A note from the Singularity University crossed my screen, which led to write ups on uCorder – a kewl little device from a Toronto firm.  It is basically a camcorder, with enough memory space to record up to 7 continuous hours. It’s main feature is that is light, small, and designed to be worn.  You clip it on your shirt or pocket, or wherever you can, turn it on and let it run for 7 hours while you go about your day.

This was a serendipitous note since I am currently reading “Total Recall” by Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell of Microsoft.  They are discussing e-memory and the notion that you could “record your life”.  This is not a future thing – they are doing this now – at least to some degree.  What they propose is that you stash away in e-memory everything that happens in your life.  That means everything you see and hear, everything you read, every document and report you create or obtain….. yep – everything goes into e-memory.  What on earth for?

WellI haven’t read all the book yet, but I immediately see what they are getting at.  You are off to a conference in Vegas about topic x.  You vaguely remember talking to someone last year about this topic and they referred you to some reference but you can’t remember.  Well if you remember his name – look him up in your e-memory and see if you met him last year.  If so, recall your visual and sound from that encounter and replay it.  Got the reference – good.  Now you remember you did get a copy of that reference, and now you have its name you can look back in your e-memeory and find it.  You never have a paper copy. If it was paper you had, it has been scanned in and OCR’d to make it totally searchable.

Bell has been doing this for some time, scanning in his paper files and recycling the paper.  Must be nice to see all that paper disappear from the endless filing cabinets.  A device like the uCorder lets you capture the sight and sound of your day.

Kurzweil (who created the singularity university) predicts in his book “The Singularity is Near”  the creation of a new intelligence on this planet.  The book title comes from his explanation that technology and our knowledge base is expanding on an exponential curve.  Not only that rate of increase of that curve is exponential as well.  This leads him to the following prediction: “I set the date for the Singularity – representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability – as 2045.  The non-biological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.”

My copy of his book is 1 3/4″ thick – filled with his arguments why this has to be so – and the impact it will have.  For me, that would almost be the level of intelligence I think I would need to make sense of my life so far and present me some intelligent feedback and really, really good search results.  He does talk about a symbiotic relationship between a human and this level of intelligence…. the next evolutionary steps for humans.

Now I recall many years back reading in the “Futurist” magazine (back when I was inside a corporation that provided me with access to all technical journals – boy I miss that) about this notion.  The argument went something like this.  A brain is a highly interconnected (both electrically and chemically) set of nodes (neurons) – and it give rise to the phenomenon we call “mind”.  The internet was a highly interconnected set of human/computer nodes.  Could it at some critical mass give rise to a new mind?

Well, Canadian SF author Robert J. Sawyer thinks so and details the whole thing in his new trilogy.  Volume 1 called “Wake”has been available for some time and volume 2 will appear shortly, with volume 3 coming next year.  Great read…. and for sure Rob does a whole pile of research on his subjects because his stories rung true (not to mention they are filled with Canadian memes).

I digress, I was talking about an electronic assistant that would take on the functions of librarian for me – cataloguing, adding meta-data and links (what I called Vannevar trails – see my computerworld article at http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/a-trail-is-worth-a-thousand-thoughts/133840). Searching and retrieving and learning my idiosyncrasies are key objectives for my assistant.

There is also a lot of talk out there about nanotechnology and the availability in the near terms of injectable nanobots that have sufficient intelligence to carry out single tasks, like find and embed yourself in the visual cortex.  These devices could  be switched so that either signals from your eyes, or signals from somewhere else,  can be sent back into your brain.  Well, having just graduated from a Documentary Production from Algonquin College, I immediately saw something like this could transform the documentary industry.  You don’t watch what is happening – you live what is happening.  Talk about first person filming.

This led me to the thought that should such technology be available, and we were able to record the entire life of a person…. we could then let someone “live” that persons life over again.  Think of the business opportunities…. spend a day living the life of a famous scientist while she discovers the cure for cancer.   Spend a day living the life of a movie star while he trolls the beaches in Rio.  Endless opportunities.

Yep – I’ll be “being” you in the future.