. I found it really useful for remembering things I'd otherwise have forgotten. "Oh yea, I went to *that* bar, now I remember"
If you're not already recording your life events on Facebook, I'm sure your friends are having a pretty good go at doing it for you!
The problem is that the law treats recording devices differently from your brain. Anything artificially recorded on a personal device is not sacrosanct and is subject to seizure. Who knows what will happen to privacy once machines can actually read everything in your head. And then you have "augments" that will incorporate incorporate electronic and biological enhancements to their brain. If you have a flash chip in your head the data will likely be seizable.
Taking all that even further it may become practical to rewrite memories in a brain or even bypass them to rely only on artificial memory mechanisms. Governments will then be able to outlaw thinking. Imaging being forced to sit in a chair to have your memories reviewed and if they don't like them changed. A country like Iran or North Korea would love that.
and they are essential to your ability to find meaning in your otherwise arbitrary existence.
Unless you are going to fit the camera with a rose coloured filter?
Seriously, how boring would that be?
One of the neat things about memories is that we tend to forget the moment to moment mundanities while retaining the extraordinary bits. Yeah, so we might have to reconstruct a bit and things may not come back the same, but that's what photographs and letters and the occasional home movie is for... However, look how bloody boring all those hour upon hour of sitting at work answering customer cases or pounding out code would be.
hell, most people I know don't ever watch their wedding video after they see it once - they might look back at some of the wedding photos for years, but nobody watches the video more than once or twice.
I'm just thinking how boring it would be watching a replay of watching myself watch a previous life event.... Seriously, we're not all that "most interesting man in the world", and the sooner we realize that the sooner we can stop bothering our friends and family with endless home videos and LifeBitz or whatever.
Feh.
... as you continue to grow older you will eventually reach a point at which your distant past will once again become crystal clear -- like it was just yesterday!
What I would like is a "photographic memory" (with all the other senses too!) and a magic device that upon my death, would record all of my memories and have those memories stores, un-viewed, until everyone alive when I die and their children and grandchildren had been dead for several hundred years.
Imagine the fun historians could have a millennium from now if they had access to 7 billion people's perfectly-recorded memories.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A memory which forgets is a blessing. As we get older we tend to look back on our past selves and realize just has stupid and embarrassing we were. Forgetting details of your past is a good thing, don't try to replace that natural process with technology. Take pictures of a few special moments, snap a few vacation shots, photograph your wedding or your children. Those are nice milestones, but don't record the tiny details, they aren't important and this process will only distract you from living your life.
Plus, chances are none of your family or friends will want to be around you if you're recording all the time. It's seriously annoying and a privacy violation.
This is anecdotal, but I usually associate memories with songs... So every year, I try to find a good song I like, and just attach memories with it, and put that song away in an album and not listen to it for a couple of years. Just play that album again later and the memories come flooding back. I find it to be quite nice.
I have a friend who's kept a journal for longer than I've been alive (well, maybe not quite that long but still a long time) and it can be very interesting hearing his take on events from the before time, uncolored by 20+ years of failing neurons.
A 24/7 video record is pretty pointless. The purpose of recording the events of your life is to record the interesting events of your life, not sitting on the pot for 20 minutes trying to squeeze out a grunter.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -- Cardinal RIchelieu
So how long would it take going through those recordings to find something...
But don't worry, our technological society is evolving to that point asymptotically -- you probably already carry a tracking device in your pocket that also can be used to make phone calls; if you drive a recently manufactured car it has a rat box in it that your insurance company can use to try to avoid any liability, and there are proposals for future model years to make that rat box collect even more information. Sound and pictures will get there eventually.
Why would I want to document my alleged "crimes" for the corporate police state?
You crazy?
Counterargument: what if you recorded the worst-case scenario? Accidentally viewing that video of your child being hit by a car could be devastating. And I can see too many people obsessing over re-watching those 'happy memories' (now gone sour) of ex-girl-or-boy-friends. This latter point - and many other interesting ones regarding this idea taken to an extreme - were covered in the quite decent mid-90's quasi-cyberpunk film 'Strange Days'.
For those who haven't seen the film (no real spoilers here, I'm describing something that happens in the first 15 minutes): the film describes a future in which a banned underground technology allows the direct recording of one's memories. The main character (the perennial 'loser' type) is a guy who illegally sells recorded memories on the black market. He can never emotionally get over the fact that his bitchy ex-girlfriend dumped him because he constantly sits alone in his apartment replaying memories of the good times, when he and she went rollerskating, or were bumpin' uglies.
Part of moving on to the next event in your life involves not necessarily forgetting the past, but sort of 'shelving it' and not replaying it over and over. Wounds will always be fresh in your mind if you have an instant replay button.
Wow! I have few enough seconds waiting for me in the future without wasting them reviewing my past. Frankly, I'm going to enjoy the moments I have waiting for me, not the dusty days gone by.
Focus on the now. Forget the past - it's gone and there's nothing you can do to actually relive it; don't worry about the future - it will be here in a minute, anyway.
That is all.
..you wake up, you put on Google glass, you turn on record. You record 16 hours of FHD video, then you go to bed and when you take it off you find your day's highlights, or maybe you indicated them when they happened. "Cortana, bookmark this moment". Then those moments are saved and the rest of those 16 hours are erased, and you go to bed. Then after a few years, you have a few weeks of solid video that's just everything that happened that you didn't see coming but never want to forget. I'm down. As long as that info is stored on MY hard drives and not up in someone else's cloud.
