[ExI] Can you avoid information theoretic death via 1080p? Re: pets, mirrors and cryonics

[James Clement]

Brian Atkins <brian at posthuman.com> wrote:

> For anyone concerned about information theoretic death, I'd suggest
> looking into the lifelogging/quantified self area as a possible cryonics
> enhancement.


If you haven't already read it, Gordon Bell's Total Recall: How the
E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything," would probably interest you:
http://amzn.to/106orvY.

>From the Publisher: THE TOTAL RECALL REVOLUTION IS INEVITABLE.

IT WILL CHANGE WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

IT HAS ALREADY BEGUN.

What if you could remember everything? Soon, if you choose, you will be
able to conveniently and affordably record your whole life in minute
detail. You would have Total Recall. Authors Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell
draw on experience from their MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to
explain the benefits to come from an earth-shaking and inevitable increase
in electronic memories. In 1998 they began using Bell, a luminary in the
computer world, as a test case, attempting to digitally record as much of
his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned.
Everything he did on his computer was captured. He wore an automatic
camera, an arm-strap that logged his bio-metrics, and began recording
telephone calls. This experiment, and the system created to support it, put
them at the center of a movement studying the creation and enjoyment of
e-memories.

Since then the three streams of technology feeding the Total Recall
revolution-- digital recording, digital storage, and digital search, have
become gushing torrents. We are capturing so much of our lives now, be it
on the date--and location--stamped photos we take with our smart phones or
in the continuous records we have of our emails, instant messages, and
tweets--not to mention the GPS tracking of our movements many cars and
smart phones do automatically. We are storing what we capture either out
there in the "cloud" of services such as Facebook or on our very own
increasingly massive and cheap hard drives. But the critical technology,
and perhaps least understood, is our magical new ability to find the
information we want in the mountain of data that is our past. And not just
Google it, but data mine it so that, say, we can chart how much exercise we
have been doing in the last four weeks in comparison with what we did four
years ago. In health, education, work life, and our personal lives, the
Total Recall revolution is going to change everything. As Bell and Gemmell
show, it has already begun.

*Total Recall* provides a glimpse of the near future. Imagine heart
monitors woven into your clothes and tiny wearable audio and visual
recorders automatically capturing what you see and hear. Imagine being able
to summon up the e-memories of your great grandfather and his avatar giving
you advice about whether or not to go to college, accept that job offer, or
get married. The range of potential insights is truly awesome. But Bell and
Gemmell also show how you can begin to take better advantage of this new
technology right now. From how to navigate the serious questions of privacy
and serious problem of application compatibility to what kind of startups
Bell is willing to invest in and which scanner he prefers, this is a book
about a turning point in human knowledge as well as an immediate and
practical guide.

Total Recall is a technological revolution that will accomplish nothing
less than a transformation in the way humans think about the meaning of
their lives. *"What would happen if we could instantly access all the
information we were exposed to throughout our lives?"*-*Bill Gates, from
the Foreword*
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Best regards,

James
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