Memories, Memories
AP says “Big Brother Wants to Watch You Digitally“. Basically, what they are describing is a fully multimedia personal weblog. People today already have blogs that track their GPS position, use emoticons to describe emotions, publicize their interpersonal relationships, and so on.
John Pike of Global Security.org, a defense analysis group, says “they have not identified a military application”. I would add, they could have said the same thing about DarpaNet. The example of darpanet is not accidental. I think I already explained why digital memory (”indelible”) is the inevitable evolution of the Internet.
And I think the article is presenting just one side of the issue. There are two sides:
- Side A: If everything is recorded, someone might look at what you did when you thought you had privacy. If it’s not recorded, nobody can know. This is the side thatthese newspaper articles focus on exclusively.
- Side B: If everything is recorded, you can remember it. You can battle amnesia and even death.
Humans grasp and claw to hang onto life as long as possible; and when faced with mortality, they do whatever it takes to pass on their knowledge so that their children don’t have to re-learn the same lessons. Nothing is more human than these two impulses, so the development of things like LifeLog should surprise nobody.