Your Life On a Hard Drive 186
Iddo Genuth writes to point us to his The Future of Things blog, where he has put up a rumination on the idea of recording one's whole life, beginning with Vannevar Bush's 1945 "Memex" (from the same essay in which he envisioned digital photography and advanced electronic computers). This serves as introduction to an interview with Microsoft Research's Gordon Bell, arguably the first man to attempt recording (most of) his life. From TFoT: "If humans may be viewed as the sum total of their memories, then at our doorstep may be a life changing revolution: the ability to store one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file. In this article, we examine this idea, as well as some of the problems involved in its application."
It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Interesting)
When I experience something, it's a multitude of things. It's not just my five senses which can be recreated to within some threshold
I would view it and try to remember what I was like back then but I'd still be me now. I've still kissed ten or twenty other girls in passion. You could never put me back there and it's laughable to aim for that goal.
I also believe that humans are dynamic beings and that we are more than "the sum total of our memories..." These may affect behavior but they do not necessarily define us.
More importantly, I'm more intelligent now. Show me the video clip of me pulling a garden hose off a shelf in kindergarten and I'll wince as the sledge on top of it plummets off of the shelf and destroys my big toe. I'll watch it over and over and over again and dwell on how stupid I was. Or, I'll move on with my life.
People who want to do this are possibly suffering from a legacy complex where they are worried about what mark they leave on the world. Maybe this will satisfy you and maybe you'll make your kids experience these but it's not going to change the facts--there's a low probability anyone but your offspring will remember you. Hell, I don't even know any generation prior to my grandparents and neither does history.
Things happen to us--for better or for worse they happen. Let's experience them and move on. I don't dwell on pictures, I don't dwell on home videos, if you want memories of joyous occasions then record them but nobody wants to watch me go to work day after day.
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2, Funny)
Mod -1, Liar.
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Funny)
C'mon this is
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:4, Funny)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
You mean: Scixelsyd of the World Untie!
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
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Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
Silly people, don't they know Cress Jutish is Lord?!
(Does that joke mean I need to go to "Nonce Of Sis"?)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Informative)
/. is the root of a file system
./ is the current directory
He must be referring to his own life experience.
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2, Interesting)
Not for you, but if I cloned you, and raised you using the recording of your life so that everything was exactly the same, all five senses, would you clone have pulled the garden hose off the shelf without thinking about the sledgehammer? Would his first kiss have been exactly the same?
it's also the state of my mind at the time.
The deeper question here is whether the state of your mind is the sum of all of the inputs up to that instant. If you started over with a clone and fed it
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there is a strong connection between the memory recollection and the context of the encoding event. Usually, it is true that there is better memory performance when the context at encoding and retrieval of a memory
and if (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:and if (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:and if (Score:4, Informative)
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I'd like to mod this up but the mod point cupboard is bare, so instead...
Just to add to this, if Roger Penrose's theory is right ("The Emperor's New Mind"), then the brain relies on quantum level changes when m
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Same reason you make any backup. (Score:2)
Suppose you suffered some great psychological trauma, something so severe that it rendered you unable to function normally in society. Rather than being institutionalized, or living a reduced quality of life, you could restore your mental and psychological state to how it existed at the time of the backup.
I don't think you'd want to do it
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We have no technology that might do that in the forseeable future, so it's a purely hypothetical question.
I have learned for myself that recording information is vastly different than learning it. As I started to use things like a PDA and laptop, I used to hoarde information on my gizmos. Eventually I realized it was just a form of procrastination. I never felt pressure to internalize information because, hey, I would always have it at my fin
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Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
I disagree with you... I think that a tool like this would be tremendously helpful. Maybe not to society immediately, but think about being able to access someone's memories from even 50 years ago, or 100. Being able to look back on how things were is a great way to get a grasp on how things are, and how things will be.
History repeats itself.
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:5, Insightful)
I REALLY wish people would stop saying things like this everytime a new scientific endeavor is underway. I mean, really, who the hell are you to judge what is more helpful to society? If you don't think people pursuing their OWN goals is helpful, then I HIGHLY recommend you watch James Burke's Connections series from the BBC because it will illustrate exactly how random human technological and societal development has been and what random quirks lead us to where we are now. So I applaud these guys. Who knows what future change this will inspire.
