Inventors do what they do best with technology; in this case, smaller, faster, better. Or is it?
A new camera is set to hit the market. It has the power to document our everyday lives, by shooting a picture every half minute.
But who does, truly need to document his/her life 24/7? And then, of course, there is the other side of the coin.
What if this cute little camera was pointed at you? It is so small, so gadgety, so innocuous looking that you might think it an MP3, or some other similarly innocent device.
But this camera is what technology does: it gives new avenues, but it takes away others.
The company that makes the tiny little camera, pictured above, is Memoto.
What Memoto has set out to do, is to create a 'memory', in other words they want to change the process of changing memory, i.e., what you remember versus what is recorded and therefore the truth, and how we see ourselves by focusing on how people react to us in everyday life.
There are some that argue that privacy is overrated, and let's face it, we are willingly losing more and more of it daily through social sites.
But is this what we want? And is all this airing of our deepest secrets so great?
Obviously the camera offers opportunity for scientific and psychological research, but also for legal matters, that could be groundbreaking.
The head of the project, and the founder of Memoto, Martin Kallstrom, has said that the company's goal is "to find a way to re-experience our lives in the future while enjoying the present."
The Memoto camera can be clipped to our clothing or worn on a chain, because it is as small as a Ipod Nano. But it has no on-off button. It simply keeps whirring away in silence as it records a picture every 30 seconds. That's 2,880 pics a day. Only by placing the camera in the darkness or your pocket, it will stop recording. As the picture is taken, the device records time, and gps location. This creates a diary of your life, called 'Lifelog'.
The pictures do not stay in the camera itself. They are trasmitted to the company's servers, which then sort them and organize them.
What is then the future after Memoto hits the streets? There might be no more forgetting, even for those things we wish to forget. We will not idealize an event, for the stark reality of it will remain forever etched on those giant computer servers. Furthermore, there will be no more subjective memory.
Forensics will have a field day with this. Imagine having an accident in your car while you are wearing the device? Or committing a crime that is recorded accidentally by the camera worn by someone else or the victim?
Imagine the use that can be had in training people, so that they can be taught to learn from their own or others' reactions.
Total Recall, anyone?
Source : Spiegel online 5.3.13
The possibilities are endless. But do we really want to stop life as we know it and replace with a mechanized tableau of irrefutable images?
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