Lifelogging aims to use computers as prosthetic memory to record and retrieve a lifetime of experiences. The idea traces to Vannevar Bush's 1945 Memex proposal for a desk-sized microfilm machine that stored and linked documents via associative paths. Engineers later built wearable systems and sensors to capture continuous data, and projects like MyLifeBits attempted comprehensive digital capture of personal artifacts. Persistent technical hurdles centered on reliably capturing inputs and extracting useful, searchable outputs from massive raw data. Advances in AI now address indexing, retrieval, and pattern extraction, making practical continuous personal memory systems feasible for the first time.
Lifelogging is an unfashionable word. But its central idea - using computers as prosthetic memory to remember everything - is appealing. The idea is 80 years old. In a 1945 Atlantic article, Vannevar Bush proposed a memory machine called a Memex. Bush was an American engineer, inventor, and science administrator who led the US Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, helped develop analog computers, and founded Raytheon.
Bush wanted everyone to have a personal desk-sized machine designed to use microfilm to store huge amounts of books, articles, and notes. The Memex would let users add new information by taking pictures and storing them on microfilm, then searching and jumping between related items using a special keyboard, like choosing paths through a branching network, instead of relying on alphabetical or numerical order.
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