Funny this should come up. I'm in the process right now of going through the gigabytes of stuff I've saved over the years and deleting most of it, keeping only the best stuff.
I used to save everything because it was so easy to do. What if I need it some day? What if I just want to browse the past one day? Hard drive capacities expand all the time, so why not save everything, even the things you think you shouldn't? Visual clutter wouldn't be a problem because you can always tuck stuff away in yet another hierarchy of directories if you want to keep it out of sight.
What I found is that although you can keep the clutter out of sight, it still carries a psychic weight to know that you remain a caretaker of your past. Photos and articles I saved, thoughts I had, notes I wrote to myself, and old software just were always a few clicks away. My computer shopping list from 2005. Years worth of odometer readings from my road bike. Every single email I ever received or sent.
I finally decided that my life is not a museum. If I was offered the bargain of trading all of my irreplaceable photos and records of the past for a future that was just as happy or happier, shouldn't I do so? Shouldn't my focus be on creating and having peace, joy, and love right now? I'm not suggesting to throw out all those family photos of deceased relatives and totally burn the past... just exercise moderation and recognize that there are good photos and bad photos, good data and mediocre data. If you're going to preserve anything, be highly selective and enhance your collection by not surrounding it with junk.
Today, I only keep things of consequence, like major projects. I don't record or track the little things. I don't save receipts, except to the extent required by the IRS. I don't log skydives, so I have no easy way to compare myself with other jumpers. I sold my bike computer and now if I want to know how fast I'm going I either have to guess or not wonder at all, like I did when I was 9. I am much happier knowing that I have no way of even accessing all that data, because ultimately it's all just a bunch of useless numbers. Yes, my receipts and skydive statistics and bike trip numbers and endless junky photos tell part of the story of my life. But not the essential part. The essential part is the part I'm living right now.
I have wanted to do this for a while now. But, practically, I don't see any way to do it yet. Batteries don't last long enough, and storage is still too expensive. Does anyone know of any way I could actually do this, barring cost, right now?
As if it was so simple, record everything and nothing will be forgotten. Even assuming that recording everything is technically possible and legally or morally acceptable, how are you going to find the moments you cherish? Was it two months ago or five, that you had this wonderful sex ending in some earth-shattering climax? Or was that last year? Was little Timmy 3 or 5 when he was so cute losing the fight against a roll of toilet paper, and was that in that motel in Lake Tahoe or in Chattanooga? Anyone having a huge collection of pictures will attest, that finding one specific one you can dimly recollect is a huge task.
And then, even if you manage to find that even, times over times it has been proven, that people photographing or videotaping some event are later disappointed how bland the recording was and not matching the remembered reality. The brain is constantly editing and enhancing impression to create memories, but who's going to do that with your life recording? Taking good still-photographs that are emotionally gripping is already hard enough and needs training and experience - flickr is a testimony on what doesn't work for most part - video is even worse, not even counting cutting and post production. A life-recording that isn't edited will be of horribly low quality and have nearly no value watching.
If you want to show your future loved ones how you were in college, don't clobber them with 1200 days of 24 hour recording. Make the effort and get a few representative images or short videos which communicate the essence of this time.
As to how I feel if someone recorded his whole day including the time we spend in bed together? I couldn't care less.
You need to make sure you have nothing on record that the statute of limitations hasn't run out on.
Yes, there are times in my life that I know are probably forever lost to me on account of the "fog of memory" (awesome term for it, by the way), and I have to admit that at times I really do wish I could remember some of those points in my youth far more vividly, but I'd be hesitant to hand responsibility of remembering my daily experiences to a computer, because that would mean I, myself, would not have as much need *TO* remember. And, as the saying goes, if you don't use it, you lose it; I am fairly certain that a user of such technology would find all too soon find that they wouldn't even be *able* to remember almost anything without, other than things which would ordinarily stand out in one's memory anyways.
I can't help but think of the ending of Stream of Consciousness.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The primary plot of Robert J Sawyer's Neanderthal Parallax is about a quantum rift that allows travel between our world and one where the Neanderthals ended up out-competing Homo Sapiens. However it postulates the Neanderthals developing a very different society from ours, including exactly the kind of "record your entire life" technology you're talking about.
The books make it sound like a great thing... if your entire society and legal system is set up to deal with it. Trying to get there from our current society however would involve a lot of pain and difficulty, both because of the personal expectations of privacy and our current nosy legal system.
(Note that the above wikipedia link is quite detailed. If you've got the time and interest it would be better to skip that and read the books.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I personally can't stand listening to recordings of myself, I sound like a complete idiot!
spy's / secret areas and what say some edits / hacks a video to make you look guilty of crime then what?
wait I think part 2 was part of a movie or a tv show.
I do, it's called a revision control system.
where would you find the time to do anything but recurse? you'd spend your time looking at a record of your life looking at a record of your life...
nb: captcha: distress. heh.
Let's do some math here: assuming you were only recording when you were awake (~16h a day), and assuming you live at least a couple more decades, you're looking at hundreds of thousands of hours of video, easily.
When the fuck are you going to watch all that?
