My Life Bits

This blog is going to be about something that both made me think and confused me. Hopefully I’ll remember to add quotes this time, I keep forgetting.

The two main texts I will be referring to for this blog is ‘Cyber Goggles: High-tech memory aid’ and ‘Scientific American’ – March 2007 edition.

My life bits is a device that records everything. It is worn around the users neck and basically records their life onto a memory storage chip. It can record sight, sound, websites the person has been on, conversations, even how much carbon dioxide is in the air and the wearers blood pressure.

In the March 2007 issue of Scientific American, it states that ‘Because human memory is fallible, researchers are striving to develop systems that can automatically record communications, documents, images and video, storing everything in a searchable archive.’

In 2008 a device named ‘Cyber Goggles’ were brought into the spotlight. They were described as a ‘smart video goggle system that records everything the wearer looks at, recognizes and assigns names to objects that appear in the video and creates an easily searchable database of recorded footage’.

The debate we had in class was about this new technology, specifically with a project called ‘My Life Bits’, where Microsoft Research designed a device that recorded someones life and tested it using a subject named Gordon Bell. He kept the piece of technology with him for six years, it recorded everything he did for those six years and then he gave feedback on it.

We were split into two groups, one for the motion and one against. I was in the for group, and I think we had a really good case. There was only a few things I could think of that could be said against the device, one of them being that people would start to rely on such technology and the other about privacy. Of which I had counters for.

I could see in my head how the situation was going to span out, they were going to say something about reliance on the technology and I’d be like ‘OBJECTION!’ then state how people already rely on technology, because it’s true. If I took away your mobile phone then asked you to give me your mothers mobile number, would you be able to do it? If I took away all your technology then told you to tell a friend who lives in another country to be safe because of a disaster, would you even think about using a pen and paper?

So, the debate started. We had two jury members and a judge, then the two sides. Problem is, I’m not very good at debating, as it showed when we got into it, because I kept contradicting myself. Eventually our teacher joined our side to help explain what the hell I was trying to say, because I completely suck at explaining.

The against side had several arguments against the device, one we didn’t count because we weren’t going to bring religion into the whole thing. The main ones I managed to write down were;

> Invasion of privacy

> No copyright – We stated that if this technology became available to the public, new laws would probably be made to prevent the use of them in places like museums and galleries.

> People relying on it – This one was a given, I’ve already written down the counter we had to it.

> Paranoia – Basically people not wanting to be recorded and such. But we brought up the fact that we’re being watched all the time anyway, CCTV and all that.

The only thing we didn’t have an answer for was the privacy in people’s homes, but in the end we did mention that the things could simply be taken off.

We had quite a few things written down for the motion, to name a few we had;

> It could be used by the emergency services; doctors could use it to find out when peoples symptoms start and maybe use it to make new cures, police could use it when someone gets murdered etc.

> You would never forget again, everything would be stored so you’d never have to worry about forgetting where your keys are or an important date.

But our main point was that it was an inevitable trend. It had been proposed before in the past, our back up for this being a quote from the Scientific American text stating; ‘The vision of machine-extended memory was first expounded at the end of World War II by Vannevar Bush, then director of the U.S government office that controlled wartime research. Bush proposed a device called the Memex [short for ‘memory extender’] – a microfilm-based machine that would store all of an individual’s books, records and communications.’

Our back up to the statement that the trend was another quote from the same text, stating about how fast technology is evolving. It states that ‘today a $600 hard drive can hold a terabyte of data, which is enough to store everything you read [including e-mails, web pages, papers and books], all the music you purchase, either hours of speech and 10 pictures a day for the next 60 years.’ Then later on in the same paragraph it says ‘In 20 years $600 will buy 250 terabytes of storage, enough to hold tens of thousands of hours of video and tens of millions of photographs.’

Overall though, we won the case the judge voting in favour of the motion. So we won, yay!

At the end of the lesson, we had a quick talk about the device, and I was the only one in the class that said that I would have one if I could afford it. The whole idea of a large storage unit recording everything I do sounds like a god send to me, the amount of times I’ve gone to a gallery for a project, made notes and even taken pictures if allowed, yet still returned home and forgotten everything I saw. I have that problem with most lessons too, I’ll write notes, maybe even take pictures, yet still completely forget what I’ve done.

So to end this blog, I just wanted to say that if I could, I would use this technology, it’s a revolution that I would be interested in being involved with.

Stuff used –

Cyber Goggles: High-tech memory aid. Pink Tentacle [2009] available at http://pinktentacle.com/2008/03/cyber-goggles-high-tech-memory-aid/

Scientific American, March 2007 edition – www.sciam.com