Life Caching Revisited

Earlier this year, I blogged about life caching, or digital scrapbooking, a growing phenomenon spurred by the burgeoning availability of hard drive disk space. At the risk of appearing to be a spokesperson for Fast Company [I am not but it is a great read] I must rave about the cover story of the latest issue, available at www.fastcompany.com.

The article features Gordon Bell, a senior research engineer at Microsoft, who has embarked on an amazing journey to digitize his entire life, including recording his phone conversations, photographing his daily routine, scanning all his paperwork, etc. and making it all searchable with the help of Microsoft’s MyLifeBits software program, which is in the developmental stage.

I don’t know that I entirely embrace the concept but there are aspects of it that appeal to me, namely the enhanced ability to recall details as quick as the click of a mouse. For Bell’s part, he loves it: “It gives you kind of a feeling of cleanliness. I can offload my memory. I feel much freer about remembering something now.”