Thursday, October 19th, 2006, 11:17 pm
Memory Aid for the Obsessed
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The CNN ran an article on some mind-boggling research. It addresses the obsession with capturing memories digitally. These things are, in my opinion, close to being pointless because too much information can/must be captured, e.g. sound, video, 3-D models, etc. The list is endless and the information cannot be conveyed and processed by one’s mind unless one lives in the past and reminisces in ‘slow motion’. I suppose it would be a nice way of remembering vacations, but for an indexable mind and knowledgebase, it’s just too big a task.
This particular research project is backed and run by Microsoft. If it ever becomes a reality, let us hope they will be careful with names. Zune is pronounced the same way as “a shag” in Hebrew (yes, the bad meaning; very vulgar) while Vista, at least in Malta, appears to mean “a whore” (or something along these lines, if I recall correctly).
Worth reading: an unrelated article with a Mac-slant, which discusses expansion through bundling of software.
October 20th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
I would tend to agree with your first paragraph. Current streams of thought in physics and microbiology (not to mention numerous other scientific fields) state that the human being can only consciously process about %10 of the information being recieved at any given time. The film “What The Bleep Do We Know” fleshes out the particulars nicely.
It would seem that, to trigger these memories, one doesn’t need even the capabilities we have now. Doesn’t that beg the question of the appropriateness of our current application of said technology?