Month: October 2009

Feel Good Philosophy

Reading Time: 2 minutes I recently started reading The Truth About Everything, An Irreverent History of Philosophy.  I have to say, for a critique and history of philosophy book, it has been a very (wildly) entertaining read. I found one particular paragraph that stood out to me.  Being both the idealist and compulsive categorizer, I often wonder what drivers…
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Total Recall, Personal Informatics and Life Logging

Reading Time: 3 minutes “Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, “memex” will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.” — Vannevar Bush (1945)
Fast forward fifty four years, and we finally have the technology (hardware and software) to make the Memex a reality. My project has been primarily focused on fulfilling a small portion of the the original idea, but has only touched the surface. The Memex fully realized would be a system that completely (and automatically) digitizes experiences, memories, and interactions with the environment. The capability for Total Recall , offloading human memory to a digital space, is not too far away (think Cyborgs).