Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything by C. Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell Read Free Book Online
Authors: C. Gordon Bell, Jim Gemmell
software, which is able to recognize written letters and numbers in an image and reconstruct them in a text file. What I ended up with were thousands upon thousands of text files that were neatly interleaved among the scanned files.
Now I just needed desktop search software, that is, software that would allow me to search through my thousands of files for some desired text, just like you search for Web pages now using Yahoo or Google. But at this time operating systems were still several years away from offering desktop search. Desktop search was in its infancy, and every such product I tried was pretty “bleeding edge.”
I tried to get Microsoft to take the lead in desktop search, starting with the acquisition of a leading start-up, but was unable to convince the right people. I would have to wait for others to revolutionize search technology. In the meantime, if I wanted to continue my little lifelogging experiment, I would have to cobble together my own solution. In October 2001, Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder, who had been working with me on other projects at Microsoft, decided that this would make a great research project for them to get involved in. We started out like we do with any new research project, by combing through the published literature to see what others had learned.
I dug up an old paper that I recalled as being relevant, and was surprised at just how relevant it was. In fact, it specified a system almost made to order for us. That’s pretty amazing, when you consider that it had been written more than fifty years earlier.
MEMEX
In 1945, when electronic computers were actually multistory buildings, the director of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush, published an essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “As We May Think,” which outlined a radical new vision of how people might one day keep their own libraries of personal media. He proposed the memex:
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed. . . .
. . . As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. . . . He can add marginal notes and comments . . . and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme. . . .
Another way to get material into the memex was with a wearable camera:
The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures. . . . The lens is of universal focus. . . . There is a built-in photocell on the walnut . . . which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. . . . It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with two spaced glass eyes. . . .
The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man’s sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that
Now I just needed desktop search software, that is, software that would allow me to search through my thousands of files for some desired text, just like you search for Web pages now using Yahoo or Google. But at this time operating systems were still several years away from offering desktop search. Desktop search was in its infancy, and every such product I tried was pretty “bleeding edge.”
I tried to get Microsoft to take the lead in desktop search, starting with the acquisition of a leading start-up, but was unable to convince the right people. I would have to wait for others to revolutionize search technology. In the meantime, if I wanted to continue my little lifelogging experiment, I would have to cobble together my own solution. In October 2001, Jim Gemmell and Roger Lueder, who had been working with me on other projects at Microsoft, decided that this would make a great research project for them to get involved in. We started out like we do with any new research project, by combing through the published literature to see what others had learned.
I dug up an old paper that I recalled as being relevant, and was surprised at just how relevant it was. In fact, it specified a system almost made to order for us. That’s pretty amazing, when you consider that it had been written more than fifty years earlier.
MEMEX
In 1945, when electronic computers were actually multistory buildings, the director of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development, Dr. Vannevar Bush, published an essay in the Atlantic Monthly titled “As We May Think,” which outlined a radical new vision of how people might one day keep their own libraries of personal media. He proposed the memex:
A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.
Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent platen. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed. . . .
. . . As he ponders over his notes in the evening, he again talks his comments into the record. . . . He can add marginal notes and comments . . . and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme. . . .
Another way to get material into the memex was with a wearable camera:
The camera hound of the future wears on his forehead a lump a little larger than a walnut. It takes pictures. . . . The lens is of universal focus. . . . There is a built-in photocell on the walnut . . . which automatically adjusts exposure for a wide range of illumination. . . . It produces its result in full color. It may well be stereoscopic, and record with two spaced glass eyes. . . .
The cord which trips its shutter may reach down a man’s sleeve within easy reach of his fingers. A quick squeeze, and the picture is taken. On a pair of ordinary glasses is a square of fine lines near the top of one lens, where it is out of the way of ordinary vision. When an object appears in that
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