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MyLifeBits to Store Every Moment of Your Life

Posted by Zonk on Wed Apr 09, 2008 06:34 PM
from the now-we-need-a-hud-to-go-with-it dept.
Microsoft Data Storage Software
Dixie_dean writes "Microsoft researchers are developing a way to enable you to capture every moment of your life and store it on your computer. The principal researcher with Microsoft's research arm, Gordon Bell, is developing a way for everyone to remember those special moments. 'The nine-year project, called MyLifeBits, has Bell supplementing his own memory by collecting as much information as he can about his life. He's trying to store a lifetime on his laptop. He's gone on to collect images of every Web page he's ever visited, television shows he's watched, recorded phone conversations, and images and audio from conference sessions, along with his e-mail and instant messages. Calculating that he saves about a gigabyte of information every month, he noted that he tries to only save photos of a megabyte or less. Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage." This is a project we've been talking about for a long time.
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Roland Piquepaille writes "This article from Wired Magazine looks at storage with a new angle. 'Right now I am sitting in front of a whirring 60-gigabyte hard disk that cost less than $100. Do the math: If back then 10 megabytes cost $1,000, then 60 gigabytes would have cost x, where x = $6,000,000 and "back then" = 18 years ago. I'm sitting in front of $6,000,000 worth of mass storage, measured at mid-1980s prices. We have Moore's law for microprocessors. But who's coined a law for hard disks? In mass storage we have seen a 60,000-fold fall in price -- more than a dozen times the force of Moore's law.' DeLong also looks at a non-distant future when a $100 mass storage device will hold a full terabyte. He also thinks that with disk space becoming cheaper and cheaper, we'll be tempted to archive everything about ourselves, including pictures and videos. This is in fact the goal of the Gordon's Bell project, MyLifeBits. You can learn more about the MyLifeBits project by reading this NewsFactor Network article. Check this column for more details."
[+] Hardware: Recording Your Entire Life 211 comments
Scientific American has an article on Gordon Bell's 9-year-long experiment of recording great swaths of his life on digital media. The idea harks back to an article by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, which arguably presaged hypertext and the Web as well. Bell, the father of the VAX computer and now with Microsoft Research, first published a paper on his experiment in CACM in 2001. The goal is to record "all of Bell's communications with other people and machines, as well as the images he sees, the sounds he hears and the Web sites he visits." Storage requirements are estimated at a modest 18 GB a year, 1.1 TB over a 60-year span. Not a lot if the article's projection comes to pass — that we will all be walking around with 1 TB of storage in our portable devices by 2015. The article is co-authored by Jim Gemmell, who wrote the software for the MyLifeBits project.
Submission: MyLifeBits to store every moment of your life by Anonymous Coward
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  • Aren't they 24 years late? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:37PM (#23019006)
    To forget is human. To be human is important.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by glittalogik (837604)
      I'm down with being post/trans-human. Bring on the Singularity.

      • Re:Aren't they 24 years late? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jeremiah Cornelius (137) * on Wednesday April 09 2008, @08:26PM (#23019776) Homepage Journal
        Well. They're to late to capture last week's bout of virulent diarrhoea. There's an episode I'm not soon liable to forget!

        That such moments will be forever trapped and preserved, like a fly in digital amber, is a notion that I relish with degree of satisfaction paralleled only by the joy I have in watching old episodes of The Waltons and the Golden Girls.

        Re-run runs...

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PopeRatzo (965947) *
        Speaking of media:

        Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage.
        Mr. Bell must have lived a very empty life.
  • Just need to find a good editor for the film of my lifebits to play at my funeral and i"ll be happy.

    • MyLifeStore for boring people (Score:5, Funny)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:35PM (#23019426)
      I predict a service selling clipart LifeBits to people who have really boring lives. It's called MyLifeStore. You upload a picture of your face and for $25 you can buy a LifeBit of you doing exciting stuff like bungy jumping while saving rain forests in the Amazon. Use it to overwrite that day when you just stayed at home and read the newspaper.

      • Re:MyLifeStore for boring people (Score:5, Funny)

        by Starteck81 (917280) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @08:15PM (#23019686)

        I predict a service selling clipart LifeBits to people who have really boring lives. It's called MyLifeStore. You upload a picture of your face and for $25 you can buy a LifeBit of you doing exciting stuff like bungy jumping while saving rain forests in the Amazon. Use it to overwrite that day when you just stayed at home and read /. all day long.
        There I fixed that for you

      • Re:MyLifeStore for boring people (Score:4, Funny)

        by lottameez (816335) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @09:58PM (#23020326)
        Of course, those that buy their iLifeBitz at the iLifeStore pay twice as much but will feel better about the look and feel.