Even assuming you only used it for reference purposes, if your memory is already going, how are you supposed to remember when stuff you want to remember happened? At this point you're looking at some kind of massive video analytics system capable of searching through dozens of terabytes of data, and returning useful results for "that time at that weird restaurant when bob laughed and milk went up his nose". Good luck with that.
"Yes! That's right! Everything you know is wrong!"
Ha! I knew it!
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The question has to be, when does the value of your life (time) exceed the value of the time spent re-watching your life. If you spend 5 minutes watching 5 minutes of your life that you have already lived, then you have spent 10 minutes living 5 minutes of your life. This would seem like a bit of a waste of 5 minutes. Life is precious and there isn't much of it so don't waste it watching or doing things you have already done. There is no point in this at all.
I need an AI to watch the video for me, erase the boring stuff and duplicate things, and flag and tag everything else based on date & time & categories and people involved, transcribe all conversations, do OCR on everything in front of me, plus make a nice searchable index.
Otherwise I'll never be able to find anything interesting out of the giant heap of boring in my life if I'm ever so lucky as to have something worth reliving actually happen to me.
Rather than record it you should amplify and beam the data into space, very powerfully. The beam will leave our planet (Earth) at the speed of light, so we can never catch up to it and recover the beam of memories. So the memory beam is safe from human eyes. Yet it persists, and is not gone; for the space people, your story is on it's way. They won't record it either, they know better.
The Final Cut
the idea has been explored in depth
The Admin and the Engineer
Great, great, great movie. Coined the term "2K", referring to Y2K, long before "Y2K" was coined.
http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4093072/Strange_Days_(1995)_(Ralph_Fiennes__Juliette_Lewis)
http://filebin.ca/YJC0FRXeOdR/strangedays1995.nzb
"You got lights, you've got cameras - bitchin' technology!"
It’s called writing a journal.
Watching back your life will literally take a lifetime worth of time to do. Not to mention how long it would take to edit it into something comprehensible.
Here's a suggestion: Live your life and look forward instead of focusing on how you can dwell harder. Spend more time doing things you love instead of remembering the things you used to love.
I believe that a well curated record of a personal past could stifle social development. People tend to believe that their present self developed rationally from their past views and experiences. We recite memories that fit well into a narrative that supports our idea of ourselves as it stands today. Those memories are false. They are constructed as they are "recalled" out of a loose framework that is filled in by present information. If we are constantly reminded of our actual past beliefs, we may be influenced by a misguided sense of integrity to honor those younger beliefs and stay rigid in the face of new experience. To combat this, since I believe the documentation of or lives is inevitable, I suggest society begin actively promoting change over integrity in personal relationships.
Posting as AC because /. doesn't work with this phone.
Please forgive phone typos.
I recorded from cameraglasses from 99 to 2002, in NY and Tokyo.
Recording is important, and the only way to truly show your children how you built your life, how you really react, and how other people behave.
With this in mind I recorded life beginning in 99, including the cultural changes occuring in 2001 in NY after the events of that day in september. I went through airport security coming back to the US from Japan wearing my life recorder.
In Tokyo there was no problem. In NY I could not wear it for longer than a few hour before finding a very bad situation. People in the USA do not accept a person doing life recording, and in any public situation the recorder, unless they are dominant, will always be in danger from the mob.
Many people have done this recording in the US and experienced a backlash, clash for authority over images. Its an important topic for civilization, and for families. Its something that will affect our cultural evolution.
If recording is done from a position of strength there are fewer problems, police recordings don't have such issues. The public record is not something that people wish to give up control over. Recording interferes with the ability to change viewpoints, and so can only be done by authority.
By recording, you take on authority and create the public record. If you interfere with another source of authority there will be competition.
jesse.org/sign2013022611
'nuff said.
Go watch Strange Days (1995)
I'm not so interested in recording all of my life, but I'd love to have at least a 30 minute buffer of recording going at all times. Then when something cool happens, I can tap my Google Googles, or whatever the tool turns out to be, and have that bit saved.
I couldn't think of anything worse! There are many good reasons why large parts of my life are forgotten. It's not easy forgetting all that stuff that I'd rather not remember.
Having it all recorded in other people's memories is the ultimate nightmare.
Apart from immediate family I don't think I'm in touch with anyone I knew 20 years ago. And that's the way I like it.
It's not easy being a fool.
The past is dead.
The future is unknowable.
As for the present... I forgot to bring one.
Imagine yourself, watching a recording of your past self, who's watching a recording of your past self, who's...
Try Black Mirror S01E03 ;)
"As I get older, I find the little details of my life slip away from my memory after years and decades pass."
You're a 25 year old gay man, for god's sake. If you have problems now, you won't need them videos later because you won't be able to find them.
Also, you're already all over the internet with your personal crap, nobody needs more, especially not us.
.....douchebag.
If you want something to represent your life, then create something. What you're talking about is just mental masturbation.
Get over yourself. Your life is just not that interesting. The only person who would think so is you, and I bet even you would find rewatching long tracts of it would make you realise how boring you really are. We all are.
And what about the filming of the parts where you are rewatching stuff you filmed earlier? It's all just going to disappear up its own butthole.
"It would be cool to share with my boy friend and future kids how I was when I was younger by just showing them video from my life."
Spare us. Nobody gives a shit about your life, much less your past one.
You'll never have kids.
You're already everywhere, from Reddit to Tripadvisor, from Facebook to Twitter and all those between.
