MyLifeBits to Store Every Moment of Your Life

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.

Aren't they 24 years late?

[Anonymous Coward]

To forget is human. To be human is important.

This sounds like a terrible idea...

[drydirt]

... 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?

Not "every moment"

[jdigriz]

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.

I might be a pessimist but...

[RobinH]

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.

My Computer

[Doc Ruby]

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.

a story full of itself

[djrbeta]

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.

2012: MyLifeBits, now a legal requirement for all!

[justdrew]

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!

[apodyopsis]

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?)

Re:As long as its optional

[Original Replica]

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.

Re:Aren't they 24 years late?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

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:Cutting room floor

[urlgrey]

I hate it when life imitates art like this. This sounds eerily like the Robin William film "The Final Cut" [imdb.com]

Re:Do NOT want

[Original Replica]

"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?

Re:Aren't they 24 years late?

[glittalogik]

I'm down with being post/trans-human. Bring on the Singularity.

We don't need this!

[closer2it]

Google is already doing this for me... well at least, my virtual life :P

Re:Aren't they 24 years late?

[PopeRatzo]

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.