It’s finally coming in handy to have voraciously read tech news every day since 2002. Because I remember a lot of random stuff…including MyLifeBits.

There are very few products without precedent and @AviSchiffmann’s Tab AI [0] is no different. I always find it instructive to look to what the past tried when envisioning the future (one I'd love to exist).

Radical life documentation took off during the mid-aughts, most famously by Justin Kan (Twitch founder) [1], most nerdily by Stephen Wolfram (inventor of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha) [2], and most endearingly by 72-year old Gordon Bell with his self-written program MyLifeBits.[3]

Gordon Bell also probably pushed the technical limits further than any of his peers at the time and his implementation of MyLifeBits most resembles some version of what we will enter in the era of the transformer. In 1999, Bell began a 7-year “lifelogging” experiment, documenting every conversation, phone call, email, web page, and physical interaction (via his custom SenseCam).His interactions, seamlessly integrated into his 'surrogate brain' and easily searchable, echoed the sophistication of 2024's technology, a far cry from what was available in 2006. And indeed, he might as well be living in the current moment. Storage is cheap, cameras/mics are abundant and sophisticated, processing power is orders of magnitude faster and more abundant, and cloud means your memories hop seamlessly from device to device.

We are now on the precipice of realizing true ambient computing—the seamless blend of interconnected smart devices and technology into everyday life, automating tasks and providing intuitive assistance without direct human interaction.

In 2006, pulling off such a feat required the ingenuity of someone like Gordon Bell. Today, it simply requires an ambient capturing device, speech-to-text technology, cloud storage, and Retrieval Augmented Generation. While I expect the same initial “Glasshole” reaction, there is a reason we keep coming back to the same ideas. If they are implemented right, with the right technology, in the right form factor, with the right privacy protections, they can be transformative (pun intended) to the way we live our lives.

I’ll end on a prescient quote from Martin Conway—a psychologist and psychoanalyst focusing on the study of autobiographical memory—pulled from that 2006 Fast Company article: “We’re moving into an age when technology is going to massively enhance our cognitive abilities, our problem- solving abilities,” he says. It’s rather like the way Google has already become an indispensable part of how people think about things–sitting at their desks, constantly tapping into the world’s massive trove of information. “Your real memory becomes a sort of executive manager for all these other technological abilities.”

Maybe this time it’ll be different—the underpinning technical infrastructure certainly is. Here’s to hoping it does!

Citations

[0] Tab AI: https://mytab.ai/

[1] Wikipedia, Justin.tv: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv

[2] Stephen Wolfram Writings, The Personal Analytics of My Life, 2012: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-analytics-of-my-life/

[3] Fast Company, A Head for Detail, 2006 : https://www.fastcompany.com/58044/head-detail

[4] Fast Company, Avi Schiffmann’s Tab AI necklace has raised $1.9 million to replace God: https://www.fastcompany.com/91007630/avi-schiffmanns-tab-ai-necklace-has-raised-1-9-million-to-replace-god