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Total recall : how the E-memory revolution will change everything

2009

Format:	Book
Author:	Bell, C. Gordon.
Title:	Total recall : how the E-memory revolution will change everything / Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell ; foreword by Bill Gates.
Publisher, Date:	New York : Dutton, [2009] ©2009
Description:	xiii, 288 pages ; 24 cm
Summary:	Total Recall provides a glimpse of the near future. Imagine heart monitors woven into your clothes and tiny wearable audio and visual recorders automatically capturing what you see and hear. Imagine being able to summon up the e-memories of your great grandfather and his avatar giving you advice about whether or not to go to college, accept that job offer, or get married. The range of potential insights is truly awesome. But Bell and Gemmell also show how you can begin to take better advantage of this new technology right now. From how to navigate the serious question of privacy and serious problem of application compatibility to what kind of startups Bell is willing to invest in and which scanner he prefers, this is a book about a turning point in human knowledge as well as an immediate practical guide.-- Publisher description.
Subjects:	Information society. Memory. Neural networks (Neurobiology) Information resources management -- Forecasting. Telematics -- Forecasting. Computers and civilization -- Forecasting.
Other Author:	Gemmell, Jim, 1965-
Other Title:	How the E-memory revolution will change everything
Notes:	Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-268) and index.
Contents:	The vision -- Mylifebits -- The meeting of E-memory and bio-memory -- Work -- Health -- Learning -- Everyday life--and afterlife -- Living through the revolution -- Getting started -- The future.
LCCN:	2009011526
ISBN:	9780525951346 0525951342
Other Number:	317068136
System Availability:	1
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Fiction/Biography Profile

Genre
	NonFiction
	Science
	Sociology
Topics
	Biotechnology
	Technology
	Computer technology
	Memory
	Communication
	Privacy
	Science
	Sociology
Time Period
	-- 20th-21st century

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Trade Reviews

Publishers Weekly Review

At Microsoft, computer science pioneer Bell has worked with senior researcher Gemmell for years on a project called True Recall, which will allow people to create a "digital diary or e-memory continuously," something they predict will "change what it means to be human" as fundamentally as language development and the invention of writing. Based upon further development and integration of three already-extant technology streams (digital recording devices, memory storage and search engines), the authors have worked toward this "third step" in the development of human memory for a decade and a half. A number of issues will need to be addressed, including privacy; the authors distinguish between being a "life logger," with privately stored digital records, and a "life blogger," whose web posts are accessible to others (like friends or coworkers). Bell and Gemmell outline the tests they've run since 2001, scanning and then cataloguing for retrieval a mass of personal data (documents, photographs, books and articles, web pages visited, instant messages, telephone calls) and wearing miniature cameras that sense light shifts and take automatic photographs. Readers will be wondering about the consequences of "recall[ing] everything you once knew" long after they put down this fascinating text, of particular interest to techies, but clearly written for general readers. (Sept.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.

CHOICE Review

This engaging book, divided into three parts, markets the idea of "total recall" (part 1); explains how total recall will impact our lives (part 2); and suggests how one adapts to and gets started with total recall (part 3). The writing style is more literary than scholarly, though the book does include an annotated reference list. Despite the noticeable bit of redundancy, the text makes a convincing argument that total recall, a digital e-memory of our lives, is coming--in fact, is already here--in many facets of daily life. The principle behind total recall is "don't discard...digitize." However, until information architectures are more intuitive to human thinking, motivations, and searching strategies, simply having more data does not imply having more information. Bell and Gemmell (both, Microsoft Research) concede that information organization is critical, but believe search engines are well on their way to making total recall a total reality. The authors touch lightly on the topic of information security, suggesting a "lock" on "those events you'd like to forget," and encryption for protection of our private e-memories, but do not address the impact of common security breaches (hackers, viruses, worms) on the success of total recall. An interesting and somewhat prophetic read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels of readership. B. G. Turner Faulkner University