    • Re:Cutting room floor (Score:4, Insightful)

      by urlgrey (798089) * on Wednesday April 09 2008, @08:31PM (#23019812) Homepage
      I hate it when life imitates art like this. This sounds eerily like the Robin William film "The Final Cut" [imdb.com]


      • Not really ... (Score:5, Informative)

        by tomhudson (43916) <hudsonNO@SPAMvideotron.ca> on Wednesday April 09 2008, @09:01PM (#23019990) Journal

        FTFA:

        Bell figures one could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage."

        Just goes to show you don't have much of a life if you could store the whole thing in one terabyte.

        Just do the math: 1 terabyte (1024x1024x1024x1024)
        divided by 80 year lifespan
        = 13743895347.2 bytes
        divided by 364 days
        37,654,507 bytes/day
        16 waking hours/day
        2,353,407 bytes
        divided by 60 minutes
        39,223 bytes/minute
        divided by 60 seconds/minute
        653 bytes/second.

        There's no way you'll record everything about your life in 653 bytes/second. And that's ignoring that lossy compression isn't an option, since then you *aren't* recording *everything*, and ignoring your dreams, etc.

        All this is is an "enhanced blog" - big f*cking deal.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Media Tracker (455903)

          Alan Turing, in his 1950 paper Computing machinery and intelligence [abelard.org], where he discusses the question of whether machines can think, and where he introduces the Turing Test, says (section 7):

          Estimates of the storage capacity of the brain vary from 10^10 to 10^15 binary digits. I incline to the lower values and believe that only a very small fraction is used for the higher types of thinking. Most of it is probably used for the retention of visual impressions. I should be surprised if more than 10^9 was requ

          • My point is he's saving the stuff that ISN'T important - the mundane. The web pages he's visited, crappy pix that nobody else will ever see, etc.

            Recording all the sensations in a sky jump, on the other hand, would take terabytes, but people would definitely want to experience that second-hand.

            Besides, slashdotters already have the ultimate way of dividing up images, video, etc.

            It's binary: Everything is either "pOrn" or "recycle bin."

  • It's about time! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Angst Badger (8636) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:38PM (#23019014)
    Finally, technology has caught up with narcissism.

  • We need to remember THIS! (Score:5, Funny)

    by SeeSp0tRun (1270464) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:38PM (#23019020) Journal
    Just what we need...
    To remember what all the pr0n sites we visited when we were 15...
    at age 70.

  • Obligatory Red Dwarf Quote (Score:5, Funny)

    by rsteele19 (150541) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:40PM (#23019026) Homepage
    CAT: No, this isn't the one.
    LISTER: What isn't?
    CAT: I'm looking for this dream I had last month on the dream recorder.
      It was sensational.
    LISTER: What was it about?
    CAT: Me, three girls and a family-sized tub of banana yoghurt!
    RIMMER: You know, cats have a very strange attitude to women if you ask
      me.
    CAT: Say what, Goalpost Head?
    RIMMER: It's all sex, and no sense of settling down and having a long-
      term relationship.
    CAT: Hey, I want to settle down.  And as soon as I find the right small
      group of girls, the seven or eight women who are right for me, my
      wandering days are over, buddy.</pre>

  • Copyright Infringement (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jamu (852752) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:43PM (#23019070)
    What happens if he goes to watch a movie? If it were possible to store every moment of your life, and use it to augment your normal memory, would you need a change in the copyright laws?

  • Recursive? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MyNymWasTaken (879908) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:43PM (#23019078)
    What about recording me watching a recording of me watching a recording of me watching ...?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You did not finish your sentence.
    • We've already got a name for that [penny-arcade.com]....

    • Re:Recursive? (Score:4, Funny)

      by B4D BE4T (879239) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:42PM (#23019514)
      Colonel Sandurz: You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
      Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
      Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
      Dark Helmet: When?
      Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We're at now now.
      Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
      Colonel Sandurz: When?
      Dark Helmet: Now!
      Colonel Sandurz: Now?
      Dark Helmet: Now!
      Colonel Sandurz: I can't.
      Dark Helmet: Why?
      Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
      Dark Helmet: When?
      Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
      Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
      Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
    • Wasn't there a lame movie about this starring Robin Williams... oh yea it was called The Final Cut [imdb.com]

  • This sounds like a terrible idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by drydirt (1161445) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:46PM (#23019098)
    ... Unless you're one of those perpetually smiling people only seen in corporate clip art, life tends to be full of more unpleasant, uncomfortable, and completely banal events than positive. I could not imagine anything worse than watching high school all over again. I would probably want to strangle myself for being such a horrible, awkward geek.

