Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything (3 page)

Just as the cloud will offer digital storage, it will also offer incredible processing power. This will range from your cell phone asking for extra help from a couple of machines in your home, to paying a fee to rent a few thousand computers from some service provider for a couple of minutes. Your health information might be mined for patterns by a couple of servers in your home. A service provider might keep the index of all your information up to date so that your cell phone isn’t slowed down by index “crawling.”

Of course, even today’s smartphones already boast impressive processing power, doing things like voice recognition, movie playback, and running full-blown databases. For most tasks you will already have enough computing at hand. However, cloud processing isn’t always just about computational muscle. Cloud processing can also provide simplicity. Instead of installing and maintaining software in all of the computing devices in your home, it can be much simpler to install to just one home server, and have the other devices just act as terminals to the server. Then you only have one computer that requires upgrades, license verification, and other management drudgery. The same can happen across the Internet, and we already see Internet-based alternatives to traditional desktop software, including e-mail, instant messaging, word processing, spreadsheets, and backups.

In the future, you probably won’t know or care whether an application is running on your device, or whether it is running in a cloud server and your device is just a terminal. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, describes it this way:

All your devices will be appliance-like. You’ll buy them to suit your need or tastes. Phones, PCs, Xboxes, whatever. You’ll go to the Web and license software that is intended to be used on these various appliance-like devices. When you turn it on and log-in for the first time and “claim” the device as yours, the things that should be on it (the right data, the appropriate version of a given app for that kind of device) simply appear. When you run the app and use the data, it is automatically sync’ed so that there’s only ever temporarily a “dirty” copy of data or settings on the device that isn’t also present in the cloud. When you recycle a device and “unclaim” or “disown” it, your stuff vanishes.

Many Web service providers are in the same boat with you. They often don’t care where your data or where their own data actually resides, because they, too, may outsource their storage and processing needs, paying for whatever capacity they use when and as they use it. Many companies run their entire businesses using remote servers, without having to invest in computers, storage, or associated software. To serve this need, Amazon, which has vast amounts of excess storage, has a service called EC2, for Elastic Compute Cloud. Likewise, Microsoft has Azure, a cloud-based operating system that will let companies develop and run Web applications without setting up their own data center. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has predicted that nearly all Internet data centers will be outsourced in this way by 2020.

Cloud computing will lead to a single, integrated e-memory experience. Every device will act as an access point to recall from your e-memory. And every device will also become a source of information feeding into your e-memory, helping to record your experience.

Most people’s cloud-interface device of choice is going to be a small, lightweight device that combines the functions of a cell phone, a camera, a personal digital assistant, a Web browser, an MP3 player, a GPS locator, and any other sensors and functions that can be crammed into it. Early versions of these devices are already abundant. They’re called smartphones (e.g., iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, and Android). As smartphones become better at many traditionally PC-based functions, trusty but less agile laptops are being left at home. Sales representatives tap into customer databases five minutes before meeting with clients. Managers track inventories in real time. Physicians call up medical records and lab reports while standing at a patient’s bedside.

Your smartphone plus whatever sensors and miscellaneous devices you wear and carry will all be linked together to form a personal digital memory collection-and-management system that will (if you choose) be able to record just about everything you see, hear, and do and keep it all in one big virtual collection in the cloud. The uses of such an archive are limitless.

Consider the fact that currently, nearly every financial transaction you make—making a deposit, withdrawing cash, paying with a credit or debit card—is registered electronically as a unique event. Every month when you open your statements you can see the trail you have left, which is geographical as well as financial, with entries like “01/07/08 32.60 **Australian Dollars 29.10 MOS CAFE SYDNEY NSW; 01/08/08 VIZZVOX INC WY 99.00; 01/12/08 MICROSOFT *ZUNE OFFICE SUPPLY STORE 00877-438-9863 WA 15.00” ; and so on.

Imagine extending this trend to all the recordable events in your life that you can imagine ever wanting to be able to recall or examine or contextualize at a later date: where you went, how you got there, who you met, what you did, what was said, how your vital signs varied, who you called, what you read, what you wrote, what you looked at, what pictures you took . . . all these things and more can be automatically recorded and saved, indexed, filed, and cross-referenced by time, location, and other natural linkages to make them easy to refind later and to sift through for patterns and trends.

While much of the technology for Total Recall is already available—e-mail, cell phone, camera, home videos, social-networking sites, photo- and video-management sites, and so on—these many pieces remain isolated and fragmented. They are not yet integrated by a single set of tools or unified under a common interface. The current e-memory ecosystem is relatively fraught with inconveniences: nonportable data formats, the need to keep on top of dozens of passwords and personal profiles, short battery life, and data fragmented across devices and applications. As these impediments disappear, led by the shift to cloud computing and the evolution of hardware, the e-memory experience will be transformed, and the technology of Total Recall will become a reality in most people’s lives.

FEAR

Such a massive change can be frightening. Won’t the government access all our e-memories and spy on us? Since George Orwell published his masterpiece novel
1984,
the idea of government as Big Brother has loomed large in rational critiques of real government policies as well as in conspiracy theorist outcry. We like to use the term Little Brother. If Big Brother rules the authoritarian vision of a surveillance society, Little Brother rules the “democratized” vision. It is a society of omnipresent surveillance in which the recording equipment is not controlled by a single central authority, but by millions of individuals and private entities. Total Recall is perfectly consistent with social values behind the inspiration of the Internet, in which I’m proud to say I also played an early role.

