 | Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com | THE TOTAL RECALL REVOLUTION IS INEVITABLE.
IT WILL CHANGE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.
IT HAS ALREADY BEGUN.
What if you could remember everything? Soon, if you choose, you will be able to conveniently and affordably record your whole life in minute detail. You would have Total Recall. Authors Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell draw on experience from their MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to explain the benefits to come from an earth-shaking and inevitable increase in electronic memories. In 1998 they began using Bell, a luminary in the computer world, as a test case, attempting to digitally record as much of his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned. Everything he did on his computer was captured. He wore an automatic camera, an arm-strap that logged his bio-metrics, and began recording telephone calls. This experiment, and the system created to support it, put them at the center of a movement studying the creation and enjoyment of e-memories.
Since then the three streams of technology feeding the Total Recall revolution-- digital recording, digital storage, and digital search, have become gushing torrents. We are capturing so much of our lives now, be it on the date--and location--stamped photos we take with our smart phones or in the continuous records we have of our emails, instant messages, and tweets--not to mention the GPS tracking of our movements many cars and smart phones do automatically. We are storing what we capture either out there in the "cloud" of services such as Facebook or on our very own increasingly massive and cheap hard drives. But the critical technology, and perhaps least understood, is our magical new ability to find the information we want in the mountain of data that is our past. And not just Google it, but data mine it so that, say, we can chart how much exercise we have been doing in the last four weeks in comparison with what we did four years ago. In health, education, work life, and our personal lives, the Total Recall revolution is going to change everything. As Bell and Gemmell show, it has already begun.
Total Recall provides a glimpse of the near future. Imagine heart monitors woven into your clothes and tiny wearable audio and visual recorders automatically capturing what you see and hear. Imagine being able to summon up the e-memories of your great grandfather and his avatar giving you advice about whether or not to go to college, accept that job offer, or get married. The range of potential insights is truly awesome. But Bell and Gemmell also show how you can begin to take better advantage of this new technology right now. From how to navigate the serious questions of privacy and serious problem of application compatibility to what kind of startups Bell is willing to invest in and which scanner he prefers, this is a book about a turning point in human knowledge as well as an immediate and practical guide.
Total Recall is a technological revolution that will accomplish nothing less than a transformation in the way humans think about the meaning of their lives. "What would happen if we could instantly access all the information we were exposed to throughout our lives?" -Bill Gates, from the Foreword |
Average Customer Rating:   A top pick for general and college-level collections across the board TOTAL RECALL: HOW THE E-MEMORY REVOLUTION WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING comes from a legendary computer scientist and a Microsoft senior researcher who reveal the social, political and technological changes coming from a new digital revolution. New innovations in memory and search techniques will soon make it possible to record and recall everything one has ever seen or done. Total Recall will have vast impact across society and will change the world: this study tells how to anticipate changes and is a top pick for general and college-level collections across the board.
My Cloud is Lacking Loved it!!! You don't have to be a scientist to enjoy TR. GB managed to intertwine the technical with personal anecdotes and stories enabling the reader, no matter the level of knowledge, to get it! Stuff from the past, today, future, and beyond--help with issues we all face now, but he also stretches us into the future.
I read it cover to cover. Now in my 5th career, author, many times I've found my memory lacking (character attributes, where did I reference her parents, his quirky habit, what book/chapter in the series--if only my e-memory were in place). With each book, I create more and more piles. Being a piler I gained insight into how I can minimize the clutter and find more information as a result. Because of the way they set up the "Annotated References and Resources" I can easily dip in to get help on my current organization issues.
A fun read.
mj:) Author, "Murder in the House of Beads, Intercept, and Checkmate"
e-Memories, light the corners of my screen What to say about a book claiming, 'Everything' will be changed by the ability to capture, 'Total' digital records of everything that happens to you? This book says creating e-Memories are here, mixed with, some of it's on the way.
'Everything' consists of a much lower resolution then reality. Just digital images (scan, photo, a small bit of video), perhaps audio, and text. Not 24/7. No stereoscopic images. Nothing 3-D. No touch, smell, taste. No shiny gold-tape playback of e-Memories like in the movie, 'Brainstorm.'
