Sign of the Times
'Lifelogging' a natural step in recording our lives, sharing experiences in Internet age
The desire to leave proof of one's existence is perhaps the fate of the human race, which in addition to genes, has produced and accumulated much that it hopes to leave to future generations.
Diaries are a good example. The act of recording the goings-on in one's daily life in brief written passages will continue even after liquid crystal display screens replace paper as the medium.
There are various pros to a digital diary. It doesn't take up space, and is easy to preserve. Via blogs, one can even send out a diary directly into the world for others to read. Blog, by the way, is short for "Weblog" -- it is a web diary after all.
The ease with which one can search what happened on a certain day or when one traveled to this place or that is another merit of digital diaries. There's no need to pull out old notebooks; instead, all it takes is a simple search on the computer.
A related research topic in my field of computer science today is the "lifelog." With digital technology advancing by leaps and bounds and storage devices growing larger and more affordable, researchers are attaching small cameras and microphones onto their eyeglasses and onto their collars to record everything they see and hear from the moment they wake up until they go to sleep. They have set up a system to automatically record circumstances surrounding a person -- whether awake or asleep -- such as location using GPS, as well as air temperature and humidity, body temperature, speed of breathing, and heartbeat using a variety of sensors.
Such record-taking was just a pipedream in the past because of the huge size of data recorded this way. However, the technology of storage devices is making improvements around the clock and prices are dropping. According to Gordon Bell, a famous computer scientist and a frontrunner in the field at the age of 75, it will be possible to buy the storage needed to record one's entire life for $100 by the year 2020.
So how does one use such a log? Let's say you misplace something. It will be quite simple to figure out where to look for it: "At Shinjuku Station, I got on the sixth car of the Chuo Line train heading for Tachikawa Station at 10:53, and sat on the sixth seat on the left side of the train. I didn't have the umbrella with me when I got off the train ..." and so on.
We grow more forgetful as we get older. People forget if they took medication in the morning, or when they even last ate. With a lifelog, however, you can find out such information without having to ask someone else. Bell, who practices lifelogging everyday, says in his book that his lifelog has given him self-confidence.
Bell -- who claims his goal for lifelog research is to enable oneself to retrieve the external memory of one's life as one's memory begins to weaken, and argues that the elderly need lifelogging more than anyone else -- embodies the cutting-edge image of the senior citizens of the digital age.
One remaining problem with the lifelog is that regardless of how much information surrounding a person's being and life we record, none of it can tell us what the person was thinking or feeling at the time. In that sense, diaries and blogs have the upper hand.
In response to this deficiency, the use of Twitter as a supplement to the lifelog emerged. Blogs and diaries are often organized summaries of one's day, meaning that the thoughts and feelings recorded at the end of the day may not accurately reflect one's thoughts at the time they occurred. Tweets, in contrast, record what's going on in one's head in real-time such as "I'm hungry now."
What's interesting to note here is that a facility with lifelog devices allowing users to write short notes went mostly unused, but people use Twitter a lot. In the U.S., nowadays, there are online social services that allow users to share their GPS information and even records of their credit card use. People Tweet precisely because they can share -- not hide -- information.
With that in consideration, lifelog researchers, who are going through life with cameras, microphones and sensors all over their bodies for automatic recording, may actually be left behind.
Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance measures that would have been unthinkable in the past have become accepted in many industrialized nations in the name of security. The U.K., which has experienced clashes over Northern Ireland and has endured countless bombings over the years, is a leading nation in the field of surveillance. Anywhere from 4 to 5 million surveillance cameras are reported to have been set up around the country, and residents of London are likely to be captured over 300 times a day on these cameras.
The problem I would like to point out here is missing the ability to access the photos of one's self acquired through these tools. But then again, it's not that far-fetched to imagine a technology that would allow us to zoom only into pieces of photos where we appear a la Google Street View.
The issue of privacy in the Internet age is not so much about preventing others from learning information about ourselves anymore. The focus has shifted toward knowing and managing how our information flows and is handled.
We now live in an era in which the external and online nature of private information no longer fazes us. Lifelogging in such an age no longer remains in the domain of individual record-keeping, but is rather realized as part of social logging. (By Ken Sakamura, professor of Applied Computer Science at the University of Tokyo)
(Mainichi Japan) June 7, 2010