Here’s a link to a CNN article about a Microsoft researcher that has been steadily building up an “e-memory” of all his life events, including everything he experiences, buys, does, etc.
What I found a little worrisome was this statement:
By about 2020, he says, our entire life histories will be online and searchable. Location-aware smartphones and inexpensive digital memory storage in the “cloud” of the Internet make the transition possible and inevitable. No one will have to fret about storing the details of their lives in their heads anymore. We’ll have computers for that. And this revolution will “change what it means to be human,” he writes.
Good Lord, what kind of privacy issues is this going to raise? How much vicarious living will people do with other people’s lives?
This sorta reminds me of the movie “Strange Days”, in which people are able to virtually relive other people’s memories via a machine that straps onto your head.
What does the SDMB community think? 2020 is not that far away. Any doubters that what this man says will happen? Would you embrace this type of technology? Does it frighten you?
Think the article overstates what the guy is doing, and really don’t see the world turning out that way. Even if the technology exists to record that much data, all it can record is images and sounds. That’s only a fragment of memory, which also includes thoughts, impressions, and emotional responses to those images and sounds.
Technology reporting get flagrantly over-optimistic and this sounds that way: you’ve got one guy wearing a camera around his neck predicting someday all of our memories are going to be stored online. But even he isn’t using the device all the time:
But to get to the real topic:
Over the last couple of years I’ve reluctantly, and sometimes angrily, tried to accept the idea that what I think of as privacy is going extinct. People don’t seem that interested in it, frankly. At this point it’s seen as almost Luddite NOT to tell people everything you’re doing all the time. (Then again this may be overstated: what was that statistic? 20 percent of Twitter users create 80 percent of the content?) Conventional ideas about privacy, like “you expect privacy in your own home” or “people should not expect to see what you do not choose to show them” apparently don’t apply now. I don’t know what the replacement concept is - “everybody will share everything and it’ll be great” is cheerleading, not a notion of privacy.
Like most people I might add that Bell misunderstands what memory is.
Memory is not a record. It is an impression. We sometimes want it to be a record, but only when we’re trying to think of something positive about ourselves. So forgetting and subconscious editing is a what makes our memory what it is, as opposed to what computer memory is. Does it have to be that way? No, but that’s how it works for us at the moment.
I admit that having a neural kind of YouTube where people post their memories and ideas is kind of interesting. Searching would have to improve drastically for it to be even a little bit useful, but I guess that needs to happen anyway. I have no interest in letting people rate my sex life, meals, vacations or cherished memories, but if I’ve thought up a good standup routine and I can share it that way instead of going to a club or trying to get myself on TV, then yes, there is definitely an appeal there.
Jesus, I dont even keep a diary or anything more involved than a notation of when I have appointments so I can get to them on time. I really don’t want anybody but me knowing what I have been thinking or am thinking … talk about no privacy!
Microsoft’s on the way out, or is at least on its way to no longer being the superpower it was.
Instead, Google is becoming the dominant company. Google, whose mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
So I don’t think Microsoft will ever get to the point where they’re cataloguing all our thoughts and purchases and travel and everything else about our lives. That’ll be Google’s job, and they’ll make us love them for it.
I can stand in front of a camera and do that, yes, but I wouldn’t want much of my life on that kind of system. I was thinking of something vastly larger, more immediate and more personal. I’m talking about searching through a relatively complete record of people’s lives, with less of the recycled TV content and the “here I am, performing for YouTube” stuff.
I don’t know how much of this would ever be possible because Oakminster is right: memories involve a lot of components that are harder to transmit. But I expect people are going to try, and there are interesting possibilities along with the privacy issues.
20th and 21st Century records were somewhat skimpy, but perhaps Google was the entity that will eventually become Psi-Corps. “We’re everywhere. For your convenience.” <shudder>
That’s already eerily true. Google has legions traveling the roads of the US and other countries, taking millions of 360-degree pictures, a massive canvassing project…so that you, at home, can click on a street map and see what it looks like at ground level.
In “The Final Cut” , Robin Williams plays an editor of implanted memory devices. He provides sanitized versions of people’s lives for their memorial services.
Now there is an information clearinghouse that specializes in records of individuals, that will provide details about your life to any stranger who asks. They already provide financial information, social networking information, employment history, criminal history, marital history… the more information that is available online, the more they will provide.
It’s only a matter of time before a real Friends of the American People* starts up, IMO.
We just saw on TV that Tiburon, a little town across north of San Francisco, is installing cameras on the only two roads into and out of their peninsula. Your license plate, date, time, speed, and a clear view of you and your front passenger. They claim it’s just for unsolved robberies, but how would that work? If you report a witnessing a break-in you would get to see all the footage to see if you recognize anyone. So, just fake a break-in call to spy on all your neighbors’ comings and goings.
Doesn’t really scare me. Might embarass me, but oh well, thus is life. I enjoy my privacy but simply having the technology available to be able to record your life permanently, I feel, is a net gain for humanity.
Sure there’s all that information being collected, but how do you use it? Suppose you have a video camera, audio recorder, and GPS recorder going 24 hours per day. If you want to find out what you were doing at a particular rime, then that’s very easy, but simple queries like “What was George’s wife’s stepmother called?” are rather more difficult.
All of this still involves choice. You do not need a myspace or facebook page, you are not required to upload videos of your life, and you can screen what you post online on blogs or forums such as this one.
Many people have had information they themselves posted online used against them either in court, or the public arena of mass media. Too often what you post online will be used against you if you are accused of a crime. There are threads here on the dope discussing background investigations for potential jobs. People have lost out on job opportunities or even been fired from jobs based on information or videos they willingly put online. It baffles me why people would put their lives out for the whole world to see.
George Orwell only got it partly right: there are cameras in many public places now, but we are doing it to ourselves. We are the ones putting cameras in our businesses, our homes, our schools. We are the ones uploading videos online of ourselves engaging in questionable behaviours. We are the ones posting statements that can be used against us in court or cost us our careers. The government isn’t forcing this, we are doing it to ourselves.
