I've blogged about life caching before and - via the Middle Zone Musings blog - here is a great profile of Microsoft computer scientist Gorden Bell by Clive Thompson for Fast Company on his experimental work in this space. Bell is "trying to record every single experience he has, every day: Every phone call, email, conversation, web page, snapshot of everything he sees".
Thompson does an excellent job of exploring not only what is remembered, but the implications for remembering, forgetting and what happens when digital memories are accidentally lost - including the comment that all this technology "might be slowly degrading his real, carbon-based brain's ability to remember clearly." Hmm - that's got me worried too as I treat this blog as bit of a memory aid!
But reading Danah Boyd's post from last week on being virtual, I wonder if Bell isn't a little off track for a more fundamental reason - as Web 2.0 and social software is showing us, we're still social animals even when we augment our ability to communicate with technology... so its not about remembering for remembering's sake, but sharing. Or as Boyd puts it, "These technologies haven’t been adopted as an alternative to meatspace; they’ve been adopted to complement it".
Update: See, even the new Wii game system is impacting back into the "meatspace".
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