Our culture will need to develop a whole new body of etiquette about who may record whom when and where. Our sense of privacy will continue to evolve, as it has since everyone knew everyone else’s business in the village life of agricultural economies. There is more to say on this subject and potential unintended consequences in the coming age of Total Recall. I’ll get to those issues in the third part of this book, after we look at the big impacts it will have on these key areas of life: the workplace, our health, our capacity for learning, and our most personal intimate relationships. In the remainder of this first part of the book we’ll look at a bit of the history that got us here, my part in the revolution so far, and what the proliferation of e-memories and their use is going to do to the memories in our heads.

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

The arc of human development from the Stone Age through the present can be seen as an ongoing quest for Total Recall. One thing that has defined our progress as the preeminent species on the planet has been our ability to develop better and better systems of memory.

Our greatest innovation was language, a unique system for representing, storing, and sharing knowledge. Language made us into the first and only truly cultural animal, able to share both highly specific and powerfully abstract bits of knowledge across societies and down through generations.

The next great turning point in human development was the invention of writing, which it became necessary to invent as the needs of record keeping in agrarian city-states outstripped the limits of naked memory. Thanks to writing, human knowledge snow-balled over just a few thousand years and brought us most recently into the Information Age. Around the middle of the last century the digital computer joined our mnemonic arsenal and rapidly precipitated another epochal change in how we manage our knowledge. A mere generation ago, the amassing of information was so expensive that a world of Total Recall could be no more than a wild science-fiction dream.

But themes of Total Recall have been explored in science fiction for decades.

In
Hominids,
Robert J. Sawyer imagines the citizen of the future sporting a body-implanted “companion” computer that transmits information about his or her location, as well as three-dimensional images of exactly what he or she is doing, to an “alibi archive.” The archive protects against false accusations.

In
The Truth Machine,
James Halperin describes a world where not only is recording common, but everyone testifies using a perfect lie detector. Crime is drastically reduced. But when people want to talk candidly in a free and open discussion, they must turn off their recording equipment.

The 2004 movie
The Final Cut
depicts a world where people pay to have their babies’ brains implanted with memory chips, called Zoes, that record everything those children see and hear throughout their lives. When the person dies, the chip is removed and a professional “cutter”—in this case a somber Robin Williams—goes through the chip’s footage to edit his or her life down to a (flattering) feature-length movie called a Rememory, which is played for friends and family at the memorial. Cutters can make “saints out of criminals,” as Williams’s character does with the life of a child abuser. The movie also shows protesters with placards demanding “the right to forget” and darkly depicts the lengths to which some people might be willing to go to get their hands on the private life recordings of a political enemy.

Another common theme of sci fi is digital immortality, whereby a person’s lifetime of experience, knowledge, and personality are simulated by a computer. In the Superman movies, the Fortress of Solitude can create an on-screen likeness of Superman’s wise and stately father, Jor-El, which is able to answer questions about Kryp tonian history, technology, and culture. In the British TV sitcom
Red Dwarf
the last human in the universe, David Lister, is forced to endure the company of a hologramatic simulation of his insufferable prat of an ex-crewmate, Arnold Rimmer. And in the American TV espionage series
La Femme Nikita,
the character Madeline is virtually resurrected in a similar fashion. As the character Quinn explains: “Madeline’s psychological and analytical profiles were extensively documented. It was a question of merging them with [an] artificial intelligence program.” Thus the steely intelligence director—or at least, the benefit of her lifetime of experience—continues to aid the living after her death.

Science fiction can be fun and stimulating, but one of the best recent sketches of what Total Recall might actually look like comes from Donald Norman’s 1992 nonfiction book,
Turn Signals Are the Facial Expression of Automobiles
. Norman, an expert on human-machine interface and design, proposes that in the future everyone will have a lifelong companion he called the Teddy—a “personal life recorder.”

In Norman’s vision, this device would be issued very early in life, perhaps at age two or three, and dressed up in the guise of a toddler-friendly toy. Because the devices would be in the hands of young children, the first life recorder would be soft and cuddly, like a plush bear—hence the name Teddy. The Teddy needn’t be limited to just the passive recording of a child’s actions and words. It could be designed to be interactive, and help him or her learn to read, write, draw, and sing.

By starting so young, the Teddy would end up storing a great deal of your life experience. You would become quite intimate with your Teddy. It would “know” all about you and could answer questions about your past. At the same time, it could give you access to knowledge and information from the Internet and other sources. When you outgrew your stuffed-animal phase, your Teddy would change form to match your growing sophistication and interests. Its guise would change, but its complete record of your personal experiences and knowledge would always follow you.

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

The Teddy is science fiction, but just barely. Total Recall is coming, and young children might be one of the first segments of society to have it applied to them. Many parents won’t be able to resist. Today’s children are already extensively surveilled. They are monitored by microphone while they sleep. They are relentlessly photographed and videoed by camera-happy grown-ups. Some are even fitted with directional radio or GPS tracking devices while out and about. Some preschools provide live Web cameras so parents can look in on the kids’ activities from work. Some parents buy “nanny cams,” which allow them to spy on their children’s caretakers and other domestic help. (Superficially echoing Norman, nanny cams can be bought in the guise of teddy bears.) Older kids are given cell phones so that they, unlike every previous generation, never have any excuse for being unreachable or untraceable for longer than the time it takes to drive through a tunnel.

Parents do all this for two reasons: for their children’s safety (or perceived safety), and to create a trove of memories of what they were like at each fleeting stage of development. The new wave of cheap and unobtrusive recording devices extends parents’ already widely exercised ability to monitor and record their precious charges. Given today’s ethos of “hyperparenting,” it’s hard to imagine the trend stalling or reversing anytime soon. For all these reasons, we can expect one of the vanguards of lifelogging to be children. These are the same future citizens who will be the most enthusiastic and least conflicted about embracing the technology of Total Recall.