We don't want to see nor hear you.
Just go away and die.
But everyone could only watch after you were gone.
Ask RMS. He'll know how..
You can get a blog, and put your daily things, for example, the happiness, the potos you have taken and so on!
There's a famous quote by someone-- "If most of us had to sit through a movie of our lives, our main emotions would be boredom and embarassment". That's the first thing I think of whenever this topic is brought up.
The second thing I think of is-- how did I spend my time yesterday, and how would that look on a video? Boredom and embarassment, yes, that seems pretty accurate. (Especially since I'm getting over a cold, and spent most of yesterday blowing my nose and watching Season Five of The Shield).
Which raises an interesting question. How would I have spent yesterday if I knew I was filming it? Would I have goofed off less, and spent more time doing things that are exciting, productive and/or admirable? I don't know. It's hard to believe that knowledge of being filmed wouldn't have had *some* effect on my behavior.
help us not be so shitty to each other.
Don't worry - the government and corporations will begin this process soon enough, if they haven't already.
...I think this one is the best (as opposed to the ones that are a photo for every day of one's life): http://vimeo.com/40448182
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
Why don't you try it for a week with a video camera? Then wait a wait a year. Then see how much of that week you want to sit and watch again.
Most people's lives are the same ordinary as most other people's lives. An hour a week maybe. What is it about your life that would make me want to give up a lot of mine to watch lo-fi re-enactments of yours?
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Having myself lived mostly, but not entirely, in the Internet Age where the answer to any given quandary is only as far away as you are motivated to find a library/computer/dig your cell out of your pocket, I can say the value of retaining arbitrary information has dropped further than perhaps it should; for all information is merely arbitrary until it becomes useful or necessary, and then the ability to recall it quickly is indispensable. The drive to achieve this quick reaction time through technological means has been self-defeating to a degree, as we merely adapt to become more reliant on technology to get us where we want to be. Where would we be without search engines, if we had to go back to actually remembering URLs?
If you record your memories, you will likely find yourself referencing them less, as you become comfortable forgetting, confident that the memories are there when you really want them. If you know that this moment will be gone forever except in your memory, then you will make damn sure to remember it. You'll truly experience the moment, rather than just record it.
On New Years Day 2010 I set my self the target of publishing one snapshot a day on my personal website, as a means of recording what I was doing that day.
I've been keeping it up, publishing about 20 snapshots a month (it's more difficult than it seems, especially when you're in a work/sleep rut ;) ). And I enjoy looking back at them and remembering what they relate to.
It's not about the detail on the photograph (there are usually no people in it) or the quanitity (there's never more than one for a day) but each one acts as an 'anchor' to events in the past. Even simple things, like the staircase of the building where I work, my old car, flowers in spring, a birthday cake, can bring back a pallette of feelings and memories.
Stachel
otherwise it would take longer to review it that it took to live it.
My Dad sends an email to his kids every Sunday morning with what he's done that week. He looks at the calendar, uses the appointments written down there to jog his memory, and then punches out about a pages worth and sends it to us. This is possibly the best way to go about remembering your life. If you don't have the resolve to accomplish this about 48 weeks of the year I doubt you'd be able to accomplish your goals.
I really don't want to record some of my poops.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
You want to record your ENTIRE life? When will you have time to watch it?
....
Buddhism teaches us that life is suffering, and that it is imperfect, limited and temporary.
The ephemeral nature of life and memories can bring you both insight and joy.
no recording, end of story
The downsides of been publicly humiliated is far greater than any positves
Jenna Marbles pooping
Seriously, it'd be the most boring thing ever. over 95% of what you do wouldn't be interesting to anyone at all, including you. The other 5% will probably only be interesting to people that don't have any good intentions with those recordings, or at least the intentions you are hoping for. The small bit that you are interested in yourself, will probably differ from your memories and the cameras never catch the good bits from the right angle.
It'll be just like Jenna Marbles pooping. Nobody would be interested in that, including herself, apart from a few fetishists and people that want to check she's not pooping in places where it's illegal.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
During xmas holidays in 2009 I wrote a small Linux script that would take a webcam picture once every 5 minutes. Then I set up a webcam in my living room, and I mostly have the whole year 2010 recorded from my living room. I spend too much time watching TV :-(
Sometime early 2010 I also wrote a ffmpeg script, that is run with cron every midnight, and it compiles all the daily pics into a time lapse video. They are the only way I can view the material - there is loads of it. Running "ls" on the directory with the pictures takes about 5mins, so I strongly recommend you put each day in a separate folder.
Who will watch this stuff? I don't know, I just do weird projects for fun.
Zippy?
The very act of recording, changes the perception and present. So you're not really recording what you would've experienced if you were NOT recording.
You're really recording what you're recording, and that is really really sad, and far from the reality you're hoping to catch.
Just repeat after me: There is no true objectivity. Never was, never will be.
And: The more you hold onto life, the less you truly enjoy it. Just let go!
Wow, so I can't believe how un-helpful most of the posts in response to this have been, Mostly of the "forgetting is good" variety. I'll get to that later, but first, on the technical front.
