Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
12.2 Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
12.2.1 Managing Serendipitous Moments in Human Life Memory
As explained in the U.K. Grand Challenge in Computing 2003 [11], there is
a real need for the development of techniques for storing personal seren-
dipitous moments and other lifetime memories in a manner that is robust to
changes in hardware, operating systems, and indexing strategies. The com-
puter and programs that operate on the data will change frequently over a
human lifetime, but the data must outlast the systems that analyze it.
In fact, the idea to keep an individual or private file was envisioned by
Vannevar Bush in Memex [12] as long ago as 1945. His vision was for a device
“in which an individual stores all his topic, records, and communication,
and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed
and flexibility.” The Managing Human Life Memories project moves beyond
Bush's vision to store personal storage because it also allows a user to share
their lifetime memories with family and trusted friends.
The work most similar to ours is perhaps that of MyLifeBits [7]. MyLifeBits
is a database of resources (media) and links, but it is a stand-alone system
and therefore their media content cannot be shared with others. They pro-
posed a new system for storing digital media collections using an improved
user interface, allowing the easy manual annotation of images and also pro-
viding for audio annotations to be created. They used a SQL Server with an
Index Server supplying full-text search and used sensor cameras to continu-
ally record personal experiences.
T her e a r e s evera l ot her pro j e c t s t h at de a l w it h p er s on a l me mor y. C he ng e t a l.
in Total Recall focus more on the privacy and security issues of personal data
storage [9]. The Total Recall system continually records personal experiences
(memories) by using personal sensors (a special camera and microphone).
Adar et al. in their Haystack project emphasize the relationship between an
individual and their environment [10]. When an individual interacts with the
environment, Haystack gathers data about those interactions and uses this
metadata to further personalize the retrieval process. Lifestreams [4] is a per-
sonal store that abandons hierarchy in favor of time-based visualization. The
project supports a form of saved query to filter what is viewed.
Another project, Singh et al., proposed a prototype called eVITAe (for
electronic vitae) [13]. The eVITAe prototype is intended to chronicle the life
of its user through various media collected by the user over their lifetime.
Czerwinski et al. list five main challenges in managing digital memories:
identifying valuable personal records, interpreting and correlating data
from multiple sources, viewing and interacting with records, security and
privacy of personal data, and data sharing [14]. Much research into lifetime
memories has been undertaken but none of the existing approaches have
considered the sharing of memories in a peer to peer network environment.