'Total' consisting of some things we choose, some things we don't, some have legal issues.
Without a staff, interns, custom written software, hardware, and funding by a large corporation, it seems clear that 'Everything' and 'Total' will be boiled down to tiny e-Memories for most of us.
The premise is great and the current delivery may not be here, doesn't mean that this discussion isn't worth the read. I like the book for revealing so much about where current technology could go. Setting the goal for, 'a lifetimes worth of data' brings in very interesting issues. Perhaps, greater usability could come from intelligent built software for managing data. The less maintenance one does, the greater the benefit. A good example is automatic time and location stamping of digital photos.
The book does cover some interesting concepts about how embedded and integrated technology could have a greater impact on our lives. Though it seems to shy away from the corporate economic hold that technology has on individual data. Who owns your data? How private is private? How secure is it? Will it be accessible at a future point? How does it all get paid for? Will we sale Ad Space to support our e-Memories? Will people make comments on your e-Memories? Do people really want to spend time collecting data about their lives?
The methods described don't really address people who already do keep handwritten or visual journals. An area that technology has found difficult to solve. Yet, Leonardo Da Vinci's journals are some of the most interesting records of man we have from the past. Not because it tells us what his heart rate was, or which streets in Milan he walked, but because his creative thinking was captured in drawings and text. I believe that until common technology supports direct input of handwriting and drawing, it'll be difficult to have paperless e-Memories.
According to the authors, having a digital version of something, means you discard the original. Difficult for me to believe? Just because there's a digital copy of the Mona Lisa, I would not throw the original away. Even the author makes the point in getting started (Page 204) that an important task is to, "Third, make a print version of your interactive data." Paper requires no power source to access and no decrypting. There is a bit of irony, that the authors printed a book to discuss everything becoming digital and paperless.
It isn't just the software formats that become inaccessible, but also the physical format. Floppy disk and SCSI hard drives are losing the ability to connect with new computers. How far into the future will the current format of CDs and DVDs reach? How many different times will we purchase, 'Dark Side of the Moon,' or 'Snow White? ' Moving the data forward becomes more difficult the more you record and the idea that one has to keep converting it along, makes paper look the most stable storage. When I'm gone, who will keep converting my digital memories into future formats?
Current technology seems small when compared to how big and infinite the universe really is. Can our lives really be captured in a few bytes of data? Do these records constitute a copy of who I am? Even the vast Internet, as big as it is, is still missing a lot of data. How will the Internet deal with some of these issues? I like this book a lot, not for what it says as believable, but because I hope it will spark the conversation about how to make technology that serves the user. What is the lifelong format? How do I get my data out of software and formats that go obsolete?
This book frames the most important questions everyone should be asking about the function and purpose of technology in our lives. Do we want to spend our time creating, maintaining, and using any technology that gives us no control, integration, or future access? EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME On his website, The Technium, Kevin Kelly (of Wired and Whole Earth fame)
writes about "What Technology Wants."
Here's what IT wants - "Everything, Everywhere, All the Time."
In IT's strive toward omniscience, it's clear that the next key piece is
Total Recall of all personal, individual memories.
Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell lay out precisely how and why that will happen.
I've been in the memory business for over 40 years:
first as a student of neurobiology at MIT, then as an AI researcher at Stanford,
and finally as a physician. (Search "Bob Blum" for my essays on
machine consciousness and other Big Questions.)
I had heard of Gordon Bell for decades, but had never met him
until recently when I heard Gordon and Jim present this work
at the (Xerox) PARC Forum. (That video is now on the PARC Forum archive).
That prompted me to buy the book.
Despite being age 75, Gordon is a lively, energetic spirit
who readily deflected my public query/position ,
"don't neuroscientists consider forgetting to be crucial
as a means of increasing memory relevance?"
(My concern then and still is on maintaining high signal to noise ratio -
quieting the mind to achieve the zen of pure signal.)
Young Jim Gemmell is also bright and engaging.
Although I'm guessing that Jim contributed half of the leg work,
the book is presented as a first person account of Gordon's 75 year life.
