Microsoft's Lifebrowser Is a Prosthetic For Memory 64
holy_calamity writes "This article talks about software from Microsoft Research that looks like a smarter, more private version of Facebook's timeline. Lifebrowser uses machine learning techniques to process photos, emails, web history, documents and other data on your computer and automatically create an interactive timeline with an awareness of what's important and what's not. Lifebrowser is intended to be a prosthetic for memory. When a user searches their archive for specific information, Lifebrowser presents notable photos and other information to aid recollection."
A good start... (Score:4, Interesting)
...but I'm waiting for the real memory prosthetic, the one that integrates with my hippocampus.
I've probably got another thirty or forty years before it becomes a serious issue, but I'd like to think I'll have that option when I need it.
Everything old is new again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Showing my age (a bit over 60). When I was a kid, we had these things called "diaries". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diary [wikipedia.org] Some people would use archaic instruments called "pens" to record what they did every day in a diary (a book with blank pages). What MS is proposing is a digital diary.
One thing I never understood... every so often, I'd hear on the radio about somebody who had been charged/convicted of robbery/rape/whatever. And one of the key pieces of evidence would be their personal diary, which police had seized. The diarists actually recorded on paper that they had committed the crime. That is beyond dumb. And I never heard of any of the defendants claiming that the police had forged the diary.
Fast-forward to 2011, and some people are being busted for crimes, thanks to self-incriminating postings on Facebook. If Microsoft's idea ever gets past the vapourware stage, expect police to have fun searching through people's personal digital diaries. No doubt some people will be stupid enough to put incriminating posts in their digital diaries.