;) If nothing else it can be used to "fill in gaps" in my mind if it's damaged in Cryo-storage. Yes.. I'm a transhumanist. :P
I myself have been trying to do this for the last decade or so. Some devices you might like to look into.
http://www.looxcie.com/
Pretty light head mounted camera. Can record about 8hrs of footage at lowest Res. I had to hardware hack it and attach a bigger battery as it runs out before it runs out of recording. Every night I slurped off the recording to my Mirrored raid "lifelog" drive at home. Look into some good VJ software. Almost any good VJ software has the ability to tag and index parts of a video. If something noteworthy happened in the day I'd take 10 min in the evening to jump to it and tag it in the SW. (hence for future search of little Timmy being cute)
Basically if you want to go 24/7 (actually just when you're awake) you'll need to build your own rig. I recommend a pinhole camera from a spy shop online. They make cameras that look like buttons you can integrate into your shirt. A Raberry Pi and a huuuge SD card will get you a days recording. In the evening pop the SD into the PC and have an auto-sync pull the data to your big redundant life array.
The only thing that's kept me from keeping this up is storage. Even LQ video and mono audio and you're looking at gigs a week. It adds up really fast to about a HD a week. Not sustainable. As soon as Drives get bigger I would be doing this for sure.
Why? So if I die the future super beings can pretty faithfully recreate me from the records. My future simulated me will be way better resolution than the rest of you jokers.
A lot of who or how you are at a particular point in time is in your mind. An audio/video can just capture what's on the surface and not all the real emotions and thoughts deep inside the mind, the core.
I'd like to record my life at 33 and play it back at 45, so everyone would sound like a chipmunk. Simon! Theodore! Alvin!!
Surely you'd be done for manslaughter.... by boring everyone to death!
This small camera takes two photos every minute and also stores your GPS position along with the photos. http://memoto.com/ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/martinkallstrom/memoto-lifelogging-camera
Even without laws, would others act differently around me because they were being recorded with my life record?
If reality TV has demonstrated anything, it is that being recorded 24/7 and peered at by millions of people makes you less adventurous, more respectful and more caring of others.
My biggest worry in life is that I don't manage to live enough. When we die, we just cease to exists, I think, so it is important to live while you are here. It may be nice for you descendants to have some memory, but IMO the best gift one can give one's children is a good set of skills for life - not just a formal education, but how to handle all the other things life throws at you.
Personally, I'm not much in favour of leaving a cold headstone behind - I'd hate to think of the waste of money on something like that. It would be a nice thought if my ashes were buried under a nice tree somewhere in a place not too near a city development, so it could grow on and be beautiful or useful for a long time.
...well not new exactly...but imagine all those moments (pick your own fetish) edited together, over and over and over.
Sorry to break it to you but nobody other than yourself, and *possibly* some future historians, are likely to be interested.
But if you want to do it don't even think about it. Just buy a half decent video camera and go right ahead. I say this as somebody who creates lots of audio and video works but I don't expect them to have any longevity. Assuming you do get stuck in then your problems have now become:
1 Storage.
2 Backups.
3 Backups of backups.
But make sure you undertake any work with the expectation that any media you create will likely expire when you do. it will still be just as fulfilling but you won;t be dissapointed when nobody cares :)
Quite honestly, and this question can be asked about bloggers, facebook users, twitter feeds and quite a few people that published memoirs over time, I wonder what makes someone think their life is so earth-shatteringly interesting that they need to record it all for posterity.
The average life contains a lot of very, very dreary and dull moments. In between the interesting bits, insofar as there are any, most of us lead a life that is decidedly mundane and uninteresting, present writer included. The notion of recording it all not only suggests narcissism to the point of being megalomaniacal, but is also in jolly bad taste.
Have we, as a species. evolved to the point where we are prone to such self-important wind-baggery that we need to subject our environment to every brainfart that crosses our mind? Quite frankly, the last thing I want to subject my son to is the image of me as a kid or teenager. I'd settle for raising him to be wise and kind, and the rest is irrelevant gravy.
The fact is that when I die, I cease to be. And people will remember me for a variety of reasons, be they good or bad. A recorded lifetime takes a lifetime to watch, which seems to me a gigantic waste of one's life.
Greetings and Salutations
I would suggest one of two options.
1) Carry a small, digital recorder with you, and, every so often record a few comments about what has been going on.
2) As a meditation and contemplation technique, take some time at the end of the day to type some notes into a document about the day and its events. Keeping a day book like that can allow a person to filter out the useless stuff and only keep the good stuff. after all, who really wants to see hours of walking down the sidewalk, or, sitting at a desk, shuffling papers.
YAB - http://blog.beemandave.com/
"How would it make you feel if your friend or family member did this?"
:) anyway, I wouldn't like it. I'm not living in someone else's reality show. If someone does this, I want them to have a clear indication that they're doing it, e.g. I don't want unnoticeable Google Glasses, quite the opposite, I want them to be clearly noticeable. While you might allow some or most of your activities to be recorded, it's important that you know about it, always. Especially when the recorder is not someone you know, and/or the service that is used to record and store the footage has privacy policies that can change by the weather.
Easy, I'd kick them out of my sight, or, kick myself out from their sight
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/12/10/1510221/sensecam-aids-patients-with-memory-problems
took me too long to track down though
it's been done.... mostly for the alzheimer & similar afflicted...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I'd be very interested to know the breakdown of opinions to different age groups. In my younger years I was very much of the opinion this would be a waste of time, bandwidth and generally intrusive. Now i'm in my early forties I'd like to look back at a lifelog of my younger self. Some of this is obviously Nostalgia for people and places, some of this is the unreliable memory factor convincing me things where better. It would be interesting to compare the differences. I'd suspect it would actually be fairly useful to reduce false nostalgia as you approached old age and having accurate access to the past would help you deal with and focus on the present.
