Lifelogging

I usually do my blogging on my laptop in the bathroom. Instead of reading about the weather, looking for deals on the Net or whatnot, I'd try to write a few lines of 廁所文章. The cool thing about blogging is written for public consumption, so it doesn't go very deep on a personal level. The other extreme is Lifelogging where nothing is personal.

Vannevar Bush, in my opinion, is one of the greatest American thinkers, not only he envisioned a microfilm based World Wide Web and a Wiki like repository of knowledge in the 40s before there were computers, he also predicted that every respect of a person's life could be automatically documented someday. In the 90s, a girl named Jenni put a 24 hour webcam in her room and attracted millions of (paid) viewers hoping to catch her in person moments on JenniCam.

Gordon Bell, a Von Neumann Medal winner, has been involved in a "Lifelogging" project. Below is a series of short videos from his Total Recall website, watch at least the introduction to get an idea of of the project.  For example, not only it's taking pictures and videos continuously, it also captures every keystroke you type on your computer.


I think the greatest advance in computer is the availability of computer processing power, storage, and bandwidth. The most intelligent design is often trumped by brute force and "good enough" design just as in Darwinian evolution.