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But you know what...I'm with THEM! And WE'RE coming to get you!!! Lock your doors and cower in your basement. And we have installed cameras in your keyboard, so the only way to prevent us from tracking you is to destroy it and never type
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Ok, lets talk about my initial comment then. All of your pseudo-science crackpot theories aside....your entire posting history on Slashdot has been you comment spamming your site. That has nothing to do with your idea and everything to do with the fact that you are a spammer. There's a freebie for YOU, spammer.
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I used to laugh a lot at sites like the Time Cube Guy but now it just makes me sad that they are sick and unable to get help.
Re:It Happened Once & It's Over (Score:2)
You are missing the point. You seem to think that this is a bad idea just because no one will ever care about the data. Um, I'll strongly disagree with you. You even state that no one will want to watch you go to work every day.
Let me give you an example. You walk to work every day. One day you are mugged and beaten up and everything removable on yo
George Orwell called this a telescreen in 1984 (Score:2)
Experiences != memories (Score:3, Interesting)
"Humans" clearly aren't properly viewed as the sum total of their memories. First, there's an incongruity between the concept "human" and the concept "memory." Second, even if we ignore this incongruity, shouldn't it be "total of their experiences", not memories?
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. .
Maybe this guy is the sum total of what he's done, but I am the sum total of what I am about to do.
KFG
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Toss into that the whole nurture/nature argument, so genetic predisposition, physiologi
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Do you not think that your beliefs are formed by the things you experience? For example, somebody may be shaped by their belief that they experienced god speaking to them... but this is only because at an earlier age, they experienced being told by someone else about this 'god' idea. It's still experiences that shape you, even if you have to look back to previous experiences to understand why the latter experience shaped you in the way that it did.
Dear God, no (Score:5, Funny)
Just imagine having to sit through your uncle's slide show documenting every second of his vacation, including the 5 minutes he spent standing in front of the mirror scratching his ass. No thanks.
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real-life porn featuring your ex'es (or current girlfriend)!
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Its been done. See the film Brainstorm. Can you say "religious experience"?. Hint: Natalie Wood doesn't make it.
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I'll top that - with a nightmare, no less. Imagine a recording of your life, edited and complete with a laugh-track.
On pay-per-view.
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Just imagine having to sit through your uncle's slide show documenting every second of his vacation, including the 5 minutes he spent standing in front of the mirror scratching his ass. No thanks.
Well, we could always ask to see the hottie cousin making out with random beach dude.
The Final Cut (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of a movie I just saw called "Final Cut [slashdot.org]">The Final Cut with Robin Williams. In the movie he plays a "cutter". His job is to splice the full memories of people (who have had a chip implanted into their brains) into little films to play at their funerals. It was a very interesting movie.
That said... what a waste of space. How much of my life will I spend watching TV. Good thing we might be able to record all that soon.
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OK, I TOALLY screwed up that link.
The Final Cut [amazon.com]
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Great, another reason for the *IAA's to sue me!
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That movie was the first to really cause me, when I saw it for the first time at 21 to really think deeply about the
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I did this (Score:5, Funny)
Some experiences shouldn't be re-lived... (Score:1)
I remember back some years ago when the occasional person would try to document their life or wear around a camera so that people could see what they were doing as they went through-out the day. The idea seemed cool, but I wouldn't want to be on the sending end of that data.
If people c
useful. (Score:1)
I think I saw this movie (Score:1)
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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants (Score:1)
Memory != reality (Score:5, Insightful)
People's memories are colored by everything from their state of mind at the time to associations with other experiences (that may not even seem related).
I think most people would be upset to find out just *how much* their cherished memory of an event differs from the actual thing as it was recorded.
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People's memories are colored by everything from their state of mind at the time to associations with other experiences (that may not even seem related).
I think most people would be upset to find out just *how much* their cherished memory of an event differs from the actual thing as it was recorded.
