Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything (25 page)

The real answer to what is the best backup is: have more than one.

STAY CURRENT, STAY GOLDEN

Some care is needed for file formats to make sure you can still read all your files fifty years from now. In order to avoid the Dear Appy scenario, follow three guidelines.

First, regularly convert your files to the latest formats. For example, suppose a new standard for photos called JPEG2015 takes the world by storm. Convert all your all JPEG photos to this new standard.

Second, whenever possible use “golden” formats that you believe will be supported “nearly forever.” A good hint of such a format is that it is used by millions of people millions of times. Even if such a format ever became obsolete, the large market for them would guarantee that solutions would be provided to convert the old format to something new. Good examples of golden formats are JPEG, MPEG-2, HTML, and PDF.

Third, make a print version of your interactive data. For example, every year I print out an annual report from Microsoft Money to PDF. That way, no matter what happens with the Money format files in the future, I have a version that I can at least look at and search for text.

PROTECT YOUR PRIVACY

As discussed in Chapter 8, everyone needs to be concerned about the privacy and security of his or her e-memories. As we wrote this book, Jim Gemmell had someone use his credit card number for a Las Vegas spending spree. I have found some solutions that work very well.

As with backups, I believe in layers of security to protect my privacy. Invest in a firewall as a first line of defense. Nearly all the home routers have a built-in firewall.

As a second layer, make your computer secure. Make sure it has all the latest patches and is running good security software. Protect access to your computer by use of a strong password (do a search on the Web to learn what constitutes a strong password). Make your notebook require the password whenever it is started up, so that if you lose it someone can’t just flip it open and get your stuff. The same goes for your smartphone—always password-protect it. Get a smartphone that also lets you remotely wipe the data if someone steals it.

As a third layer of defense, encrypt the data on your hard drive. That way, if someone pulls out your drive and puts it in another computer, he will not be able to read the contents. If you are Windows user, get a version of Windows that supports BitLocker, which implements this kind of drive encryption. Use this encryption for your external backup drive too.

ENJOY IT ALL TOO

Once you are lifelogging, I suggest buying some extra equipment to get the fullest enjoyment. Displaying your photographs and video cliplets throughout your home can be immensely rewarding, as a growing number of people are finding. You see something wonderful every day instead of waiting months to get the inclination to dust off the old memories.

If you don’t have a large-screen high-definition TV, buy one, and connect it to a device that can display. If you have Windows Media Center for one of your PCs, you can display media on the TV from the PC using an “extender” such as the Linksys DMA2100, or an Xbox 360. You can also buy LCD screens from HP with built-in extenders. If you are an Apple user, get an Apple TV.

Also, add some small-screen versions of the same thing, such as Samsung’s Photo Frame series. These little picture frames wirelessly connect to your home network to spread your e-memories all over your home, from your end table and kitchen counter.

With these three steps, you are well on your way to living in the Total Recall world. But it is just the beginning. In the coming years Total Recall will get much better as increased storage, better software, and a proliferation of sensor hardware makes the picture complete. Which brings me to the final step. . . .

STEP IV: BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR (OPTIONAL)

The steps above will get you started with Total Recall today, but there is a lot that can be done to make it easier for people to participate in the Total Recall revolution. Total Recall holds great opportunities for entrepreneurs to serve the public—and make a lot of money.

Hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear a pitch from some start-up that wants me as an angel investor or as a board member. Very few win me over. Below is my top ten list of Total Recall ideas I’d
like
to hear someone pitch to me.

START- UP # 10—PICTURE-TAKINGMIRROR

Have you ever seen one of those photo exhibits in which someone has taken a picture of his kids in a set pose over a sequence of years so that you can see them change over time? One fellow, Richard Hanson, has gone even further and taken a picture of his son every single day of his life. The result is utterly compelling, even for us strangers. Imagine if it were of yourself or a loved one. I wish I had a mirror in my hall with a camera behind it that would take my picture every day. Actually, I’d like to give one to each of my grandchildren. An alternative to the mirror would be to put the camera in one of those digital picture frames—then you’d also have a potential videophone.