Go to a concert. Stand in the back and try to see the stage. Hard isn't it? That because too many people won't live in the moment, and would rather record it for watching it later. So a concert today is mostly thousand of hands in the air, recording everything, and at the same time blocking everyones view of the stage.
I would guess it also would make a bigger gap between extroverts and introverts. As a natural introvert, I do not act natural in front of a camera. I would feel pressured and uncomfortable.
Besides, how would I as a potential passerby in your life request you delete footage of me? You might want to record everything, while I and many with me do not want to be recorded.
Supposing we take the life recording tools (google glass) and make a complete log. Then we train an unsupervised neural net (deep learning) to reproduce my own reactions given stimulus. That would make an interactive avatar of myself, or, if it is good enough, an uploaded version of my mind.
... the better it was.
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
TASER International has had this sort-of covered for some time now (http://www.taser.com/products/on-officer-video/axon-flex-on-officer-video) but nothing like Google Glass. There's probably something to be said for combining the best of both worlds though.
I was talking about it with my dad - say a cop is on duty and his teenage son calls him, frantic and in tears over a breakup with his girlfriend - should Axon (or Glass) record that? What about the officer using a toilet? Dad's suggestion was that EVERYTHING get recorded, and the department detail an officer (or one officer per squad, or whatever) to review each tape as it comes in and mark certain sections "private" so that they're not erased or anything - they're still available for review on subpoena - but they're automatically skipped during "casual" (or perhaps "informal") review.
I've never been a cop, but I have been a security guard, and I'm inclined to agree. Someone once said "public officers are public property". Of course the city or whatever doesn't own you, but you're wearing the city's badge, you're enforcing the city's law, you're taking the city's wages - when you're on the clock, you've got no call saying "but this is private" unless its disclosure would somehow seriously endanger "national security" or somesuch fiddlefaddle which, let's face it, does not happen as often as Hollywood would have us believe.
And if your camera is chest- or shoulder-mounted, or something Glass-esque, then you don't really need to worry about your genitals or breasts appearing on-camera.
I once had a colleague that walked around with this A4-sized (close to Letter size for you USians) hardbound notebook. He took notes of telephone conversations, in-person conversations, meetings, and other significant events. At the time he had just completed some civil court case, where there was some disagreement about certain events a couple of years in the past. He proceeded to pull out the relevant journal, and could provide a much more detailed version of the events (in his favour, of course) including dates, times and actual discussions.
At the time I thought it is cool, but one certainly has to decide how much or how little one needs to record. In my own experience (e.g. meeting minutes) one often disregards little side points that at the time seem unimportant, but become crucial at a later date. On the other hand, recording EVERYTHING might not be practical (depending on technology), as one could spend your whole life just "recording".
The extreme example would be: recording that you where recording that you where recording....
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
People forget what it was like prior to the internet when you went to your neighbors for dinner and they brought out the slide projector or 8mm projector to show vacation pictures or their child's play or recitle, etc. We all sat through those dreadful slide shows and movies, being polite, but face it, nobody really cares about your life, at least not as much as you think they do. They may care about you, but not every detail of what you do. Your grandparents understood this. They had a picture or two of key events to hold the memory. Memories are important, not documentaries.
Forget recording. Writing a diary is a good way to enhance your skills at language manipulation, introspection, and self-reflection. Recording brings you nothing of all these.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Someone is writing it all down somewhere, and it's mostly the stuff you'd rather forget.
... for many reason. Let them fade.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
You should spend whatever time you have left looking forwards not backwards.
Memoto is the only product I know of that is actually targeted at consumers for life logging, but it's rather low tech as it's only pictures from what I understand. Taser Axon Flex is another product and can do full video, but it's geared for police use, not consumer use. Once released, Google Glass might of course be the obvious solution, but so far Google hasn't really said anything if it actually supports life logging, as all the demo videos so far had the user trigger the record, it's also not known if the battery life will be enough for life logging.
Don't really know if there is anything on the software side with good support for life logging. Making the pictures is the easy part, finding the picture you are searching for in hundreds of thousands of images is not so easy. So something with face/voice/text recognition for automatic tagging would be interesting. Memoto seems to come with some apps, but no idea how good they are.
I wholly agree with your aspiration - something that I am quite keen on myself.
With this years trend of wearable technology and the near-term release of stick-on body sensors, we are really close to having the sort of hardware technology that enables this. I believe that although recent hardware releases makes great headlines, we are still getting there when it comes to the software; the widespread ability for companies to really address the Big Data problem associated with this level of data collection.
Memoto is one such example of this technology (my only affiliation is that I am a fan who backed them on Kickstarter). Interestingly, and something that will be common to all of these tools, is their ability to turn a blind eye and forget. Turning a blind eye would be the technologies real-time decision that there is no current or future advantage to capture data at that point in time. Forgetting is discarding information after capture, whether it is immediately afterwards, during an archiving process or in the presentation layer when deciding what is useful or not to deliver to the end user.
How would it make you feel if your friend or family member did this?
It would make me feel as if my friend or family member were bat-shit crazy.
