Passing It On

What did you have for breakfast on April 4, 1996?

What if you could record every moment of your life in a searchable digital file? It may soon be possible.

If Microsoft’s MyLifeBits Project seems a bit Orwellian to you, consider that it has its roots in the 1945 vision of Vannevar Bush who envisioned a desktop “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.”

Bush called his dream contraption a “memex.” Today you might call it a PC.

Microsoft is taking a two-pronged approach to realizing Bush’s vision – investigating lifelong storage on the one hand while developing appropriate software on the other. For the past decade, Microsoft researcher Gordon Bell has been putting the concept to the test, creating an ever-expanding digital record of his life.

Stefani Twyford, a videographer and blogging friend from Houston, Texas, brought the project to my attention while raising the question: Is this really a good idea? My short answer is “I don’t think so.” You can find my long answer in the comments section of Stefani’s blog.

What do you think? Would such a comprehensive digital record be of value or interest to your descendants?

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Gordon Bell on cover of Fast Company magazine courtesy of brewbooks.

How has technology affected your family history?

When my maternal grandparents wed and headed to America in 1920, it was a huge leap of faith that they would find whatever it was that they were seeking and apparently couldn’t find in their native Denmark.

Sadly, I’ll never know precisely what it was that they were seeking, but they must have found it. They never spoke of any misgivings to me, and they remained here the rest of their lives.

While the cultural and social changes they went through in their lifetimes were huge, indeed, they shared in the major technological shifts that engulfed this country as well. They arrived two years before commercial radio was available in America, but by the time my grandfather died more than six decades later, he was fond of listening to Danish radio on his shortwave radio, often singing along to the music of his youth and sometimes taping his sessions, a decision his descendants are eternally grateful for.

He truly appreciated the new and wondrous technologies his adopted country afforded him, an appreciation that is sometimes overlooked in our fast-moving modern age.

I was reminded of this over Thanksgiving as I filled my fanny pack for a trip to celebrate the holiday with relatives in Omaha. The fanny pack itself is decidedly low-tech, something I picked up for free at an Iowa State Fair a few years ago. But consider what fits inside the pouch that is barely noticeable (to me) when I wear it. In the picture with this post, these items are (from left):
    • A digital camera (actually, a photo of a digital camera since the actual camera was in service at the time), capable of storing more than 400 high-quality color images.
    • My 80G iPod Classic, capable of storing up to 20,000 songs, or roughly 1,600 vinyl LPs.
    • My cell phone that keeps me connected to the world, including my sons in England and California, whom I can call from just about anywhere, and for far less cost than I could call someone 20 miles away 40 years ago.
    • My digital recorder, which is cable of recording several hours at the flip of a switch.

I’ve acquired each of these things in the past year and newer versions of each are already available. Many of us take these things for granted, but changes in technology also affect how families behave and interact with each other. Take this into account when you preserve your own family histories.

Larry Lehmer is a personal historian who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or send him an e-mail.

Accidental documentaries: The sounds of our past

Over the weekend I happened to catch part of the This American Life program on National Public Radio. This weekend's program was called "Accidental Documentaries." During the program, host Ira Glass played excerpts of audio tapes from a variety of sources, including one found in a Salvation Army thrift store.

The recordings were rich with family stories, many obviously were never intended for the national audience delivered by NPR. They were riveting, if in a voyeuristic sense.

There was a time when I was deep into audio recording myself. Although I started using audiotape as a means of identifying radio stations, I soon expanded it to incorporate my music collection. It was  a short hop to recording family events and conversations.

Although most of those recordings have been lost, I still managed to come up a few earlier this summer while working on my own family history. Included were tapes of my children at very young ages, snippets of phone conversations and radio station appearances and a complete cassette from my mother-in-law from back in the day when swapping tapes between out-of-town relatives was in vogue.

At one point, I bought a box of reels of tape at a garage sale with the intent of recording over them. Upon checking, however, I realized there were hours of giddy conversations among teenage girls from the 1970s, the golden age of mass reel-to-reel recording. I started to save parts of these conversations but soon realized I lacked the family context to make them relevant. How I wished I could have returned them to the rightful owner.

What about you? Do you have any "Accidental Documentaries" tucked away somewhere? Even if you don't, your relatives might. It's worth checking.

Larry Lehmer is a personal biographer who helps people preserve their family histories. To learn more, visit his web site or e-mail him.

Flickr photo courtesy of Status Frustration.