Imagine a world in which all your personal data, conversations and experiences are recorded, stored and found by others whenever they -- or you -- want. That's the Digitize Me culture.
In the first session at the Wearables Tech Expo East in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Jason Merkoski, the CEO of Be Forever Me, a company looking to provide tools that people can use to record, preserve and access their life story, talked about audiovisual wearables that record our daily activities.
Jason refers to this phenomenon as the Digitize Me culture. The concept is that all of this personal data, conversations, experiences and other things from our life is stored, indexed using machine learning and then discoverable through a natural language interface using the Be Forever Me service.
I saw a brief demo of the interface and it allows you to drill down to any type of data and use key factors such as history, places, tags and using questions to dig out any info you are looking for.
Overtime our real memories fade. As Jason stated during the session, our brains have a great ability to forget and it serves us well, however, what if you wanted to share a story that your Mom or Dad used to tell you as a child with your own children? If your parents are still alive that can be easily accomplished but what if they are no longer around? Well imagine being able to ask, in your own words, "Tell me that story Dad used to tell about his fishing trip to Alaska," and then sharing that story with someone else such as your son.
Using Be Forever Me that story would be retrieved and it would be told in your Dad’s own words as long as he also used the service. So a system like this needs to be used across generations in order to increase the value of the information and build upon not only the personal aspect of it but the historical element for popular people, historical figures, etc.
Of course, as with all of the data which is collected from us daily, security of that information is critical and Be Forever Me says that your info is safe and secure using their patent-pending technology and cloud storage. They also provide privacy settings that allow you to set permissions on a specific recording or across your entire profile.
This is a concept that many older generations will have a hard time grasping. If you do not understand selfies and check-ins, then this may not be for you.
However, today’s Millennials enjoy sharing every aspect of their life across all kinds of social media channels and media formats. For them this is a concept they will embrace and chronicle nearly every aspect of their life experiences.
I spoke with Jason after the session and we discussed tools for accessing and experiencing this information. Right now Be Forever Me uses a mobile (iOS) app and a desktop program (Windows and Mac) to scan and access your digital memories.
In the future possible avenues for experiencing these digital memories would be virtual and augmented reality devices such as Gear VR or HoloLens. Imagine being able to see 360 degree and/or holographic images as you experience those memories.
Of course cost and consumer availability will drive those options but there is a lot of potential, along with many pros and cons, that make this concept very intriguing.