Proverbs 21:19
I like the idea of going to work every day in my suit and tie and every time a cop stops me for Driving While Black, Walking While Black, or Being Black in a Public Place, I can record every interaction and share my everyday experiences with the world.
The best part would be near the end, where you watch a video of yourself watching previous moments of your life; before long the camera would catch up to the present again and you'd watch a video of yourself watching a video of yourself, etc.
you might keep reliving the bad experience over and over in a series of flashbacks. Until you remember your psychotic ex has your remote.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
We failed to evolve perfect memories for a reason. If your brain was somehow defectively wired up or whatever, and you actually had perfect recall of every moment of your life at your fingertrips, I imagine you'd go insane (or at least, become fairly psychologically dysfunctional by any pragmatic measure) long before you reached an old enough age to worry seriously about biological death. Ignoring the mechanical properties of the brain probably being unable to index all of that information in a useful way, I don't think the psyche could really handle it. You've seen how emotional old people can get when they see photos of important childhood moments, right? Multiply that by a thousand. Imagine at age 40 actually having a sudden full recall of every moment from ages 10-17, and all of the raw emotions that would bring back into your present, new viewpoint on life. And then imagine all the new emotions your present self would experience as it relates to that past experience. It would be hard to even cope with understanding it all, and you'd probably lapse into some kind of strange nostalgia + depression mode for a long period of time. Now imagine that were an ongoing process throughout your life: you're always fully aware of all of your past as you age. I really think it would pretty much disable you psychologically and you'd be a dysfunctional mess. I know an AV recording isn't quite a full brain recall of the other senses and the emotions, but having that around and available all the time would probably be enough of a trigger to force the brain to try to maintain the rest.
If you chose to record it all just for others but not view it yourself, there are still pragmatic issues there. How do you decide when to turn it off, if that's even possible? Would you turn it off the first time you had sex as a teenager? Both of your parents were probably unaware and you'd think of it at the time as something to hide. You probably don't want your kids seeing it in the future in graphic detail, either. However, it's also probably one of your most important, formative, and informative memories, and it would be a shame to shut it off the recording just when it's objectively needed the most. What about that time you stole something? What about catching yourself in lies? What about the one time you cheated on someone sexually? It's the parts you'd want to filter the most that would actually be the most useful for anyone else to learn from.
So let's assume you take the big view. You're not reviewing your own memories to avoid psychological trauma, and you're not filtering the recording to selective suppress things (or to only selectively turn it on). Now you have an entire life of recorded time. By definition, it would take another human being an entire lifetime just to review the data and try to pick out the highlights that were really worth watching, which might still amount to many viewing-years of little snippets. If your child actually tries to accomplish this task, he's screwed. You've just change the entire nature of his life. He's dedicating his life to mining your memories instead of living his own. Who's going to filter out the sex so that your 6-year-old grandkids can see pictures of you working on the farm at 15 but not that roll in the hay in the back of the barn?
It's just not a good idea any way you slice it. Live life, and let your kids live theirs. Tell them what you remember when you remember it, or when whatever debacle they've gotten themselves into reminds you of similar things from your past.
I don't want to relive my life in real time. I want to remember what I promised in the meeting last week, where I'm supposed to show up for lunch, and where I left my wallet this time.
And, I want to do it with one interface, without making an effort to take notes.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Every time I see an article on this kind of technology, I think about all the good old video games that hold a special place in my memories. I remember spending wee hours of the morning playing Ultima, Bard's Tale and other classics on the Apple ][e. Then I go back and load them now days and think "what a piece of crap compared to today's graphics and games." Can't help but think the same might be true of childhood memories. Some are probably best left to the fog of childhood interpretation. But I accept it's just a matter of time before this sort of technology will be commonplace.
This sounds awesome, and apparently unlike everyone else here, I would totally want to hang out with you while you were doing this. Would I act differently? Probably I would only be *more* motivated to be awesome. There's a wide variety of forehead-mounted video cameras you could choose from. Probably having a long-lasting storage device that you could carry on your person would be a harder problem.
Why not just live-stream your life to a server while choosing when to record it to keep some parts of your life as long-lasting memories? Doing so you'll avoid all the ugly stuff other people have pointed out while having an always ready personal recording device at your disposal.
You'll spend most of the rest of your life sifting through the data you just recorded instead of actually living your life. Not only that, but say you were able to record every living waking breathing detail of your life as you lived it, you then want to spend the time to have to filter through all the sordid details of every day you've ever lived just to be able to recall some moment so you could show someone else? I'm ok with taking a moment to snap a picture or record some video of a truly inspiring moment, but why on earth would you care about what kind of coffee you drank 30 years ago or the type of cream cheese you used on your bagel when you were 17? Mmmmm breakfast...
Can't wait to see the video of you watching your video of you watching your video.
Let us know what you find out.
Amazing how similar the design specification sounds to a device worn on the arm of an alien named Narim in the fictional science adventure Stargate SG1 in the episdoe "Enigma"
Somewhat of a futuristic Video Cam with editing capabilites. It could record the emotions of an individual which could then be played back and shared with other people later.
If the Amygdala is the seat of emotional learning, it could be that somehow this device is capable of remote sensing the activity in that part of the wearers brain, like a functional MRI. And then inducing a similar response in another person out of context, like watching a tvshow or video program without actually seeing it, but feeling it "emotionally".
