When I was at the Quantified Self Europe conference earlier this year, I was at a talk about lifelogging… It was interesting to say the least but I took away a number of things. Two stuck out…
- The images which are taken, cease being images alone per-say.
- Lifelogging is like having another sense.
Really interesting to think about that while reading Here’s What Memoto Does With Your Entire Life After Photographing It and How lifelogging is transforming the way we remember track our lives.
The images which are taken, cease being images alone per-say
“Photos make sense as contextualizers for all that data [from the quantified self movement],” Johansson says. By saving data like GPS coordinates and which direction the camera is facing along with the photo, Memoto has also positioned itself for possibilities such as putting together all of the photos taken from one place into a 3-D map or allowing users to opt into a photo pool when they’re at the same event.
None of this, however, will be possible unless enough people find the app’s automatic timeline of their lives compelling enough to warrant wearing Memoto in the first place. For that, the company is betting on something akin to an extreme FOMO–or a fear of missing out, not on an experience, but on the opportunity to capture an experience. FOMOOCE, if you will. “This is a way to get to an effective mindfulness by knowing you are not missing out on capturing anything,” Johansson says.
Lifelogging is like having another sense
In 2013, lifelogging is set to hit another milestone with the launch of self-tracking hardware devices like Google Glass and Memoto’s wearable, automatic camera set to hit market.
To explore the “lifelogging” phenomenon and the shift in how people are remembering and capturing their lives, the creators of Memoto recently launched a documentary about the lifelogging movement. The documentary includes interviews with experts in the field like Steve Mann and Gordon Bell, along with the technical lead of Google Glass — exploring the past, present and future of lifelogging.
Of course the whole lifeblogging movement is dominated with Google Glass right now and the idea is in many visions, (usually dystopian) of the future including Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror’s The Entire History of You.
Set in an alternative reality where most people have a ‘grain’ implanted behind their ear which records everything they do, see or hear. This allows memories to be played back either in front of the person’s eyes or on a screen, a process known as a ‘re-do’.
A promising and interesting future for lifelogging… Me thinks