Keep everything Paper from the PIM book -- distributed to the class

First -- I cannot talk much  I have a very nasty cold and I cannot talk more than a few minutes without going into a coughing spell that you don’t want to see.  I will have some slides, but I will need you to do most of the talking tonight about the papers you read.

Before we begin -- Google Flu Trends  News report today: &emc=rss&src=ig&oref=slogin  Google, keeping track of queries for “flu” or “flu symptons” can predict outbreaks of flu some weeks faster than other systems  Go to to see current data Graph shows last year’s search activity, this year’s activity and a rating of flu presence.

Recall -- Vannevar Bush  “As we may think”  (  Reflecting after WWII  The value of collaboration  The sad use of scientific expertise to invent the atomic bomb  The need for organization and access to information.

Memex  Vannevar Bush’s vision Image source: kelty.rice.edu/375/images/memex/camera.jpg

and MyLifeBits  Gordon Bell and Microsoft  “Gordon Bell doesn't need to remember, but has no chance of forgetting. At the age of 71, he is recording as much of his life as modern technology will allow, storing it all on a vast database: a digital facsimile of a life lived. If he goes for a walk, a miniature camera that dangles from his neck snaps pictures every minute or so, immediately committing the scene to a memory built not of neurons but ones and noughts. If he wanders into a cafe, sensors note the change in light, the shift of temperature and squirrel the information away. Conversations are recorded and steps logged thanks to a GPS receiver carried with him.” Story from December 28, Collection began in 2001

A mixed blessing?  Dr Bell has also had to wrestle with the knowledge that, barring crashes, he has lost the luxury of forgetting. Even though he has to retain less in his own memory, an experience he describes as liberating, much of his life is stored, warts and all. Frank Nack at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science in Amsterdam says a perfect memory is in many ways a curse. "There are stages when it's good to be able to forget, so in that case, this technology is counterproductive," he says. Quoted from the article

Quote of the day  I write down everything I want to remember. That way, instead of spending a lot of time trying to remember what it is I wrote down, I spend the time looking for the paper I wrote it down on.  - Beryl Pfizer

New article  Gordon Bell, who we met in the previous discussion of MyLifeBits, is one of the authors of the current paper  The premise -- it is time-consuming and risky to decide what to keep and what to get rid of, so save everything.  The issues  Finding anything in a vast collection  The possibility that the vastness of the content may obscure the important bits

Related work  Note that a number of projects have explored the same general ideas.  Wearable memory-augmentation devices  Remembrance agent Heads-up display One-handed chording keyboard Location awareness Note taking software that brings up old notes based on current location, people nearby and text of notes written Rhodes 2003 as reported in Save Everything article in the PIM book

A Question  Did you ever experience a case of an indication that you were present at an event for which you have no memory? Perhaps you see photos and cannot retrieve a connection to the scene shown?  If so, how does that make you feel? If not, can you imagine that situation and how you might respond?

Two goals  Unify the various data “islands”  We have information from many sources and they are often not connected.  Improve the options for organizing and accessing vast amounts of information  Annotating  Combining  Searching The traditional directory tree is not sufficient

The technology  The SenseCam  The section heading says “Capturing Life”  What do you think of this? Is it appealing to you?  (My initial response was that it sounds like an option for a prisoner who is not confined!)

Case Study: Mrs. B  Describe the experiment  Use of the SenseCam  SenseCam first because there was a chance of some recovery and they did not want the SenseCam to have an advantage  Use of Diary  Mr. B. made the diary entries  Periodic display of the recorded information, whether from SenseCam or the Diary. Rating of Mrs. B.’s recollection by Mr. B.  Any thoughts about the experiment? Any conclusions?

Do note  Mrs. B. remembered the actual event, not just what was recorded on SenseCam  Known because she recalled things that were not recorded  Very important indicator of the role of the SenseCam data in her memory process.

Requirements of a system  Data capture  Getting the information into the system  Treat everything not in direct control as transient  Web pages, for example  Some data capture is not practical -- digitizing books  Cost of digitizing and issues of copyright  More and more information is “born digital”  Increasing use of Amazon’s Kindle or the Sony Reader or others of the sort -- books are digital and easily kept in searchable form.  How much effort is it worth to keep everything?  Uploading photos?  Organizing records?

Requirements -2  Storage  Early estimates of 1 terabyte for a lifetime of information shown to be too low  Storage becoming cheaper and smaller, so not a problem  The person who lost 4 months of data to a disk crash was Gordon Bell.  How much extra effort and extra space is needed for backups?  Does increasing dependence on the recorded information decrease independence?

Requirements - 3  Retrieval, Sense-making, Presentation  Ah, there’s the rub.  Getting the information and storing it are relatively easy. What do we do once we have it?  Two extremes - hierarchical folder system or no organization (rely on search)  Essential - Visualization or other friendly, easily navigated views of the information.

Examples  Visualization  Trip diaries  Logs of time spent on various kinds of activities  Medical information  More to come I the other article

Legal and social issues  Serious considerations  Need permission to record a call  Who owns the information, or part of it?  Rules and norms vary by country, even by state

Overall thoughts?  Far fetched?  Inevitable?  Desirable?  Dangerous?