What if you could remember everything?

One of this weeks articles for class set off an atomic bomb of questions, comparisons, and thoughts in my mind, and dozens of notes along the margins of the print out. Gemmell, J., Bell, G., & Lueder, R. (2006). MyLifeBits: a personal database for everything. Communications of the ACM, 49(1), 89-95. According to their website, "MyLifeBits is a lifetime store of everything." Do you buy it?

On the Record.
The article, which described the theory and practice of recording the human experience as much as possible, I found fascinating. Recording conversations, location, photos and video, contact information, and even bodily activities and performance. I do believe however, that their intended goal, is unrealistic and unattainable. More on that later.

My Mega Pixel Day.
Almost 2 years ago I was living and working in Seattle, and I decided I wanted to document a single, random day through pictures. Soon after I woke up, I took a picture, and about every hour for the rest of the day I did the same. It was a typical day, I with going to gym, breakfast, work, lunch, work, meetings, phone calls, dinner, out with friends to watch March Madness. The pictures alone weren't particularly great, together in a sequence they where intended to paint a broader picture. Here is March 23rd, 2006:















At the time I didn't even know lifelogging existed. But I did know I had a digital camera, and this could be a cool way to create a sort of a time capsule, to be looked back upon in the distant future. Little did I know they would come in handy for my QU Intro class blog :)
So why?
Why do we do it? Why do we have the desire to capture, document, and share? One could make the argument its in our nature. Story telling and communication are hard wired into our psyche, and now we have the tools to capture bits of information at incredible rates, and on the horizon are infinite possibilities.

A Blockbuster Shelf.
Reading this article made me feel like I was walking down the isle of a movie rental store, looking at random titles. Some you've heard of, some maybe not.

Being John Malkovich
If you could be feel what someone else feels, see what they see, taste what they taste, how could you tell the difference between them and you?

The Final Cut
Who would, who should, who could, have access to your recorded memories? What would they find? What about after we die?
The Matrix
If memories can be recorded, can they be imported? "I know Kung Fu"
Memento
"Will I lie to myself to be happy? In your case Teddy... yes I will. " Sometimes we don't want to know the "truth", our versions are much more convenient.

The way I see it, your damned if you do, your damned if you don't.
Why is it unrealistic and unattainable to attempt to record "everything"? Because you'll never be able to record enough, and if you do, your recording too much. Let me explain.
The discus field.
In high school I threw for our track and field team. During some down time at practice one day an upperclassman and I were talking and he asked me, "wouldn't it be cool if humans had the ability to recognize and be able to identify every single blade of grass individually?" This is an extreme example of course, but think about it. How many millions upon millions of things do we encounter everyday, but ignore because they serve no purpose to our day to day lives? We could take an hour walk in the woods and literally see millions of trees, leaves, grass, rocks, dirt, moss and animals, but perhaps one single flower catches our attention, and evokes an emotional response. For that one in a million, do we need to record each and every individual element? Will that ever be possible? (Great irony- I don't remember the upperclassman's name)
Lets think smaller.
A newspaper is on the kitchen table. You walk past and look at a picture on the front page of someone you think looks like your friend. You get a muffin, you walk away.
Your called to jury duty. During the selection process your asked, "Do you know anything about John v Doe?" You say no, you've never heard of it. The prosecutor gets access to your visual history file, and pulls up 9 am last Tuesday. It turns out, moments before you got breakfast you glanced at the daily paper which displayed a headline and feature article on the case. Your called a liar, and sent home. My point is this, not everything we encounter we remember, not by a long shot. Classic example. And if we do record everything we encounter, we're not accurately recording everything we remember. Either way, we've got problems.

Earlier in this course Willow said "when you see the Taj Mahal in moonlight it brings you to your knees." We can take pictures, we can take notes, video and heart beats-per-minute ratings, but I don't think we could ever capture what she felt right then. Not from the outside of our skulls anyway. Until we better understand how the brain works, how it functions, records, and observes, we won't be able to record "everything." And if we ever do figure that all out, The Matrix may not seem so far fetched after all.


Links:
An easy to use mobile blogging site http://www.utterz.com
Jim Gemmell's Site - http://research.microsoft.com/~jgemmell/
Gordon Bell's Site http://research.microsoft.com/~gbell/