The value of such a device might be to convey a sense of complex honesty, or a "hash" key of experience that is difficult to fake. It would also solve the problem on inadvertently violating other peoples privacy when sharing a personal experince via photograph or vidoe that includes the presence of other people.
An acquired taste, some people might be more interested in the pepherial details surrounding an event in a persons life than the actual emotional content, whether manufactured or actually experienced.
- john willis
These started in the 1990s when cameras were bulking and flalsh was measured in megabytes. Even then the issue was "retreival": how do you find anything you recorded. They pretty much id clever things like only record when there was motion as not to keep hours of "dead time".
I suppose this could be a mode in Google Glasses. GPS and Voice will annotate and control.
Hoarders have a problem with mental blocks associated with making decisions. So they save things "for later" with the good intent of timeshifting the decision into the future. But the details get lost in the transfer from short term to long term memory and they can no longer recall why they saved something, but that it has an emotional or "tertiary" level of detail associated with an entirely different form of "long term" memory.
Some people have suggested it is really simpler than that and simply an over expression of "episodic" memory run amuck.. for which a genetic SNP was discovered around the turn of the 21st century.. and would lead to cures or treatments of Hoarders tendencies in the early 2020s.
Rational biases for sympathic methodical disease also started with the tendency to "Save Everything" and were later proven detrimental to the wellfare of most people and somewhat contagious by way of social interactions. Peer pressure was a popular term used at the time. A fascination with online additictive activities included "Google", "Facebook", "BZing" in the early 00's which lasted until at least the late 30's demonstrated conclusively the damage to personal mental health.
Find and watch episode 3 of series 1 of Black Mirror - you really won't want to do what you're proposing after watching that. All the episodes are completely standalone, there's no back story to each one that you need to know in advance.
My life is boring and repetitive.
So at least it would compress well.
... doesn't Facebook already do that?
Our daily actions and thoughts are already recorded in the Akashic records according to Edgar Cayce and many others.
To create a material world version(an always on, always connected, always recording POV internet that was required to wear) would undoubtedly be used for evil purposes in today's society. There are some out there who actually want this and think it would be "cool", including the likes of Zuckerberg who feels there is no need for privacy in a digital age.
But only if I could keep it secret, so paranoid friends/family wouldn't be scared to talk to me, or a bunch of thugs couldn't compel me to release the footage.
"I can't remember stuff well, so lets record EVERYTHING!!" Blanket problem solving is never the way to go.
Lets face it, if you have to sift through 24 hours of video for however many days you think this could last, you would end up not remembering when events occurred anyways, and spend even more time looking for it.
How about doing some brain exercises every day so that your memory retention can be better, or at least maintain what you already have.
Record precious moments like normal people.
I think I would rather not have my life recorded. There are moments that I'm glad fade with time, the death of a loved one, that first traumatic break up, the work screw up that cost you your job.
I kind of like the fact that in my memories I was not that awkward as a teen, that I was a better athlete and student. Call it repression, but I think Im better off.
The moments that I want to remember, graduation, getting married and those special vacations are all recorded enough for me.
Besides there are two downsides I can think of. The first is, what if your prom date doesn't want that backseat encounter taped and the second is imagine when meeting someone for the first time, they don't tell you about themselves over dinner, you have to sit an watch the last three years.
You want a record, keep a journal with photos or short videos - leave the documentaries to someone else.
Several locations require that both, or all parties be notified. For example a phone call being recorded.
Either you didn't listen closely, or your friend is a poor lawyer.
First, let's look at it from the standpoint of just how much junk you are going to collect. Shoot, I can spend weeks or months going through and sorting through what I take on a single trip (depending on the length of the trip). I have learned that just because it may seem neat to walk down a street somewhere, you really do not want to go back and rewatch it later - from 30 minutes to an hour of stuff I used to shoot like that (I don't anymore), you may pull out a 5 or 10 second clip to use later in a highlight video. And do you really want a first-person perspective of you sitting for an hour a day reading slashdot?
Second, any camera that is going to be small enough to wear is going to have horrible quality. Won't work well in low lighting, will have issues with motion (unless you start going with a bigger camera, but then it is just going to get annoying wearing all the time).
Lastly, people just do not like to be around people who are ALWAYS taking pictures or videos. In fact, over the past year and a half, I had to pretty much retire my camera in an effort to restore some relationships. It is a pitty, as I have a nice camera. No, you are taking pictures or videos enough, people get to where they just don't want to be around you. I am warning you from experience - DON'T DO THIS!
Do what everyone else on the planet does - get a smartphone, that way you always have a camera available when you do want a picture or video of something, and post it to Facebook if you want to share it with friends and family.
The question isn't whether such a project is feasible. The question is whether or not you are permitted to see the lifetime of recording that The Man already has on you.
Watch Charlie Brookers Black Mirror episode 'Everything I know About You' and tell me you still want to have perfect recall.
Hey look I've read loads of comments and somehow no-one mentioned Black Mirror S01E03 "The Entire History of You"
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od#3327868
"In the near future, everyone has access to a memory implant that records everything they do, see and hear - a sort of Sky Plus for the brain.
You need never forget a face again... but is that always a good thing?"
Yes I know I should have looked harder for the comment but BLACK MIRROR BLACK MIRROR BLACK MIRROR
FIRESIGN. :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
it will suck