Life logging – Memory and Forgetting 10th February 2009

Here are a few things that I thought of about on the discussion about Life Logging, memory and forgetting on the 10th of February.

• The internet in some ways reminds me of rubbish dumb. It stores everybody rubbish just like the things that we throw out in our real rubbish. A lot of people are very careful about what they will or won’t throw in the rubbish so shouldn’t we be as careful about what we are putting on the internet. Will anybody really looking through all of this rubbish on the internet. It might be there but does anybody really care. The internet might make our daily rubbish more accessible to the world but is anybody really going to do anything with it
  

• We talked a little bit about how technology is recording our every move like online banking but the banks have always recorded what we do.
  

• A point came up at some stage about the technology having great ability to record thin (factual or numeric) information but lacked the ability to re-call emotional feelings that we had at an instance. To some extent I disagree with this as I think flickr and facebook allow people to look at their friends photos of an event or place where they were, bringing back feelings to the viewer. I don’t think that they would ever be as exact as there were at a moment in time but do think that feelings can be recorded or a person reminded of them using technology.
  

• I think we need to forget what is not important to us any more so we can develop as people and in societies.
  

• It’s easier for us to move forward if we forget the past.
  

• Not forgetting is an education for the future but is a limitation for exploration in the future. It can limit creativity as we may stick to what we know works. It can hinder creativity. If I think about my website. Trying to start a new one it would be very hard to design one differently because it is stuck in my head. Computers record and force the memories further into our heads.
  

• Having the memory of something not perfect in your mind can also create and an interesting attachment to our feelings about that memory. Often if something is replayed to me factually (for example on a video) it can change the feelings I had about what happened at the time in good and bad ways.

One small idea that I thought about how technology could help the memory is; a game that would show people something visual and then test the person’s memory of it. I think there could be more questioning or less guidance by computers to help users try and use their memory.

Could we make a computer to act like us and make mistakes like we do, forget occasionally? We could correct it. It could test our memory. If we haven’t accessed something could the computer forget it. Computers games could do this with levels and then more space to do the level again or re-design it again. Like the game Little Big Planet. http://www.littlebigplanet.com/

I think there is definitely too many of our emails stored. It would be great if you had to choose to save it rather than choosing to delete it. This may also encourage me to reply to an email when I receive it rather than putting it off till later.