Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything (21 page)

So how will we adapt to being recorded? Will it be a free-for-all ? Will we pass more restrictive laws? Recording someone talking without their permission is already illegal in many places. Customs will no doubt evolve regarding when it is socially acceptable to record. In one culture, it may be good manners just to let people know you are recording. Another culture may deem lifelogging in the company of others an absolute taboo. Birthday parties might be fair game, while first dates are not.

I think requiring consent to record will be the likely direction of custom and law, and technology will be developed to this end. When several of us gather, our devices will communicate information about who is allowed to record whom. If I chat with Ted and Mary, Ted may consent to my recording while Mary does not. My log of the conversation would then have all images of Mary blurred and all of her speech erased. At the same time, she might have allowed Ted to record her.

New sorts of relationships will arise from the adoption of life logging. There will be those you trust to record and not divulge. There will be those you trust to not record. Perhaps making promises on the record will become a milestone in relationships.

I am not dogmatic about absolutely continuous recording. I think we will sometimes shut off the recording and say things off the record. We may even occasionally stop recording just to have the “novelty” of memories that exist only in our heads. Even so, if people only logged a tenth of their lives, the changes in society would still be dramatic. And even a tenth of a life logged would be enormous and significant—how I wish I had a tenth of my grandfather’s life. Once we get a taste of a tenth we will want much more.

ADAPTING IN COURT

Could your e-memories be forced to testify against you? Richard Nixon tried the route of plausible deniability, saying, “You can say ‘I can’t recall . . . ,’ ” but tape recordings of his conversations demolished his denials.

Today in the USA, you can be compelled to produce a diary as part of discovery in a court case. If e-memories are considered a digital diary, they would surely be treated the same way. However, a recent court case ruled against the state’s being able to compel a man to divulge an encryption key for his hard drive, explaining that it would violate his right against self-incrimination. As the case wound through the courts, one judge opined, “Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory. . . . They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.” This case gives us a glimpse of hope that the law may eventually come to protect our digital memories. Falling a little short of this, some lawyers are arguing that searching one’s hard drive should be considered especially invasive, more akin to having your body searched than having your papers searched, and thus requiring a higher standard of justification.

I believe that some sensitive information will be stored in a “Swiss data bank,” an actual offshore, encrypted, secret account, which you can plausibly deny the existence of. It may take having several such accounts, so that if evidence was unearthed indicating that you had one, you could turn over the least sensitive. Furthermore, just as secret agents sometimes use a code phrase to indicate they have been compromised, there may be an optional password to the Swiss data bank—intended to be handed over to the authorities—that digitally shreds or somehow hides away some key pieces. It could also function to add all kinds of erroneous data throughout the store, putting the veracity of any of it in doubt.

My advice on hiding information is amoral; it can be used for both good and bad. I’m not aiming to help the next Nixon or pedophile (the court case regarding the encryption key involved a man who had child pornography on his hard drive). Those who commit illegal or immoral acts may be best served by actually deleting their records, but I really don’t care if they get good advice or not. I do know that protecting data can be essential to the man holding a Bible study in his house in China, or a homosexual in Iran, both of whom face government persecution. By helping protect such individuals from their tyrannical governments, we can also ensure that liberal governments don’t have the chance to become more tyrannical. That’s the spirit behind the United States Fifth Amendment, and I want to see the law, society, and technology move in keeping with that spirit.

After hearing one of our lectures on MyLifeBits, it is pretty common for people to express other concerns about having their e-memories used against them. What if the GPS record of my position over time is used to infer that I was speeding? Could I get a ticket? What if the health information I am tracking shows the likelihood of a medical condition—could my insurance company use that as grounds to cancel my coverage? The complete answer to these issues will take time to develop, and will span technology (like the Swiss data bank), law (such as a recognition of the right to not testify against oneself digitally), and business (such as a recognition by health insurance companies that they save money, due to improved overall health, by guaranteeing continued coverage to those who track more information). We will gradually adapt.

ADAPTATION STARTS NOW

Many of the changes coming are not just Total Recall issues, and they’re not just out in the future. People often query me about the security of my e-memories, and wonder whether I’ve created a treasure trove for hackers and identity thieves. They don’t seem to realize that their present, tiny, e-memories already contain everything an identity thief needs—and their physical recycling bin is an even more attractive target.

Regardless of law and custom it will become harder and harder to know for sure if you are being recorded, due to continued miniaturization. You
might
be recording me; I can’t be sure. And I will act just the same thinking you might record me as I would knowing for sure you will record me. Steve Mann demonstrates this in an experiment called MaybeCam. Steve and friends go out in bulky shirts with a dark Plexiglas panel in the front—similar to the domes that hide surveillance cameras—and printed with:

For
your
protection, a video record of you and your establishment
may
be
transmitted
and
recorded
at
remote
locations.

ALL CRIMINAL ACTS PROSECUTED!!!

Some of these MaybeCam shirts have cameras behind them, some do not. People react as if they are being recorded even if none of the shirts have cameras.

We will cross the threshold into living much of our lives with the possibility of being recorded long before lifelogging becomes mainstream. And there is already more than enough value in your present e-memory to warrant replication and backup. E-gossip is well under way; the Internet is already teeming with compromising home videos and photos. Were no further progress to take place toward Total Recall, the need to adapt in every area I’ve discussed is just as strong and urgent.

