Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution will Change Everything

[Recorded: September 23, 2009]
What if you could remember everything? In this lecture, Jim Gemmell and Gordon Bell discuss their new book, Total Recall How the E-Memory Revolution will Change Everything. Bell and Gemmell will draw on their experience from the MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to explain the benefits that will come from an earth-shaking and inevitable increase in e-memories.

In 1998, Gordon Bell, began to digitally record as much of his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned. Everything he did on his computer was captured. Real time capture of photos, bio-metric data, and phone calls were added.. This experiment and the system Gemmell designed to support it put the authors at the center of a movement to understand the creation, use and value of e-memories.

Three streams of technology feed the growing Total Recall revolution — digital recording, digital storage, and digital search. We are capturing and storing so much of our lives now, from the date- and location-stamped photos we take with our smart phones to the continuous records we have of our emails, instant messages, and tweets — not to mention the GPS tracking of our movements smart phones and some cars do automatically. However, the critical technology is to data mine our past, so that we can, for example, chart how much exercise we have been doing now in comparison with what we did four years ago.

Together, the authors discuss how Total Recall provides a glimpse of the near future and what this means for you as a member of the digital society. Imagine heart monitors woven into your clothes and tiny wearable audio and visual recorders automatically capturing what you see and hear. The range of potential insights is truly awesome.

Gemmell and Bell also provide their perspectives on how you can begin to take better advantage of this new technology right now. Bell and Gemmell believe a technological revolution has begun that will accomplish nothing less than a transformation in the way humans think about their memories, their past and the meaning of their lives.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Computer
• History
• Museum
• Total
• Recall
• Gordon
• Bell
• Jim
• Gemmell
• e-memory
• revolution
• Microsoft
• Reasearch
• digital
• memory
• mylifebits
• storage
• data

[javierenchina]

We can't have this discussion without mentioning Ray Kurzweil

[clearmenser]

Nice. I'm in the more-info-is-good camp. I just wish this was available for the rest of us. Even as a kit or code library would be nice.

[imthelolrus]

Their book is ironically not released in Ebook form... Only paper.

[rwgamer]

One problem with this technology is that our human memories will diminish as our ememories become more usable. The human memory needs challenges or it will atrophy.

[TKStoddart]

It's hard to be lectured by a David Arquette character. :)

Thanks for uploading! :)

[Sedated3]

you know.

[darthvader5300]

And you have forgotten that both our nations have developed and deployed E-weapons still targeted at each other. A single exchange of salvos of such weapons will wipe out Total Recall. We Russians are especially wary of EMP vulnerable stuff like computers and their counterparts which is why we prefer ink on paper, though we use computers.

[darthvader5300]

Especially the ones you should have asked for but did not asked and thus makes you aware of other things whether you have asked for them or not. And shows other titles whether you are interested or not. A computer cannot do these things.

[darthvader5300]

A computer will only give you the right answers when you ask the right questions because you know it because someone told you about it or came through it while surfing the internet, etc. A traditional printed book library shows both all the right answers to all the right questions.

[darthvader5300]

As an honest Russian I must say that you Americans have totally forgotten several things. One, "Digital Dark Age", chips and hard drives and memory electronics do not last as long as paper. Two, digital data retention of electronic components is still open to question. Three, computers will never solve the chicken and egg principle, which comes first but print shows both at the same time whether you ask for it or not, especially the ones that you should ask but did not.

[ianwhitt91]

This is really scary. i really don't trust it.