START- UP # 9—CONVINCINGCHAT BOT FROM MY HISTORY

I’ve already invested in MyCyberTwin.com, so you know I like this idea. The company’s chat bots are sitting in servers and providing help services to thousands of customers a day with questions about banking, tax forms, and other service requests. MyCyberTwin is great, but we are still waiting for the first company that can take a heap of someone’s correspondence (e-mail, chats, letters, et cetera) and produce a really convincing impersonation. Any team that can take my corpus and turn it into my digitally immortal chatting self will get my support. And that’s not just vanity—if you can imitate me, you can imitate help-desk personnel and make a ton of money.

START-UP #8—DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

It sounds great to declutter your life by scanning all your documents, but full-text search on a heap of files is not always the best way to retrieve information. This service (or program that you run) will automatically group similar items. It will build a knowledge base of every kind of document it can learn about, for example from all major utility and phone companies. It will be able to pull out the date, the total, and who the bill is from. It will create descriptive file names for all your documents and also create a human-readable XML file containing all the information it was able to extract. You can send in a box of documents and get back files with descriptive names in meaningful folders. For example, a file called “AT&T Bill 2008-09-17 total 87.23” in the “AT&T” folder, which is in the “Bills” folder. An accompanying file will include things like the address the bill was sent to and the breakdown of long-distance and local charges.

START-UP #7—UNIFIED STORAGE

Microsoft took at stab at unifying all my storage with the WinFS project, but gave up. The idea is to end different data types living in different “silos,” like e-mail in my e-mail app, photos in my photo app, music in my music app, and so on. Instead, I can deal with them all at once and lump some e-mails together with some spreadsheets, or quickly jump from a photo to documents created on the same date. Also, I should be able to add comments and tags to everything, not just a few special types.

Short of a major operating system really solving this, there may be a place for some smaller start-up to hatch an idea for bringing together parts of my scattered data—say, grouping my e-mail with my files, or perhaps my Facebook entries with my chat logs. I’m not sure how such a smaller start-up can succeed in this space, but someone else might have a better imagination for it.

START-UP #6—TRAVELOGUE CAMERA

I want something like the SenseCam to take on vacation. It needs to be smaller and more attractive than the SenseCam prototypes I use now. In fact, it ought to become a desirable fashion accessory. It must include GPS and a microphone for voice annotation. It could be a device that talks to my cell phone and uses the cell phone’s storage. Just as important as the hardware is summarization software. I want to go camping with my son’s family for a week. He and I each wear one. At the end, our trip is automatically summarized and photo albums are made. We can view animated maps of our travels. Great photos taken by others of the same place that are publicly available (say, from Flickr) may be included. In short, wear one of these and get a sharp-looking travelogue with zero effort at the end of your trip.

START-UP #5—WEARABLE HEALTH MONITORING DEVICES

This will actually be a whole class of start-ups. The typical pitch should go like this: We have device X. It is easy to wear, as either part of your clothing, or as a little wristband, or the like. It sends all its data to your cell phone, where an application stores the data and then forwards it either to your PC or to some service in the Internet that logs it forever. It must be easy to recharge. Wear it and forget about it. You’ll get notified when something of interest comes up. Important events might automatically be forwarded to your doctor. The BodyBugg is a forerunner in this area that will include fitness monitors, pacemakers, and hopefully new in-body devices.

START-UP #4—CELL PHONE LOGGER

As I’ve said, a smart cell phone is a killer device for Total Recall. My cell phone should record my GPS location and call log, record all text messages, support note taking and dear-diary entries—both text and audio, and even video—and store it in the cloud. I’m already invested in reQall, which is a great step in cell-phone-based memory creation. Evernote also looks hot. We created some prototype software in this space and it wasn’t too hard to get to a proof of concept. I expect to see some strong, more comprehensive efforts soon.

