Software To Back Up Your Brain

As any Baby Boomer will tell you, Americans have more information to cram into their memories than ever. Yet, as we age, our capacity for recall grows weaker. But what if you could capture every waking moment of your entire life, store it on your computer and then recall digital snapshots of everything you've seen and heard with just a quick search? Renowned computer scientist Gordon Bell, head of Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group and founder of the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley, thinks he might be able to do just that. He calls it a "surrogate memory," and what he considers an early version of it even has an official name: MyLifeBits. "The goal is to live as much of life as possible versus spending time maintaining our memory system," Bell explains. Perfect surrogate memory would be supplemental to, but ultimately as good as, your original memory. It could let you listen to every conversation you had when you were 21 or find that photograph of the obscure date you had on summer vacation. As Bell says, it would "supplement (and sometimes supplant) other information-processing systems, including people." MyLifeBits isn't quite there yet, but Bell's nevertheless "gone paperless" for the past decade as part of the project, keeping a detailed, digitized diary that documents his life with photographs, letters and voice recordings. So that he doesn't miss out on important daily events, Bell wears a SenseCam, developed by Microsoft Research, that takes pictures whenever it detects he may want a photograph. The camera's infrared sensor picks up on body heat and takes snapshots of anyone else in the room, adjusting itself as available light changes. Not only does MyLifeBits record your life's digital information, but the software, developed by Bell's researchers Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder, also can help you retrieve it. "MyLifeBits is a system aimed at capturing cyber-content in the course of daily life with the goal of being able to utilize it in various ways at work, in our personal life — e.g. finances, family, health and for our future memory," Bell says. Simply enter a keyword such as "pet," for example, and the search engine will find all available information on your childhood puppy.