The work is a delightful combination of the future of personal data capture
as well as a recounting of their experiences with MyLifeBits, a system implementation.
That work was presented in Scientific American in March 2007 online - qv.)
Gordon has ridden the ascendancy of IT from prebirth
(the family business was Bell Electric), through his student days at MIT,
through his years as principal architect of the DEC System PDP and VAX computers
(that ruled the IT world for a decade), and finally to his current position
as eminence grise at Microsoft.
This book was a great stroll down memory lane.
I love visiting the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.
I had forgotten that this wonderful museum was made possible by Gordon Bell.
He describes his efforts at collecting the oral histories that went into the museum,
and how much easier it would have been with Total Recall.
Imagine having every conversation of Charles Babbage, Thomas Watson,
John Von Neumann, and Alan Turing.)
Now, here's their main point - as you live your life, COLLECT EVERYTHING:
every visual field, every conversation, every location, every accessible bodily function -
not merely every email and web page. They describe a panoply of present and future sensors
that will perhaps make it effortless: micro video cams, physiologic monitors, gps,etc.
Ok, I've got 40 physical file drawers (I'm a fellow packrat),
but that proposition raises hackles even with me as it must with every reader.
Really? Isn't that endlessly time-consuming and distracting?
(They say "no" - I say "maybe.") "Let the system do all the work," they say,
silently collecting all you see, hear, do, and are.
Then, at least, it's all potentially available, if and when you want to retrieve it.
(Record your every moment from birth, then these e-memories will be available to
your great grandchildren, your biographer, and your therapist.)
Their goal is identical to Google's:
index and make readily available every single experience.
(They describe MIT researcher Deb Roy's 24 by 7 real-time video capture
of every instant in the life of his new born baby for three years:
bizarre perhaps but priceless for students of language.)
Health, work, education, travel, personal life are all grist for Total Recall.
The health care piece especially resonated with me, since I had developed
a system at Stanford that discovered medical knowledge from stored personal data.
They correctly describe the huge importance that will accrue to each of us
as we gather data on our day to day health and habits.
Refrigerator to Gordon - "What? No vegetables? Just Ice Cream?!"
Computer to Bob - "You've sat too long. Time to get up and bike."
Gordon describes his several episodes of severe coronary disease including cardiac arrest.
Heart disease, like most diseases, is brought on one day at a time over a lifetime.
The remedy is self observation and performance monitoring. All our habits need to be recorded.
We are our own best doctors. Not only is the data personally essential,
but it's a great epidemiologic resource. When a close friend died of cancer,
it was tragic that the causative factors had not been captured.
(We are probably swimming in a sea of unidentified carcinogens.)
One thinks of the many potential hazards of collecting data this intimate:
identity theft, denial of insurance coverage, blackmail, and cognitive clutter.
They discuss all of the many pitfalls and present some novel solutions,
eg the self-destructing Swiss Data Bank. They do NOT advocate making your data public.
I had expected (and got) a thorough discussion of their experiences with
personal data capture. But, what a pleasant, upside surprise was the engaging story of
their use by Gordon as he built the Computer Museum, dealt with his heart attacks,
dealt with a poignant incident (the mysterious disappearance/death of his boss,
superstar computer scientist Jim Gray), his deals with dozens of start-ups and
entrepreneurial projects, or his on-going effort at age 75 to build an immortal version
of himself that may be able to grow and learn after his body has been recycled!
(Want to get rich? The book is filled with great ideas for entrepreneurs - untapped gold!)
Yes. 99% of life is banal, but, as they say,
"the palest ink is better than the best memory,"so RECORD IT ALL.
I award the book a mere 4 stars, only because it is not "War and Peace."
But, if you work with computers and are interested in the future, this book is for you.
"Everything, Everywhere, All the time" is inevitable, at least for some of us. Worth Reading Great Ideas on Benefits of Total Recall I think in general most people can give you plenty of reasons why you wouldn't want total recall. Bell provides great examples of the benefits and advantages. I think many people will consider this a value proposition even given the potential risks or negatives that may occur. Very happy with the purchase at the very least you should give the sample a try. |  |
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