Life with Total Recall seems as alien to us now as the first automobiles must have felt to the horseback riders they roared past. But Total Recall, like the automobile, is rejected only at the price of giving up great advantages. The greatest failure of adaptation would be the failure to take advantage of the new technology. How sad it would be to lose memories or to fail to pass on a digital legacy. What a mistake to miss out on improved health, learning, productivity, or self-awareness. We need to adapt to reap the benefits.

CHAPTER 9

GETTING STARTED

A revolution is coming, sure enough, and all over the world people are gradually drifting toward it, recording and storing more and more of their lives. But what if you want to push ahead and experience more of the revolution sooner? You won’t have a research team to take you as far as I have gone, but you can still do quite a lot. You can begin your own Total Recall revolution right now. What follows in this chapter is a plan of action for getting the revolution started in your life, and maybe beyond.

This chapter is about getting started with what we have, even if we have to employ the occasional “hack.” I’ll mention a few products, but the technology is moving so quickly that I suggest paying attention to what these devices fundamentally accomplish, not their bells and whistles or brand names. And of course, check in on
totalrecallbook.com
for the latest updates on services and products that we think mark progress in the march to Total Recall.

STEP I: THE SETUP

Approach your e-memory with a plan and you will get better results. Decide which aspects of your life you want to be able to recall, from physical objects like bowling balls to born-digital items like e-mails and GPS locations.

As I described in Part One, when I started my own Total Recall project back in 1998, I had boxes of papers in storage, foldersful of paper in file drawers, and piles of papers all over my home and office. My shelves overflowed with books, LPs, CDs, VHS videotapes, and DVDs. My photographs were archived in shoe boxes alongside slides in projector carousels. Memorabilia was displayed in curio cabinets and my refrigerator displayed my grandchildren’s latest masterpieces. Just looking at all my stuff was a bit overwhelming, but I decided to go at everything.

You may wish to embark on your e-memory project in a more focused way. But the overall system of recording, storing, and using will remain essentially the same. You may consider, as a friend of mine did, putting together a multigenerational list of all the recipes your family made and/or recorded. My friend found some as far back as five generations. She scanned and/or retyped the recipes—if you go back five generations you can expect a thousand or more—and she included any comments from the recipe’s creator. So there you have a specific set of data recorded and digitally stored. Now. How do you access it? How do you use it? How about a cookbook of recipes with eggs? Or given my health concerns, one without eggs? In fact, that friend made a cookbook that was such a success with her family members that she has begun a second Total Recall project to create a family Web site that will contain the cookbook, all family photos, handwritten letters, blogs, full ge nealogies, birth and death records, health problems, and so forth. No doubt for many people, family is a forum in which Total Recall technologies meet their warmest welcome.

When my son-in-law, Bob, embarked on his Total Recall project, he decided to focus only on photographs. After his old pictures are all scanned, he will be tackling his music. His approach is to break down the entire project into manageable sections by data type: first photos, then music, then videos, then paper, and so forth.

Maybe you want to limit your e-memory at first only to family, or food, or music. Maybe you want to limit it to your health, or your work, or your romantic life.

THE BASIC EQUIPMENT

If you don’t already have the tools of this sort of digital enterprise, you will need to buy them. Most are now fairly familiar in American households. If you think this is just buying more clutter, keep in mind that these tools will easily fit in the space you make in your life by reducing the paper and memorabilia that surrounds you. Moreover, the Total Recall revolution is being built on the strength of a few key fundamental devices and they are all fairly small.

A smartphone

Your cell phone should be a smart one, that is, one that also performs the functions of a personal digital assistant or PDA. At a minimum, it should support: phone, text messaging, instant messaging, camera, Web browsing, e-mail, reminders, and synchronization of your contacts and calendar from wherever in the cloud you keep them. If you can, get one that supports GPS. Music playback is nice too.

Many will let you connect to local Wi-Fi network hotspots when you are in range, giving you a faster connection (and sometimes avoiding airtime fees). The major platforms (Symbian, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and so on) have all kinds of applications that you can install to help you with things like: diaries, health records, lists, time cards, financial records, customer relationship management, expense tracking, and banking.

The smartphone is an absolutely critical tool for lifelogging because you tend to carry it everywhere all the time. It takes pictures, records audio comments, and allows you to type notes and to-do items. It tracks time and place.

A GPS unit

A GPS built into your smartphone might be all you need—as long as you have the software to retrieve the GPS data out of your phone. Many phones ship without such software and it can sometimes be hard to find, even if it exists for your phone. If you can’t get GPS data from your phone, then buy a GPS unit even if you have it built into your camera. After all, you want to know where you have been even when you weren’t taking pictures. If your camera does not have GPS built in, then a separate GPS unit is essential for supplementing your pictures with location information.

I’ve used some Garmin GPS units, and also tried out the Trackstick. Personally, I hate changing batteries, so the rechargeable i Blue 747 is my current favorite. Whatever GPS you get, make sure you can save files in a standard format like GPX. Check that you can actually read the text in your file using a Web browser or a text editor like Notepad or Word. That way you will always have latitude/longitude coordinates in a format you can access.

A digital camera

Pictures taken by smartphones are better than no pictures, but at present only dedicated cameras provide really acceptable quality. The good news is that virtually any digital camera these days takes decent pictures and—very important—stamps the date and time on each photo. At the time of writing, only a few cameras support built-in GPS, but if you can afford one with GPS, get it—because where something happened is just as important to your memory as when it happened. I hope by the time you read this that GPS in cameras is mainstream, and I am willing to bet that by 2013, nearly all cameras will have GPS. If you don’t get a camera with GPS, then make sure not to skip the purchase of a separate GPS unit.