Booklist Review

Prominent in computer engineering, Bell has contributed for decades to the field's development. Presently working for Microsoft (Bill Gates contributes this work's foreword), Bell, with help from coauthor Gemmell, here elaborates on his in-house project to digitize and archive everything about his life. Its inspiration lies in the Bell's conviction that within 10 years, data storage will achieve a level of capacity and economy that will enable anyone to record and retrieve the totality of their activities, from the nursery to the digital cemetery. Touting benefits from eliminating physical mnemonics from one's life letters, photographs, audiovisual media, even knickknacks Bell effuses about getting rid of clutter and converting to a database for accurate recollection, in contrast to fallible human memory, of one's past in all its aspects: health, relationships, education, work. Maintaining that anxieties about privacy or security can be allayed, Bell's techno-optimism swells with 10 business applications that he thinks could make money for entrepreneurs. Trend-spotting, PDA-toting readers may recognize themselves in Bell's vision of the near future.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist

Kirkus Review

An enthusiastic account of the near future when we will be able to record every minute of our lives. Readers may be suspicious that a book introduced by Bill Gates and authored by two of his senior researchers is merely promotional material for a new Microsoft product, but they will come away convinced that the authors are on to something. Bell and Gemmell assert that three streams of technology are nearing a critical mass. First, we are now recording more of our lives with cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras, e-mail, webcams, etc. Second, digital memory will soon be so cheap that everyone will be able to afford to store everything. Third, search technologies far more sophisticated than Google are being developedby, among others, Microsoftto retrieve, organize and present immense quantities of data. Within a decade, when these advances are seamlessly integrated, those who choose to "lifelog" will wield awesome powers. They will be able to quickly sort through their "e-memory" for events, conversations, names and numbers, but also patterns of habits, emotional responses, spending, alibis and even physiological data. To illustrate these dazzling possibilities, the authors describe Bell's campaign since 1998 to digitalize his life. Today's poorly integrated sensors, scanners, optical character readers and search software make this a tedious process, but readers will share Bell's pleasure as mountains of paper, files and references vanish to be replaced by instant access to every word or picture, many long-forgotten. Bell concludes with nuts-and-bolts advice on organizing a personal lifelogging program and discusses the thorny privacy and legal issues that will arise when everyone is being recorded all the time. Proclamations of the next digital revolution are plentiful, but this cheerful description of another is persuasive and intriguing. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Summary

What if you could remember everything? Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell draw on experience from the MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to explain the benefits to come from an earthshaking and inevitable increase in electronic memories. In 1998 they began using Bell, a luminary in the computer world, as a test case, attempting to digitally record as much of his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned. Everything he did on his computer was captured. He wore an automatic camera, wore an arm-strap that logged his biometrics, and began recording telephone calls. This experiement, and the system they created to support it, put them at the center of a movement studying the creation and enjoyment of e-memories.

Since then the three streams of technology feeding the Total Recall revolution - digital recording, digital storage, and digital search - have become gushing torrents. We are capturing so much of our lives now, be it on the date - and location - stamped photos we take with our smart phones or in the continuous records we have of our e-mails, instant messages, and tweets - not to mention the GPS tracking of our movements many cars and smart phones already do automatically. We are storing what we capture either out there in the 'cloud' of services such as Facebook or on our very own increasingly massive and cheap hard drives. But the critical technology, and perhaps the least understood, is our magical new ability to find the information we want in the mountain of data that is our past. And not just Google it, but data mine it so that, say, we can chart how much exercise we have been doing in the alst four weeks in comparison with what we did four years ago. In health, education, work life, and our personal lives, the Total Recall revolution is going to change everything. As Bell and Gemmell show, it has already begun.

Total Recall is a technological revolution that will accomplish nothing less than a transformation in the way humans think about the meaning of their lives.

Table of Contents

	Foreword Bill Gates	p. ix
	Authors' Note	p. xiii
Part 1		p. 1
1	The Vision	p. 3
2	Mylifebits	p. 27
3	The Meeting of E-Memory and Bio-Memory	p. 51
Part 2		p. 69
4	Work	p. 71
5	Health	p. 93
6	Learning	p. 113
7	Everyday Life-and Afterlife	p. 137
Part 3		p. 157
8	Living Through the Revolution	p. 159
9	Getting Started	p. 175
10	The Future	p. 213
	Annotated References and Resources	p. 227
	Acknowledgments	p. 269
	Index	p. 271

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