There was a book that I read that I can't remember the title. The plot was about using worm holes to view what happened in the past. At first it
Old news (Score:5, Funny)
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from: z0idberg@woopwoopwoop.woop
Subject: FOI request
Hi,
Could I request one copy of my life up until this point. DIVX format will be fine. Make sure you zip it up though cause I have a download limit that I need to keep an eye on (though you probably already knew that).
kthx.
z0idberg
Argh (Score:2)
gleh.
Anyway, I think it's neat. I'd do it, sorta. The recording gear would be like shoes: they'd come off when I went home. Simply being able to say "Why'd Bill say/do that?" or "What was the license plate of that guy who parked next to me when I went into the safeway? I've got a big honking scratch on my car now" and go to the video and see would be be awesome
A large part of the recording... (Score:2)
Assuming a world where people record themselves all day became a reality. A large part of the recording would I assume, be of the subject watching the earlier recordings...
So you would have a recording of a person watching their recording... then let's say they watch that...
Ok, yeah, other people would be watching the recording... so you would have recordings of *them* watching someone else's recording, and so on. Pretty soon, you'll have to get someone to get up and actually *do* something - and th
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Assuming a world where people record themselves all day became a reality....
I think it's naive to assume that it would simply be people recording themselves.
http://www.whiteshoe.org/archive/000920blockcopy.
Scary prospect (Score:2)
The whole thing? (Score:2)
Soko
On a harddrive? (Score:1)
There goes my sanity (Score:5, Insightful)
wicked (Score:2)
I am not sure at all that the psychological consequences of a full-life recording have been investigated, and I somehow tend to believe they wouldn't be positive.
I tend to think the main effect would be to intesify the awareness of our own wickedness. Unless we could Tivo past all our petty acts of nastiness ...
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Um, there are differences between having an accurate recording of an event and overly focusing on an event/memory. What'll be different is that we'll have inaccurate memories and then have the urge to look at the event and see that's not really how
I just created a list (Score:2)
Then I appended every girl that I am currently talking to, thier interests and how I know them. With any relevant contact info. If I hook up with them, they will move into the hook-up list. Else, they will move into "I am just friends" list.
I need it to remember the good times,
Baby steps (Score:5, Interesting)
The utility of having this much space on your phone isn't just storing MP3s, videos, and whatnot. The real potential is in what this means you can create.
I'd like to have my phone be a constant or voice activated recorder. I have my phone on me at all times, it has a microphone, why not have it provide me a 'cockpit voice recorder' of sorts for life? No more guessing exactly what my wife told me to do, or having to write down phone numbers.
Generation 1, your phone just records MP3s of life as it happens to you. If anything interesting happens during the day, you save the file on your computer.
Generation 2, it meta overlays GPS data and is automatically stored as part of your 'diary'. You store it in an encrypted location so it can't be used against you unless you choose to release it, and you have a perfect alibi showing what you said and where you were.
Generation 3, combine voice processing to index everything spoken around you into a searchable form, recognize phone numbers, voices, etc, and create a full digital assistant. At some point around here, it can also store a digital video feed from any cameras you or your personal equipment might have that's synchronized with everything.
Generation 4, it hunts down Sarah Conner.
Everytime someone puts a bunch of storage into something, someone else says "what's the use?" And human nature being what it is, some other asshole decides to invent something cool to use that storage/capabillity for just so they can give the finger to the first person.
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Generation 5, it marries into the Kennedy family.
Generation 6, it becomes governor.
Yeah, right... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not a breakthrough. If it is used as a body of data, rather than as entertainment, then it is just a bigger archaeological record, but it is not transformative in any way.
If it is used as entertainment (as it no doubt will be), then this is just the new "reality entertainment" mechanism with six billion channels of reality TV on all the time. If you thought biography, autobiography, and reality TV were bad, just wait for Totality Multimedia. In the most banal sense, given how much entertainment we already consume, you will finally get to spend you life watching other people watch TV. And then, you'll get to read about what they thought as they did it, and listen to the sound of them not speaking over the sound of the radio. It's so postmodern it's primitive.
