denotes premium content | Mar 12 2010 News
posted 25 Nov 2002
Microsoft works to create back-up brain
Researchers at Microsoft’s laboratories in San Francisco are working on ways to create a ‘back-up brain’ that will record and catalogue every picture you take, document you write and conversation you record.
Scientists within the MyLifeBits research group are convinced that the life database could hold a huge array of information and artefacts, which could eventually be as easily searchable as Yahoo! or Google.
New Scientist magazine revealed that Gordon Bell, one of the scientists driving the MyLifeBits project, is already putting as much material as he can in a directory of his life, including each e-mail he sends and receives, and recordings or every meeting he attends.
The Microsoft team estimates that within five years, a terabyte of data storage could cost as little as $300, which in turn could hold 3.6m 300kb images or 290 hours of good-quality video.
The researchers recognise, however, that the biggest challenge will come with deciding on how best to organise the material. They are currently working on developing a taxonomy that will accommodate the huge range of associations and relationships the material will require.
The idea of a vast repository of personal information was first floated in 1945 by US academic Vannevar Bush, in an article entitled ‘As we may think’ that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. In the article, Bush invented the term ‘memex’ for such a device, which would, he said, be “an enlarged intimate supplement to memory”.
