wk 10: The Recording of Everyday Life – MY LIFELOG!
With the onslaught of new, ‘cool’, savvy, state-of-the-art, funky, sweet (call it what you like!) technologies available, it is now much easier to record daily experiences and furthermore, store as much of it as you would like.
According to the article ‘Life Caching’ by trendwatching.com – “trends are often a manifestation of new enablers unlocking existing human needs.” As the article points out, humans are fueled by a society with pressure for control, validation, self-worth, vanity and even immortality.
As the trend of owning the latest digital toys escalates, caching every moment of our lives is now often second nature. Additionally, the increasing popularity of social networking sites on-line, sharing these images/photos is almost encouraged…. much to the ignorance of the consequences involved in doing so. Because of our obsession with capturing nearly every moment or event, which occurs in our lives, have we forgotten why we take photos in the first place? Traditionally, photos were taken with the intention of remembering sincere moments in our lives. Today, it seems pictures of derogatory nature are captured with the purpose of displaying it for public viewing (ie pouting for a Facebook profile photo) – am an offender of doing so! Are we capturing these images for memory’s sakes or for attention?
In relation to globalization and the effects it has on the media and publicity, the ease of being able to capture events have brought upon certain advantages. Citizen journalism, for example, has exploded in popularity of recent times, especially since 9/11. Media companies have taken advantage of the images captured by the public – who were present at the exact time as to when the event took place. This gives first-hand images to support breaking news stories. However, when does it become inappropriate to take images? Is it ok to take photos of someone who has just died because of a bomb blast? Is it ok to take photos of a young child who has just been raped? Is it now socially acceptable to take photos of anything for the sake of obtaining an image as proof of an experience….and are these images something worth remembering?
In Thompson’s blog, ‘Collision Detection’, lifeblogging was a personal experiment conducted by Gordon Bell, a Microsoft Research scientist. ‘Lifeblogging’ involved Bell to record every single experience he had everyday – from conversations, images, thoughts and to every detail in his activities of daily living. Every gesture was captured, and a picture was taken every 60 seconds from a camera around his neck – and all archived into his computer. Bell’s intention was to “never forget anything.”
What will life be if nothing is forgotten?
There are certain times in everyone’s lives when events are better off forgotten. Many would suggest that there is no need to archive every minute details of a person’s life. Once every detail is recorded, behavioural changes occur to ensure what is being captured gives the ‘the perfect’ impression or depiction, therefore personalities and reality are set aside.
Having the capacity to be able to offload memories and thoughts into a machine can benefit those who need to remember important things, have the need to store knowledge for future use or simply have difficulties in remembering things. However, one needs to elect which information is worth remembering or more importantly, how much information is too much information?
