Save your life ... digitise

Recording every detail of your life on gadgets could one day replace the need for memories — or mean an end to privacy

What if you could recall everything you did? Every person you met, every sight you saw, every moment of your life? What if you recorded everything digitally? You could take photos every few seconds, store all your e-mails, your phone calls, every web page you looked at, every document you read.

This scenario is not some vision of a far-off future but real and happening now. Two senior Microsoft researchers are recording their lives, putting them at the forefront of a digital memory revolution. They say our biological memory will be augmented, and, to a certain extent, replaced by e-memory. They call it Total Recall.

“The coming world of Total Recall will be as dramatic a change in the coming generation as the digital age has been for the present generation,” says Gordon Bell. “It will change the way we work and learn. It will unleash our creativity and improve our health. It will change our intimate relationships with loved ones both living and dead. It will, I believe, change what it means to be human.”