Sorry for not writing for nearly a month, but I’ve been busy with another project.  Anyway, last night I was flipping through channels on the TV.  I briefly watched “60 Minutes” (sort of a rerun, I believe), specifically the article about “Superior Autobiographical Memory”.  Now, if psychologists describe a phenomenon using a name like that, that would suggest to me that they know nothing about it, but I digress.  At any rate, the article discussed a very small number of people who seem to be able to remember every last little detail of their lives.  That’s a very interesting talent.  It’s not one I’m sure I’d like to have (I already have a hard enough time forgetting all of the mistakes that I make) but I certainly can see some advantages in it.

While I still remember what was going on in, for example, high school, the details of everything have faded and I no longer remember them clearly.  I certainly would like to be able to remember, for example, the music that was playing in the 10th grade art class I took when I was in my final year of high school, or any of the details of the presidential elections dance of that year, or what the date of various events were, or zillions of other things.

What would be even better would be to be able to remember these things in detail, without having to be pestered by unwanted memories.  I think that technology could be used to solve this problem, although it may take a few decades (say, maybe 20 years) for technology to advance to the point where it can be applied.  The technology that I think would be useful here would be some sort of 3-D video recorder that is somehow permanently attached to a person, coupled with an incredibly large storage space that would allow a video and audio feed for a person’s entire life to be captured (it would be useful if it could record thoughts too, although I wouldn’t think that would be possible in the 20-year timeframe that I suggested above).  Combined with a really intuitive playback mechanism, I think it would be really cool to be able to look back on such video and bring any day from any time in your life back to life.

Claude Choules, the last WWI combat veteran.

I think that this technology could be used for things other than amusing ourselves about our high school exploits, though.  Something else that happened last month is the death of the last remaining combat veteran of World War I, Claude Choules.  With his death is the death of all the memories of the war that he had, all of his thoughts about the war, and all of the other personal experiences that would be useful for the historian to bring the war to life.  I think that a recorder as described above would be incredibly useful as a historic record for people who have played a part, even a minor one, in significant world events.  Being able to see, as through their own eyes, what they saw in, for example, the Great War, would be invaluable.  Of course, we never really know who is going to be playing the interesting roles, so it’s important that this technology be widespread enough that we have a good enough sample of people using it.

Like any other new technology, there would be issues with it.  One big one would be privacy.  What if someone got their hands on the recording?  What if the police used it as evidence against you?  Since this technology won’t be ready for 20 years, I don’t think it’s necessary to explain how to solve these problems in detail.  To gloss over a possible solution, I would suggest that these recorders would need to be integrated sufficiently with the wearer such that the video would be unplayable by anyone else, although there would then need to be some sort of release in case of death that would allow others to play it then.  It would require a fair bit of thought to figure out how to do that, but like I said, there’s no rush.

So, will the class of 2035 be the first people in the world to have their entire past accessible to them?  Only time will tell.