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Funes the Memorius
MyLifeBits has also provided Bell with a new suite of tools for capturing his interactions with other people and machines. The system records his telephone calls and the programs playing on radio and television. When he is working at his PC, MyLifeBits automatically stores a copy of every Web page he visits and a transcript of every instant message he sends or receives. It also records the files he opens, the songs he plays and the searches he performs. The system even monitors which windows are in the foreground of his screen at any time and how much mouse and keyboard activity is going on. When Bell is on the go, MyLifeBits continually uploads his location from a portable Global Positioning System device, wirelessly transmitting the information to his archive. This geographic tracking allows the software to automatically assign locations to Bell's photographs, based on the time each is taken.
To obtain a visual record of his day, Bell wears the SenseCam, a camera developed by Microsoft Research that automatically takes pictures when its sensors indicate that the user might want a photograph. For example, if the SenseCam's passive infrared sensor detects a warm body nearby, it photographs the person. If the light level changes significantly--a sign that the user has probably moved in or out of a room and entered a new setting--the camera takes another snapshot. A recent study led by researchers at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, England, showed that a memory-impaired patient who reviewed SenseCam images every night was able to retain memories for more than two months.
How many of you would want this? I wouldn't. I prefer the memories I choose to keep, and the ones I make up, over the ones I really had. Thanks to Robin Hanson for the pointer.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 22, 2007 at 06:13 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
A more interesting question is what kind of papers could an economist write if he had access to data like that for a large number of people (e.g., everyone). Any Nobel-quality ones?
Posted by: Michael at Feb 22, 2007 7:56:40 AM
Your frequent Borgesian post titles make me smile. Borges would have like this blog, I guess.
"Isn't Economics a branch of Fantastic Literature?," I imagine him saying.
Borges would have liked to have apocryphal quotations, though maybe not this one.
Posted by: Wanderwort at Feb 22, 2007 8:48:36 AM
Maybe they'll start a cable channel that features some of Bell's more interesting moments, such as his recent guided tour of Uqbar...
Posted by: jens at Feb 22, 2007 9:57:58 AM
The outputs need to improve before I'd buy one. I'd gladly pay for a system that automatically recognized people for me from their faces, giving me their names and how I know them in real time. That's something my internal memory completely horrible at, and which has probably had notable social costs on my life. Similarly, something that kept track of the errands I need to run and reminded me when I near places they could be performed. A system that reminds me of the last place I saw something would be handy, but probably less handy than simply tagging everything I own with RFID chips and creating an auto-updating remotely-queriable home inventory. The online stuff is boring, we've got Google for that already.
Simply hoovering up the data is a lot less interesting than coming up with usable apps that can search the data for personal value.
Posted by: Dave at Feb 22, 2007 10:15:46 AM
i would not like it. It seems like a prison - you cannot have a guilty pleasure, since it will be recorded and they will discovered you were daydreaming yesterday for 15 min instead of working hard! Also pointless. Besides, I bet i could never find the memory I want.
Posted by: avm at Feb 22, 2007 10:22:23 AM
"How many of you would want this? I wouldn't. I prefer the memories I choose to keep, and the ones I make up, over the ones I really had." True enough, but what about the spirit of scientific enquiry? Here's Tyler just this week. "When Oh When will people appreciate how deep Seth Roberts's self-experimentation concept runs?" I am not as interested in (or perhaps I am afraid of) what I might find out in a scheme like Bell's, but I admire the courage it must take to truly document one's entire waking behavior.
Posted by: mayormardis at Feb 22, 2007 10:42:29 AM
I'd like this. Not to go back and revisit warm memories of my youth. I'd just like to be able to google my life! To remember who told me something, or the name of someone I met, or because "[x] search only web pages I've visited" would be a handy option when searching the web.
Posted by: Ed at Feb 22, 2007 11:17:00 AM
Definitely, if the system was more powerful, e.g. organized data better. In particular, total automatic records of food consumption and sleep, with automated analysis, continual inputting of stated probability estimates into a bayesian net, with querries for such estimates in response to many assertions, and transcript logs of all conversations in my vicinity, plus where they occurred, would be valuable.
Posted by: michael vassar at Feb 22, 2007 11:28:27 AM
What a fantastic reinforcer for self absorbed people!
Posted by: Dennis Tuchler at Feb 22, 2007 12:55:04 PM
It's a big enough pain to need to go back through the stuff that I actively keep. Can anyone imagine trying to sort through a lifetime's worth of continuous data? Ugh.
Posted by: TW Andrews at Feb 23, 2007 2:37:38 PM
I'd like it for scientific reasons, not personal reasons. But then I'd rather have someone else look at all that "hoovered up" data (love that choice of words) and draw some conclusion about it, rather than do it myself. Then I can continue to hold onto the memories I want and that I've made up.
I'm trying to figure out if this thing would be an autist's dream or a nightmare. On the one hand, all the data that you weren't able to lock onto and remember is recorded by something else so you don't have to worry about it. On the other, it seems like it could become even more informational overload than autistics deal with already.
Posted by: Erin at Feb 23, 2007 3:34:47 PM
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Posted by: 謝文豪 at Apr 1, 2008 9:50:11 PM
