A Microsoft engineering effort called “MyLifeBits” is aiming to record every memory and experience in an individual’s lifetime. The rationale is that people have difficulty remembering details of their memories and posterity could learn more about their ancestors.
That’s a cool idea, but…everything?
It sounds like a multimedia journal, but the problem I see is input. Unless you can automagically uplink your brain to the system, I don’t see how you could ever get eberything into the db. Of course, you could manually type and upload everything, but that would take an extraordinary amount of time — your experiences would then reflect typing in experiences of typing in experiences…
That was my first argument as well, but it seemed like they were leaning towards using cameras and microphones to gather the data. That way people wouldn’t filter their experiences.
What else are you going to use your 500 terabyte hard drive for 20 years from now? I mean, they have to come up with something to sell the latest, greatest hardware.
Very interesting. After reading this post I went out and found the Microsoft website about it.
I agree that getting the input there is the difficult part. They make it sound like it’s a record of everything and it simply isn’t. It’s a journal with a bit more effort. Honestly, would we want to make a record of everything? How many pieces of the day are pretty mundane? I don’t care about what all I did on April 4th, 2003 (although my blog might jog my memory) unless I get called into court.