IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2014 - 5

Mann, 1998

Microsoft, 2004

Mann, Fung, Lo, 2006

PHOTO CREDIT: GLOGGER/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

LifeGlogging sensor cameras, neck-worn by way of a lanyard to capture one's entire life

Memoto, 2013

Steve Mann: "Here's a picture I took of my neckworn camera in 1998, along with other similar more recent devices.
The 1998 camera was a "Wearable Wireless Webcam" that had various other sensors in it as well. The Microsoft
Sensecam picture I took in a similar style, and over the years various other products became available. The most
recent picture I actually took in exactly the same location as my original camera necklace dome 15 years earlier:
2nd floor of University of Toronto Bookstore, St. George Street entrance.

In this instance, some might willingly undergo
surgical amputations for reasons of enhancement and
longevity which have naught to do with imminent
medical prosthesis.
This might include the ability to get around the
"wetware" of the brain, enabling our minds to be
downloaded onto supercomputers.

Homo Electricus
Perhaps those who love the look and feel of their human
body more than machinery would much rather contemplate a world dominated by a Homo Electricus -
a human that will use electro-magnetic techniques for
ambient communication with networks [4].
An Electrophorus is thus one who becomes a
bearer of technology, inviting nano- and micro-scale
devices into his or her body.
An Electrophorus might also use brain-wave techniques, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG),
which measures the electrical activity of the brain in
order to perform actions by thinking about them [5].
This might be the best approach to retaining our
inner thoughts for recollection though there are myriad vital issues related to security, access control, and
privacy that must be addressed first.

Lifelogging
Twenty years ago, when I was still in high school, I
would observe my headmaster, who was not all that
fond of computers, walking around the playground carrying a tiny Dictaphone in his hands recording things
for himself so that he could recollect them afterwards.
When I once asked him why he was engaging in
this act, he said:
"Ah ... there are so many things to remember!
Unless I record them I forget them."
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

SUMMER 2014

He was surely onto something. His job required him
to remember minute details that necessitated recollection.
Enter Steve Mann in the early 1990s, enrolled in
a Ph.D. program at M.I.T. Media Labs and embarking on a project to record his whole life - himself,
everyone else, and mostly everything in his field of
view, 24/7 [6].
At the time it would have sounded ludicrous to want
to record your "whole life," as Professor Mann puts
it. With Mann's wearcam devices (such as Eyetap),
one can walk around recording, exactly like a mobile
CCTV. The wearer becomes the photoborg.
It is an act Mann has called "sousveillance," which
equates to "watching from below" [7].
This is as opposed to watching from above, like when
we are surveilled by CCTV stuck on a building wall such
as in George Orwell's dystopic Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Since Mann's endeavor there have been many who
have chosen this kind of blackbox recorder lifestyle,
and more recently even Google has thrown in their
Glass Project equivalent [8].
My guess is that we are about to walk into an era of
Person View systems that will show things on ground
level through the eyes of our social network, beyond
just Street View fly-throughs [9].
Other notable lifeloggers include Gordon Bell of
Microsoft [10] and Cathal Gurrin from Dublin City
University [11].
M.I.T. researcher Deb Roy lifelogged his son's first
year of life (with exceptions) by wiring up his home
with video cameras [12].
When we talk about big data, you can't get any bigger than this [13] - chunky multimedia, chunky files
of all types from a multitude of sensors, and chunky
data ripe for analysis (by police, the government, your
boss, and potentially anyone).
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