Marshall Brain's Blog

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Record your life

This week, financial firms were ordered to start saving records of all instant messages, an extension of the requirement that they save all email messages. This article describes the ruling briefly. It would now be easy to create systems that can record all phone calls as well -- a 300 GB hard disk can store over 40,000 hours of voice recordings at decent quality (2KB/sec). Cell phones create a minor problem, but the cell providers could record all calls centrally. Perhaps in 5 to 10 years it will be possible to transcribe everything said into text so it is easily searchable.

At that point the only way to get some privacy would be to go take a walk with your financial advisor. However, we are nearing the point where it will be possible to cover even those moments. For example, the Deja View Camwear system is able to record 4 hours of sound/video.

This project from the DOD creates an all-encompassing digital diary of your life. Nearer-term, Oregon is proposing a GPS-based system to track where cars go.

There's the obvious privacy concerns, but if every moment of everyone's life were recorded, it certainly would make things easier. For example, the OJ Simpson case could have been handled in 5 minutes -- either OJ did it or he didn't, and it would all be on his digital diary, or that of one of the vicitms.