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Finding ways to store data efficiently has become an impossible mission.
Technological progress over the past 30 years has led to an explosive increase in the amount of information that we create and store. But how do you save this information so that it doesn't turn into meaningless digital garbage?
When faced with the challenge of preserving their own digital history, people need to reflect on the fact that existing technologies do not allow us to effectively preserve not only the data itself, but also its context, connections, and meaning.
Digitized life, forgotten memory
I keep backups of everything I use on-premises and in the cloud. The contents of the computers I owned 20 years ago are stored as tiny folders on my multi-terabyte drives. I don't lose much of anything, which is great if I could find any of it.
Google wants us to search for everything — just put it in a pile and let the search engine sort it out. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it doesn't apply to private, personal, and long-running. Not because the search engine crashes, but because our human memory, overflowing with experience, forgets the exact language, exact dates, or any other criterion that could give an accurate result.
The problem is that we rely on human memory and associative connections, which are not preserved and therefore cannot be found using a normal search. Google just isn't "human" enough to work well with our memory.
Explosion of information and lack of memory
The amount of information you would like to save has grown to an unmanageable size in recent years. The explosive growth of research and applications of artificial intelligence has led to the fact that the number of open tabs in browsers on six computers and mobile devices has grown from a few to hundreds. This is an insult to the feelings of the digital order, a significant slowdown in the browser - and an absolute necessity. All these tabs are important. It may even get to the point where you just can't remember what's open anywhere – just that it's open. Somewhere.
Looking for a solution
This begs the question: what system could preserve the associative nature of all our experiences? Father of the 32-bit VAX (Virtual Address eXtension)computer architecture Gordon Bell in the MyLifeBits project (a Microsoft Research project), which is now 20 years old, considered collecting experience, but so far nothing provides an interface to the metadata of this experience. "We need more than just time, place, and association — it's context, and continuity, and meaning, and a way of thinking, and so much more that we can barely put into words. Such almost invisible threads connect us to our memories-both in our head and in our digital self," Bell said.
The blind spot
So what's left for us? We could set up ChatGPT to perform basic analysis and generate metadata for links that we find in various studies, documents, and so on – but then what? How do these individual elements of digital memory maintain their context and continuity? How do I connect them together?
The fact that these questions are difficult to answer with any existing tool or technique tells us that we have found a blind spot. We can't move toward what we don't see. In this darkness, much of our life, contextual learning, falls into a memory hole-preserved, but constantly losing meaning.
Rethinking ancient art
One of the original technologies of humanity – the art of memory-urgently needs to be rethought within the framework of modern technologies that allow us to preserve the meaning of our personal past as we move into the future. Humanity needs new tools that allow us to extract not only data from the digital stream, but also its context, connections and meaning, so that our personal history does not turn into meaningless digital garbage.
Technological progress over the past 30 years has led to an explosive increase in the amount of information that we create and store. But how do you save this information so that it doesn't turn into meaningless digital garbage?
When faced with the challenge of preserving their own digital history, people need to reflect on the fact that existing technologies do not allow us to effectively preserve not only the data itself, but also its context, connections, and meaning.
Digitized life, forgotten memory
I keep backups of everything I use on-premises and in the cloud. The contents of the computers I owned 20 years ago are stored as tiny folders on my multi-terabyte drives. I don't lose much of anything, which is great if I could find any of it.
Google wants us to search for everything — just put it in a pile and let the search engine sort it out. This sounds good in theory, but in practice it doesn't apply to private, personal, and long-running. Not because the search engine crashes, but because our human memory, overflowing with experience, forgets the exact language, exact dates, or any other criterion that could give an accurate result.
The problem is that we rely on human memory and associative connections, which are not preserved and therefore cannot be found using a normal search. Google just isn't "human" enough to work well with our memory.
Explosion of information and lack of memory
The amount of information you would like to save has grown to an unmanageable size in recent years. The explosive growth of research and applications of artificial intelligence has led to the fact that the number of open tabs in browsers on six computers and mobile devices has grown from a few to hundreds. This is an insult to the feelings of the digital order, a significant slowdown in the browser - and an absolute necessity. All these tabs are important. It may even get to the point where you just can't remember what's open anywhere – just that it's open. Somewhere.
Looking for a solution
This begs the question: what system could preserve the associative nature of all our experiences? Father of the 32-bit VAX (Virtual Address eXtension)computer architecture Gordon Bell in the MyLifeBits project (a Microsoft Research project), which is now 20 years old, considered collecting experience, but so far nothing provides an interface to the metadata of this experience. "We need more than just time, place, and association — it's context, and continuity, and meaning, and a way of thinking, and so much more that we can barely put into words. Such almost invisible threads connect us to our memories-both in our head and in our digital self," Bell said.
The blind spot
So what's left for us? We could set up ChatGPT to perform basic analysis and generate metadata for links that we find in various studies, documents, and so on – but then what? How do these individual elements of digital memory maintain their context and continuity? How do I connect them together?
The fact that these questions are difficult to answer with any existing tool or technique tells us that we have found a blind spot. We can't move toward what we don't see. In this darkness, much of our life, contextual learning, falls into a memory hole-preserved, but constantly losing meaning.
Rethinking ancient art
One of the original technologies of humanity – the art of memory-urgently needs to be rethought within the framework of modern technologies that allow us to preserve the meaning of our personal past as we move into the future. Humanity needs new tools that allow us to extract not only data from the digital stream, but also its context, connections and meaning, so that our personal history does not turn into meaningless digital garbage.