START-UP #3—DEAR APPY FORMAT CONVERTING SERVICE

Perhaps it could be called Format Master or Yours Forever. The idea is to convert all your files that are in formats that are stale or are fringe formats in danger of becoming stale. Files would be converted to the latest format. In addition, some “ just-in-case versions” could be created, such as PDF print versions of spreadsheets and Web pages. This could be a service that you upload your data to, or you might run a program on your PC. The service should be provided to storage providers. That is, suppose
storage.com
stores files for you. They would contract Format Master to keep your files up to date if you pay them an extra three dollars a year.

START-UP #2—DIGITAL AFTERLIFE

What happens to my bits when I die? I need a contract to store my data for two hundred years (including the Format Master service). I should be able to put some information in a time capsule, for example, not releasing the material to my family for twenty years, and only releasing to the public after one hundred years. Furthermore, for those who haven’t been practicing Total Recall, we will want to send a box of their stuff (photos, documents, et cetera) to a service that will scan it all and put it in this digital cemetery. There are already some companies doing memorials and promising storage, but I still see room for a really innovative company to take this to new heights.

START-UP #1—SWISS DATA BANK

Storage must be safe from hackers, safely backed up, and plausibly deniable. It would be preferable if the data bank only ever saw my encrypted bits, so it couldn’t divulge what it has, even if it wanted to. There will be specialty Swiss data banks, such as a health data bank or financial records data bank (like HealthVault and Wells Fargo, respectively, but with deniability). Whoever can build the most trusted brand name will reap big rewards. Perception will be as important as the technology; the slightest doubts about your brand could kill the business. A variant on the concept would set up peer-to-peer encrypted storage to virtually eliminate storage costs for the provider, while adding another layer between governments and your data.

CHAPTER 10

THE FUTURE

If the world follows my lead, Total Recall will be a very private matter. Encryption will be universal, e-memories will reside in Swiss data banks, and sharing will be careful and limited. I think the younger generation ought to eventually see their casual approach to privacy as a mistake and scale back their public disclosures. But maybe they won’t. Maybe my attitudes regarding privacy are headed toward extinction. There are those who say privacy is gone forever and good riddance to it.

If lifelogging becomes life-blogging, then the successors to Facebook and Twitter could have detailed records of every parameter of your life, with location, biometrics, sights, and sounds. Imagine for a moment that all memories are shared. One could then dream of data-mining all these memories, looking for collective good, much the way that my personal memories will be mined for my own good. There may even arise some kind of cyber communism that demands all of your information for the public good—for example your location, to help with city planning and emergency management. There could be an appeal to your own advantage: Just as
Amazon.com
and other Web sites track sales to predict items that you might want to buy, the collective cyber-mind might suggest many activities, places, and things that would be to your benefit or liking.

I don’t believe it. Embracing complete openness is like rescheduling Judgment Day for today. “What you did in secret will be shouted from the rooftops” might as well be the name of the next social networking Web site, echoing the words of Christ. But who can say for sure? I think that the future more than ten years from now is very hard, even impossible, to predict.

For one thing, it is simply hard to wrap one’s mind around the distant future. Passing on my e-memories to my grandchildren would be exciting enough—who can digest the idea of centuries ful of e-memories? You have thousands, if not millions, of ancestors from the past thousand years. What if you had all of their e-memories? Would one’s own family tree attract more attention than the History Channel? Would my family have a top-ten ancestor list, and a family highlight reel? Doubtless medical history would be pored over and different conditions identified in different branches. Genes would be compared to find ancestors similar to me, and lessons would be drawn from their lifestyle and health results. I can imagine drawing inspiration from an ancestor with similar interests to mine. I can also imagine angst over a tragic ancestor with some resemblance to me. I’d talk to his cyber twin: “But why did you want that?” “Did you realize . . . ?” If some great-great-grandsire had a gap in his e-memories, I might try to get access to the memories of his friends and relatives to try to piece together what he was keeping secrets about.