    Really... How many moments of your life do you really want to relive? And wouldn't re-watching your most pleasant memories knowing what you know now dilute just how pleasant those memories were?

  • As long as its optional (Score:5, Funny)

    by pembo13 (770295) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:48PM (#23019108) Homepage
    Although, seeing the borg icon makes me doubtful about how long it will be optional for

    • Although, seeing the borg icon makes me doubtful about how long it will be optional for
      I found that quite a profound statement, especially since right after reading it, I got a popup saying "Updates are ready to install"...

    • Re:As long as its optional (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Original Replica (908688) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:48PM (#23019542) Journal
      Some aspects of this will probably remain optional, but as storage gets smaller and ID programs gain steam, the two are bound to converge. Maybe you won't be able to see photos of various events throughout your life but your: GPS location, website history, purchase history, known associates, employment record, legal history, medical records, etc. will all be recorded. Ten years from now it will all fit in your federal ID that you have to carry in order to travel or make any purchases. Regardless of who wins the next election, it will happen.

  • Not "every moment" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jdigriz (676802) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:51PM (#23019136)
    Sorry, but this is just journalistic hyperbole. It's not every moment of your life. If you were to store every moment of your life as HD video, it would consume far more than a TB. And that still leaves 3 other senses we haven't devised recorders or storage formats for. Not to mention high-resolution PET scans for internal state, brainwave records and who knows what else. This project is a cute scrapbook instead, not full-time, automagic, all-encompassing archiving of first-person experience. But yeah, we have a lot of storage and a person obsessed with scrapbooking minutiae could have a field-day.

  • We're being "Microsgoogled"!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by s0litaire (1205168) * on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:54PM (#23019146)
    Google want you to store all your stuff on-line with them. Now Microsoft want to store your life off-line on your pc with them. Next thing you know your mobile provider will give you recording of all your phone calls you've ever made through them...(Well makes a change from them giving the recordings to the government!) :D

  • Do NOT want (Score:5, Funny)

    by unformed (225214) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @06:55PM (#23019152)
    When I'm 53 years old and I'm carrying my grandkids on my lap, I want to be able tell them stories of the old days, like "You young whippersnappers think you have it tough? Back in my day, we couldn't just go out and buy unleaded gasoline. No sir! We had to scrape the lead out with our bare hands! And you think you have it tough with your complicated computers and what not. Back when I was a kid, we didn't even have computers to write with. We communicated entirely in ones and zeros ... written in PENCIL!

    Imagine what would happen if they could just look up the past and say "Ha ha, Grandma! You're lying!"

    Do not take away my golden years, dammit!

    • Re:Do NOT want (Score:5, Funny)

      by garett_spencley (193892) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:12PM (#23019286) Journal
      I once told my grandpa "c'mon man you old people seriously exaggerate with how bad you had it".

      Then he hit me with...

      "Yup 'cause having German snipers shooting at me on Omaha was just as much fun as tugging it to almost naked girls on Youtube".

      Shut me right up :\
    • "You young whippersnappers think you have it tough? Back in my day, we couldn't just go out and buy unleaded gasoline. No sir! We had to scrape the lead out with our bare hands!"

      What's gasoline, Grandma?
  • Wait till he gets his first subpoena. I'd love to see a court have to go through all of that just to not find anything of value.
  • This takes the "get a life!" insult to a whole new measurable level. Soon geeks across the world will be able to win an internet forum/irc argument simply based on how much "life" they have, measured in GB or TB.

    But to make it a more useful measure, there should also be a way of adding "emotion" points to the total score (where users asign a level of emotion or fun to each event stored in their digitally stored lives) with a function such as {Adjusted true-life-years = life disk usage x total emotion poin

    • Soon geeks across the world will be able to win an internet forum/irc argument simply based on how much "life" they have, measured in GB or TB.
      Considering all that porn, I doubt TB is even enough...

  • I might be a pessimist but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RobinH (124750) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:05PM (#23019234) Homepage
    Here are some possible problems... you can have the files subpeona'd for court cases. How do you secure them against someone who wants to know anything about you? Will your employer demand you submit the recordings each day?

