Updates on "Forgetting? Fuhgeddaboudit"

Three quick followups to yesterday's mention of an IBM research project that would involve all-hours recording of all circumstances in your life.

1) As many, many people have noted, yesterday's English version of Spiegel Online carried a story about a woman with this very capacity naturally built into her own brain, and she's not so crazy about it.

2) After the jump, an extended version of the IBM release on the topic, which has more details and hints at some of the promising but complicated implications of this kind of effort.

3) From reader Karen Weickert, an account of an earlier foray in the same direction, under the auspices of Paul Allen's paradoxically secretive-but-publicized, and now defunct, Interval Research Corporation. (Long and interesting 1999 Wired story on Interval here.)

In the 1990's, a research shop funded by Paul Allen worked on a number of the IBM projects described in their press release.  Specifically, the "memory" idea was put into practice by a researcher who strapped a video and audio recorder to his body, and recorded his daily rounds for weeks.  He attempted to capture 360 degree audio and video.  The point was to never miss anything that happened in your day, such as important conversations, your child's first steps, etc.

What happened instead is that no one wanted to speak with him.  We assume in conversation that what we say will not be recorded and played back directly (if we are not politicians, of course).  If all social interaction was assumed recorded, as opposed to the opposite, our shared world becomes something very different.  It was creepy. 

There were a number of other projects toying with social connectedness and interaction -- virtual offices and researchers connected through "surround sound" for example.  Again, something important about our assumptions of social interaction were broken.  We assume all work happens when groups are connected, but of course, we are private beings as well.

Extended IBM release after the jump.
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From IBM:

Forgetting Will Become a Distant Memory
Information overload keeping you up at night? Forget about it.

In the next five years, it will become much easier to remember what to buy at the grocery store, which errands need to be run, who you spoke with at a conference, where and when you agreed to meet a friend, or what product you saw advertised at the airport. That's because such details of everyday life will be recorded, stored, analyzed, and provided at the appropriate time and place by both portable and stationary smart appliances.

Remembering all the details of our increasingly complex lives is a bit like trying to drink from a fire hose. Streams of constantly changing information pummel us from every direction in the workplace, home and at play. Taking mental, handwritten, or electronic notes can be difficult, and these are only handy if we actually remember to use them. In addition, recalling information only gets harder as we age.

Fortunately, the right technologies to help us with these problems are maturing right now. Consider this - we're getting better at miniaturizing electronic devices, thanks to faster and smaller microprocessors. Our computers are increasingly easier to use - especially when we search for text, audio and pictures - and can sort information more accurately. We are perfecting software that can discern sentences and information contained in pictures. Our electronic calendars and phones are getting smarter; they even know where we are, and who our friends and families are. All of these capabilities are coming together to give us some pretty smart systems.

Such technologies are being put to work in several initiatives underway. The first is called "HERMES Cognitive Care for Active Aging," a project partially funded by the European Union in which IBM Research is collaborating with partners from industry and academia. HERMES is geared towards helping seniors remember important details of their daily lives and improve their short-term memory - all without requiring that they become technology-savvy.

To help make this possible, microphones and video cameras will record conversations and activities. The information collected will be automatically stored and analyzed on a personal computer. Seniors can then be prompted to "remember" what discussions they had, for example, with their daughter or doctor. Based on such conversations, smart phones equipped with global-positioning technology might also remind them to pick up groceries or prescriptions if they pass a particular store at a particular time. To keep their minds fit, seniors will be able to engage in memory exercises that use names or events from their daily lives. It's not hard to imagine that TVs, remote controls, or even coffee table tops, can one day be the familiar mediums through which we tap into our digitally-stored information.

For travelers or businesspeople, solutions such as the Experience Organizer from IBM will become increasingly commonplace. The Experience Organizer takes photographs captured on mobile phones, extracts and sorts the information contained in these pictures, and then transfers the relevant data to personal address books or calendars. All this information can also be recalled using an intuitive, Web-based application.

Say, for example, you capture images of people, posters, business cards, or lectures from a conference. The system understands the context and can infer relationships between pieces of information based on such factors as image, time, and location. Prior to the next meeting with the same people, your calendar might enable you to review your notes and timeline about the previous encounter. Groups of people sharing common interests, such as business associates, might also choose to maintain a common database containing information from similar interactions.

The downside to all of these innovations? Fewer excuses for forgetting!