A Life in the Day

The current issue of Scientific American has an interesting (yet disturbing) article on a Microsoft project called LifeBits. No, it's not the merger of Life and Alpha-Bits cereals, but rather:

a quest to digitally chronicle every aspect of a person's life, starting with one of our own lives ([Gordon] Bell's). For the past six years, we have attempted 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--storing everything in a personal digital archive that is both searchable and secure.

Um...why?

Digital memories can do more than simply assist the recollection of past events, conversations and projects. Portable sensors can take readings of things that are not even perceived by humans, such as oxygen levels in the blood or the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Computers can then scan these data to identify patterns: for instance, they might determine which environmental conditions worsen a child's asthma. Sensors can also log the three billion or so heartbeats in a person's lifetime, along with other physiological indicators, and warn of a possible heart attack. This information would allow doctors to spot irregularities early, providing warnings before an illness becomes serious. Your physician would have access to a detailed, ongoing health record, and you would no longer have to rack your brain to answer questions such as "When did you first feel this way?"

Yeah, right. My PC can't even find a Word file when I know the name of it. I'm going to trust computer hardware and software to run my life and health? Oh, I don't think so.

Every word one has ever read, whether in an e-mail, an electronic document or on a Web site, can be found again with just a few keystrokes. Computers can analyze digital memories to help with time management, pointing out when you are not spending enough time on your highest priorities. Your locations can be logged at regular intervals, producing animated maps that trace your peregrinations. Perhaps most important, digital memories can enable all people to tell their life stories to their descendants in a compelling, detailed fashion that until now has been reserved solely for the rich and famous.

Oh, that sounds useful. I give any machine that nags me about time management 0.5 seconds before it goes out the window. Let's have it time how fast it takes to hit the pavement.

Granted, there some things I wish I could remember better, but I'm not sure that every second of my life--or anyone's life--is really worth remembering in toto. And anyone whose life is exciting or interesting enough that 100% of it needs to be recorded will probably need to be committed to Bellevue for nervous exhaustion before they need software to keep track of it all.

[M]anufacturers are producing a new generation of inexpensive sensors that may soon become ubiquitous. Some of these devices can record a wealth of information about the user's health and physical movements. Others can gauge the temperature, humidity, air pressure and light level in the surrounding environment and even detect the presence of warm bodies nearby.

I'm pretty good at detecting the presence of warm bodies nearby. Unfortunately, most of the bodies near me tend to be ice cold. But that's neither here nor there...

As for ubiquitous sensors tracking our movements, well, Orwell that ends well.