    I might be ok with it if the constitution was changed to make privacy an absolute right, and make the punishment for taking one of these files to be extremely severe.

  • I've already got the best storage medium possible for my life: my brain. Keeps not only video and audio, but also stores the other three senses.

    Who is this for? Those with Alzheimer's or amnesia?

    Interesting concept, but it seems to be more marketing fluff than a useful product.

  • My Computer (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:10PM (#23019268) Homepage Journal
    Anyone who ever saw that icon on their Windows desktop that says "My Computer", and picture Bill Gates saying it, not themselves, should think about giving Microsoft that kind of complete access to their entire lives.

    If the source were open, it were stored locally or encrypted at customer-selected third-party networked datacenters, this app could be wonderful, a lifesaver. But trust Microsoft with one's entire life? That sounds like putting it all in once place to be ruined or stolen.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by teasea (11940) <t_stoolNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:11PM (#23019278)
    I'm seeing more and more projects that simply have me saying, "why?"

    Seriously. I think filling my drives with random bits and seeing if there is anything readable would be more interesting.
  • This project is trivially achieved but the product is doomed to be uninteresting: "I spent all my life taking and organizing photos of myself".

    After all, the recording work must be recorded, and so must the recording work of the recording work, the recording work of the recording work of the recording work, ad infinitum. Get a life, microsoft.

  • Honest baby! (Score:4, Funny)

    by nick_davison (217681) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:16PM (#23019320)
    "Honest baby! I'm not shooting home porn. It's a LifeBlog(tm). I film everything. No... Come back.... Come back!"

    Unless you're dating someone with the IQ of Paris Hilton... Or the exhibitionist streak of Paris Hilton... I see some problems here. And if you are dating Paris Hilton, good God man, you've got problems enough.
  • "My life has been the poem I would have writ, but I could not both live and utter it"

    Guess not anymore! Now how long until we are able to back up our brains into hard drives?

  • Ahhh once again MS changes the definition to suit their marketing needs. "Everything" now means a small selected subset of everything that they have chosen and decided is important. Does it record your mood? Does it record your vital signs? Does it record your dreams? Your aspirations? Your fears? No we're talking low res images of trivial crap like what web site you've visited. Shit I can do that now with File->Save As and get original resolution to boot. Would be nice to automate that with a firefox ex
  • how long before everyone is REQUIRED to wear one of these at all times so they can be checked on for terrorism or pedophilia 24x7x365? Microsoft can go die

  • gods! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @07:39PM (#23019478)
    I would guess the people who would be interested in this would be reeaally boring.

    Ipso facto, their saved record/video/photos of their life would be reeally boring.

    I seem to remember reading once that almost nobody ever used their web browsers history, so I'm guess this will never get off the ground.

    Frankly I do not feel like I need my own black box, but I guess there will be some sound medical reasons why some people might want one (dementia?)

  • SciFi idea.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Datamonstar (845886) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @09:00PM (#23019986)
    If a person using an app like this started seeing his future in it.

  • The communists did it first (Score:3, Informative)

    by stevejsmith (614145) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @09:40PM (#23020190) Homepage
    Old news. The Romanian secret service was performing this service for free for most people with a university education. Now, you can apply to see the old secret service files of yourself and any of your close dead family members. Complete with transcripts of every word you utter in your own home (courtesy of bugged telephones), your radio and preferences (to make sure you weren't listening to Western subversive material), and transcripts of the twice in your life that you went out to a restaurant. And there was the added bonus of testimonials from your friends, with a special emphasis on the things that could later be used against you (extramarital affairs, unhealthy sexual preferences, subversive rhetoric, etc.).

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by stevejsmith (614145)
      ...oh, not to mention records of your prostitute visits. (Prostitutes were subsidized by the government, as they were useful for gathering information.)

  • What a remarkably naive idea (Score:3)

    by Duncan Blackthorne (1095849) on Wednesday April 09 2008, @10:13PM (#23020458)
    Why? So when someone steals your identity, they can steal your entire life history along with it? So the government can come along and seize it from you, tear it apart, and twist it into whatever foul thing they decide you should be guilty of? So every person who can get their hands on it can Monday morning quarterback every experience you've ever held dear and important decision you've ever made? Thanks, but no thanks. Somebody please round up all the people who think this is a good idea, put them up against a wall, and shoot them dead.

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