So you can observe an entire recorded world in all its banality... Or you can turn toward the window and observe an entire world being recorded in all its banality. Life reduces to itself. Yay.
It does create an interesting paradox, though: with this much data, to absorb the entirety of another's life as object, you must indeed sacrifice a good percentage of your own life as subject (assuming that it would take something on the order of your natural life to view the entire record [if possible at all] of another's). Actually, that's not even very interesting, as it merely telescopes down to "if someone else wastes their life, and you are passively there for the entirety, contributing nothing, doing nothing, then you also waste yours."
Sort of goes without saying. I suppose there's a kind of performance art in being born, living, and dying only to watch someone else being born, living, and dying. But that's about it.
The Microsoft Version. (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Research's Gordon Bell ... the ability to store one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file.
Cringing at the possibility. He actually said "file" instead of database or "files". I'm imagining the Windoze and Outlook model - a single file, difficult to search or transfer, an EULA giving M$ permission to search and destroy "copyright violations" at will, zero security and it explodes at about 2.0 GB in size. Imagine:
You: "Computer, what did I do last night?"
computer: "Master?"
You: "My head is splitting, there's a stranger in my bed and I want to know what happened"
computer: "Just a moment. Just a moment"
You: WTF?
computer: "I'm sorry, you don't have rights to view that. They have been sold to America's dumbest moments."
You: "Erase Last Night, you piece of shit."
computer: "I can't do that Dave. It's already been uploaded, you will be sent the bandwith bill."
You: Smashing Computer. "Delete last night"
computer: "Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all" [slashdot.org]
computer: "Your seventh birthday has been erased and your brother is liquidated. Thank you."
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Btw, nice dig at Vista's speech recognition; could you care to point me to all the OSS speech recognition software that works so much better?
I have something like this - it's called email (Score:5, Interesting)
A few months ago, I was going through some personal stuff about a relationship that had just ended. I wondered what the heck was I thinking when I decided to start dating this woman. So, I went back in my emails to the time when I started dating her and there were all my thoughts right there. I realized I was deluded when I started dating her, and knowing that made me feeel better for some reason. So, I guess going back in that fashion can have it's benefits, but I think recording absolutely everything is a bit much.
I'm sure a diary/journal would serve similar purposes, but for some reason, this works for me.
access (Score:2)
Lessee... Delete, delete, delete... Ack, run secure disk wipe on that one...
Ooo, lemme put this on YouTube!
Guilt (Score:2)
memories can't define a person (Score:2)
B: My mom is a weird Christian. It's her belief that when the bible talks about life after death, it doesn't mean a separate existence ("heaven") but in the mem
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Nice film, creepy at times, but quite relevant to this discussion.
I misread that at first. (Score:2)
"the ability to steal one's entire life experiences on an accessible and easily searchable file"
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can just see it now. I'm back in time leaning in for my first kiss, and then I say "hang on baby, I need to strap on my headcam so I can remember this". Of course all that would be captured are several nose bumps and her comment that I'm using too much tongue. Like I said, stuff I'd rather forget...
Anyone ever seen Strange Days? Where the dude's got a while collection of disks of captured memories of his girlfriend that broke up with him? Yeah, there's a paradise...playing back immersive footage of some ex so often you can't let go and move on.
And lastly, to me, the whole idea of storing your life on a drive just smacks of Myspace style attention whoring gone stratospheric. And you think drunken party pics are bad...
Delete (Score:2)
Wiki (Score:2)
Gargoyles (Score:2)
why is Bell's name associated with this? (Score:2)
If someone should get credit for pioneering work in this area, it's Steve Mann.
Read more SF! (Score:2)
if humans wha?? (Score:2)
If that's all we are, I think I'd rather be a goat ... or a rabbit.
Waste of resources (Score:2)
It is a rare movie indeed that I'd agree to seeing twice, or book that I would re-read; there's too much to see, read and do in life to start repeating old experiences.
hard drives crash. fact. (Score:2)
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Nice, reverse psychology, I like it