Practically a decade in the past, I declared, “Lifelogging is lifeless,” including “For now.”
Lifelogging is an retro phrase. However its central thought — utilizing computer systems as prosthetic reminiscence to recollect every little thing — is interesting.
The concept is 80 years previous. In a 1945 Atlantic article, Vannevar Bush proposed a reminiscence machine known as a Memex. Bush was an American engineer, inventor, and science administrator who led the US Workplace of Scientific Analysis and Improvement throughout World Warfare II, helped develop analog computer systems, and based Raytheon.
Bush needed everybody to have a private desk-sized machine designed to make use of microfilm to retailer big quantities of books, articles, and notes. The Memex would let customers add new data by taking footage and storing them on microfilm, then looking and leaping between associated gadgets utilizing a particular keyboard, like selecting paths via a branching community, as an alternative of counting on alphabetical or numerical order.
Straightforward, proper? Simply two issues: Getting data out and in. Over the many years, bold nerds tried to make lifelogging occur.
Within the Nineteen Eighties, a Canadian inventor and College of Toronto professor named Steve Mann constructed wearable computer systems and sensors that fed knowledge onto laborious drives — video, audio, and different knowledge, generally sensing hand positions and environmental data utilizing cameras, microphones, antennas, and different sensors.
In 2000, Gordon Bell grew to become essentially the most influential voice in lifelogging. Bell was a pc designer identified for his work at Digital Gear Company (DEC), the place he led the event of the PDP and VAX pc architectures.
Within the final 20 years of his profession, Bell labored at Microsoft and in 1998 launched “MyLifeBits” to seize digital variations of “a lifetime’s price of articles, books, playing cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, images, shows, residence films, lectures, voice recordings, cellphone calls, IM transcripts, tv, and radio.” He wore two cameras round his neck, which took footage consistently and mechanically. To make use of his prosthetic reminiscence system, he needed to depend on custom-built software program.
Once I interviewed Bell in 2016, he had given up on lifelogging. There was an excessive amount of knowledge to seize, he informed me, due to smartphones. Sooner or later, he stated, a revolution in AI will arrange that knowledge. Till then, the dream was impractical.
Properly, we’ve had the LLM-based genAI revolution —and now lifelogging is attainable.
The perfect lifelogging instrument you’ve by no means heard of
Prior to now 25 years, knowledge seize apps like Evernote, launched as a note-taking app in 2008 and finally remodeled into an all-purpose instrument, emerged. By 2019, it had 1 / 4 of a billion customers. Evernote nonetheless exists, however with a smaller workers and now owned by Italian software program firm Bending Spoons, which added AI instruments.
The hassle with Evernote is its complexity. Past lifelogging, it’s advanced right into a productiveness suite. Evernote is concentrated on collaboration and workflow — you possibly can touch upon notes, share and co-edit with others (even with out an account), and request entry or observe shared notes. There’s a sturdy cell and desktop expertise, customizable navbars, and deep template help — together with gallery shopping, one-click entry, and {custom} thumbnails. The brand new AI options embrace semantic and smarter search, automated summarization, and content material transcription for audio, video, and picture recordsdata. (The fee is $12.99 per month for private, and $17.99 a month for professional.)
A extra interesting possibility is the MyMind app. It’s a desktop app, cell app, browser extension, and cloud service launched in 2021. (It prices $7.99 per 30 days for primary and $12.99 for a extra superior model, and you should use it totally free with a cap of 100 saved gadgets.)
MyMind is a clutter-free bookmarking and knowledge-capture app with out folders or guide content material group.There are not any templates, guide customizations, or collaboration instruments. As an alternative, MyMind acknowledges and codecs the content material sort elegantly. For instance, songs, films, books, and recipes are displayed otherwise based mostly on MyMind’s detection, whatever the supply, as are footage and movies.
MyMind makes use of AI to auto-tag every little thing and permits {custom} tags. Each phrase, together with these in footage, is listed. You can take footage of data, add them to MyMind, and discover them later by looking a phrase or two discovered within the image. Copying a sentence or paragraph from an article will show the quote with a supply hyperlink. Each knowledge chunk is captured in a “card.”
Seize is straightforward. In a browser, click on a button (from the extension). In all places else, together with in any app in your cellphone, “Share” content material and select the MyMind app.
MyMind replaces data overload with a way of calm management. Every card has a button that places you into “Focus” mode, eliminating every little thing in your display besides the clearly displayed content material.
Retrieval is prompt. In case you parked your automotive and took an image of the parking storage flooring and house quantity, you can begin to spell “parking house,” however the data is immediately displayed after you sort “p” and “a.” For keyboard shortcut followers, you possibly can shortly navigate the app utilizing the keyboard.
A lot of the time, you could find something in underneath a second. And it’s non-public, with all knowledge encrypted and no monitoring.
MyMind has different options, however the primary thought is that we lastly have a lifelogging instrument that makes it straightforward to seize and retrieve data. It’s not good. For instance, it might use a voice interface. I’d love to have the ability to add data by speaking, and get it again by listening. But it surely’s most likely the simplest lifelogging instrument obtainable.
Lifelogging {hardware}, too
Alongside AI-enabled lifelogging instruments like MyMind, we’re additionally coming into an period of lifelogging {hardware} gadgets. One promising route comes from a startup known as Good Labs. Its new $299 Halo glasses, obtainable for pre-order and transport in November, are light-weight AI glasses.
The glasses have a protracted listing of options — bone conduction sound, a digicam, mild weight, and so on. — however the lifelogging enabler is an “agentic reminiscence” system known as Narrative. It captures data mechanically from the digicam and microphones and locations it into a private data base. An AI assistant known as Noa or Noa Plus (subscription) provides you a natural-language interface to your data. You can even use the glasses to “vibe code” apps.
As Gordon Bell predicted, a revolution in AI has ushered in sensible, highly effective lifelogging.
Due to genAI, which does the grunt work of capturing and retrieving the knowledge in our lives, we are able to now bear in mind nearly every little thing.
