Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything

by Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell Narrated by John Haag

Overview

Authors Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell tap their experiences with the MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research for this extraordinary book. What if you could remember everything? With today's technology, that notion becomes more realistic each day. Bell and Gemmell explain what it could all mean. "Readers will be wondering about the consequences . long after they put down this fascinating text ."-Publishers Weekly, starred review

Editorial Reviews

In 1998, Microsoft computer scientists Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmel began a herculean attempt to record Bell's entire life digitally. Not only did they document every particle of his ongoing existence; they also incorporated a digital record of his past, including letters, records, photos, and memorabilia. Not surprisingly, their monumental, technologically sophisticated project attracted widespread media attention on- and offline. Total Recall not only recapitulates the wide parameters of MyLifeBits; it also explains the very real implications of digital memory breakthroughs that in coming years will affect every aspect of human health, history, and behavior.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.

At Microsoft, computer science pioneer Bell has worked with senior researcher Gemmell for years on a project called True Recall, which will allow people to create a "digital diary or e-memory continuously," something they predict will "change what it means to be human" as fundamentally as language development and the invention of writing. Based upon further development and integration of three already-extant technology streams (digital recording devices, memory storage and search engines), the authors have worked toward this "third step" in the development of human memory for a decade and a half. A number of issues will need to be addressed, including privacy; the authors distinguish between being a "life logger," with privately stored digital records, and a "life blogger," whose web posts are accessible to others (like friends or coworkers). Bell and Gemmell outline the tests they've run since 2001, scanning and then cataloguing for retrieval a mass of personal data (documents, photographs, books and articles, web pages visited, instant messages, telephone calls) and wearing miniature cameras that sense light shifts and take automatic photographs. Readers will be wondering about the consequences of "recalling everything you once knew" long after they put down this fascinating text, of particular interest to techies, but clearly written for general readers.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Reviews

An enthusiastic account of the near future when we will be able to record every minute of our lives. Readers may be suspicious that a book introduced by Bill Gates and authored by two of his senior researchers is merely promotional material for a new Microsoft product, but they will come away convinced that the authors are on to something. Bell and Gemmell assert that three streams of technology are nearing a critical mass. First, we are now recording more of our lives with cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras, e-mail, webcams, etc. Second, digital memory will soon be so cheap that everyone will be able to afford to store everything. Third, search technologies far more sophisticated than Google are being developed-by, among others, Microsoft-to retrieve, organize and present immense quantities of data. Within a decade, when these advances are seamlessly integrated, those who choose to "lifelog" will wield awesome powers. They will be able to quickly sort through their "e-memory" for events, conversations, names and numbers, but also patterns of habits, emotional responses, spending, alibis and even physiological data. To illustrate these dazzling possibilities, the authors describe Bell's campaign since 1998 to digitalize his life. Today's poorly integrated sensors, scanners, optical character readers and search software make this a tedious process, but readers will share Bell's pleasure as mountains of paper, files and references vanish to be replaced by instant access to every word or picture, many long-forgotten. Bell concludes with nuts-and-bolts advice on organizing a personal lifelogging program and discusses the thorny privacy and legal issues that will arise when everyone is beingrecorded all the time. Proclamations of the next digital revolution are plentiful, but this cheerful description of another is persuasive and intriguing.

From the Publisher

"I am not sure whether recording everything we see, hear and do is the landfill or landscape of our lives, because thoughts and memories are their own reality. But I am sure that Total Recall is a must read due to its inevitability, seminal nature and clairvoyant authors." -Nicholas Negroponte, author of Being Digital

"Gordon Bell is one of the great visionaries in the computer industry. In Total Recall he paints a picture of a world where computing is far more personal than anything we have seen so far, where digital memory appliances supplement the human mind and store all the details of your life. Like much of Gordon's work it is a characteristically bold and exciting vision of computing. He takes us to a future which is just around the corner, but which would be hard to glimpse without him."
Nathan Myhrvold, co-founder of Intellectual Ventures

"For decades, the tech world has been going gaga for "Moore's Law", which describes how much faster and more powerful personal electronics becomes over time, but in the last decade, most of the really big freakouts have been as a result of the explosion in our ability to capture and store data... What happens when being alive means being in record mode, for everybody? It's a change that is at once astonishing and imminent. Gordon and Jim are at the center of this kind of work, and just the guys to write the book."
Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody

"Total Recall does a marvelous job of exploring first- hand the implications of storing our entire lives digitally. And just in time! - the technology is already here and will be ubiquitous before we know it."
Guy L. Tribble, MD, PhD, Vice President of Software Technology, Apple Inc.

"Economists, along with everyone else, will be astounded by the wide ranging social and personal benefits of Total Recall digital technology."
Tyler Cowen, author of Create Your Own Economy

"As you warm to the ideas expressed in Total Recall, you find yourself reaching for your digital camera to record the moment just gone by."
Donna Dubinsky, CEO of Numenta, co-founder of Palm and Handspring

"Wow! Thanks for this book. I've been fascinated by MyLifeBits for years; it's certainly inspired our thinking at Evernote."
Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote

"Extraordinarily prescient but also entertaining...Total Recall is of paramount importance in the new, increasingly paperless world."
Leslie Berlowitz, Executive Director of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

"Total Recall offers a prescient view of the powerful use of today's information tomorrow. Gordon provides provocative insights, entertaining stories, and fundamental advancements in recall enabled by tools readily available today that immediately enhance the capture, access and sharing of numerous forms of information."
Jim Marggraff, Founder, CEO and Chairman of Livescribe, Inc.

"Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell paint a vivid and personal picture of a revolution that is already in progress, a revolution that will transform our future by making our past transparent. Clear, detailed, and permanent knowledge of ourselves and others will change the fiber of our lives and societies, pervasively, from meal planning to constitutional law. If we are blind to the implications, we'll be trying to solve the wrong problems with obsolete tools. Total Recall will open eyes, and the more, the better."
Dr. K. Eric Drexler, author of Engines of Creation

JUNE 2010 - AudioFile

Gordon Bell describes his method of recording and storing every detail of his life into digital format for later access. He calls the collection "My Life Bits." In his obsessive collecting, Bell includes miles walked, names from his high school yearbook, his daily weight, thousands of emails, and the videos of his coronary angiograms. At present, neither the technology nor the funds to expand the Total Recall project exist. Narrator John Haag sounds like he could very well be this Type-A entrepreneur and salesman who knows little economy of words. Haag makes no attempt—either with a pause or a change of voice—to indicate quoted material. Further, he interprets the author’s overstated message with the aggressive, upbeat tone of a personal-improvement audiobook. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169475845
Publisher:	Recorded Books, LLC
Publication date:	04/02/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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