Software aims to put your life on a disk

　

软件打算把你的生活装在一张磁盘上

Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write — in fact your every memory and experience— into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything,  New Scientist can reveal. It is part of a curious venture dubbed the MyLifeBits project, in which engineers at Microsoft’s Media Presence lab in San Francisco are aiming to build multimedia databases that chronicle people’s life events and make them searchable. “Imagine being able to run a googly-like search on your life,”says Gordon Bell, one of the developers.    《新科学家》揭示：工程师正在研制一种软件，它可加载你的每张相片和你写的每封信—事实上，你的每一段回忆和经历都被放进一个永远不会忘记任何事件的代理大脑里。它是一个被称作“我的生活片段”奇特创业项目的一部分， 在这个项目中，旧金山的微软媒体实验室的工程师正致力于建立多媒体数据库用来记录人们生活事件而且便于人们查找。“想像你能够瞪视查究你曾经历的生活，” 开发商之一Gordon Bell说。The motivation? Microsoft argues that our memories often deceive us: experiences get exaggerated, we muddle the timing of events and simply forget stuff. Much better, says the firm, to junk such unreliable interpretations and instead build a faithful memory on that most reliable of entities, the PC.    研制该软件的动机是什么? 微软公司指出：我们的记忆时常欺骗我们，我们不但夸大经历，还搞错事件发生的时间，而且完全忘记具体细节。公司说：有了这种软件好多了，人们可以扔掉这类不可靠的解释，改成在最可靠的实体—个人计算机上建立起忠实的记忆。Bell and his colleagues developed MyLifeBits as a surrogate brain to solve what they call the “giant shoebox problem”.“In a giant shoebox full of photos, it’s hard to find what you are looking for,”says Microsoft’s Jim Gemmell. Add to this the reels of home movies, videotapes, bundles of letters and documents we file away, and remembering what we have, let alone finding it, becomes a major headache.         Bell和他的同事研制了“我的生活片段”软件系统，把它作为代理大脑，用来解决他们称作“庞大的鞋盒似的问题”.“在庞大的装满相片的鞋盒中，很难发现你想找的东西，”微软的Jim Gemmell 说。加上我们一盘盘的家庭电影、录像带的胶片以及成捆的信件和文件，我们在寻找东西时费劲地回忆我们拥有的东西，不说能够找到它，寻找东西的整个过程简直变成了不小的一个麻烦。Logging life记录生活By the time he speaks at December's Association for Computing Machinery Multimedia conference in Juan Les Pins, France, Bell says he will have logged everything he possibly can onto his MyLifeBits database.    到十二月Bell在法国Juan Les Pins召开计算机多媒体会议上发言时， 他说他将尽可能把每件事记录在"我的生活片段"数据库上。Apart from official documents like his passport, he will post everything from letters and photos to home videos and work documents. All his email is automatically saved on the system, as is anything he reads or buys online. He has also started recording phone conversations and meetings to store as audio files. The privacy and corporate security risks are clear.    除了像他的护照这样官方文件之外, 他将会把从信和照片到家庭录像带及工作文件都记载在数据库上。他所有的电子邮件是自动存在系统里的, 一如他在线所读过或所买过的东西也自动保留一样。他还开始以音频文件记录电话谈话和会议实况。显然，这样做容易暴露隐私和公司安全。Of course the system takes up a huge amount of memory. But Bell's group calculates that within five years, a 1000-gigabyte hard drive will cost less than $300 - and that is enough to store four hours of video every day for a year.    当然，系统占据了极大的储存空间。 但是Bell的小组计算出：在五年之内, 一个 1000 个十亿字节的硬盘将会花费不到300美元---而且一年内那足够每天储存四个小时的图像。Each media file saved in MyLifeBits can be tagged with a written or spoken commentary and linked to other files. Spoken annotations are also converted into text, so the speech is searchable, too.    每个保存在"我的生活片段"中的媒体文件都会被贴上标签或配上一段语音并且和其他文件连接。语音注解也被转换成文本，因此这种演讲也是可查寻的。To recall a period in his past, Bell just types in the dates he is interested in. MyLifeBits then calls up a timeline of phone and email conversations, things he has read and any images he recorded. The system can also be used to build narratives involving other people, events or places. Searching for the name of a friend would bring together a chronological set of files describing when you both did things together, for instance.    要回忆过去的某一个生活时期,Bell仅仅键入一些他感兴趣的日期。然后"我的生活片段"软件就回忆起打电话、发邮件谈话、读过的文章以及录像的画面的时间表。系统还可以被用来记录包括其他人、事件或地方的情况。例如，搜索朋友的名字会带出一个按年代排的一套文件，这些文件描述你和朋友曾经一起做过的事情。Meet the ancestors与祖先会面Although MyLifeBits is essentially a large database, it could gradually become a repository for many of our experiences. Now that many mobile devices contain photomessaging cameras, you could save everyday events onto the system. “Users will eventually be able to keep every document they read, every picture they view, all the audio they hear and a good portion of what they see,”says Gemmell.    尽管，“我的生活片段”软件基本上就是一个庞大的数据库，但是，它可能渐渐会变成为我们许多生活经历的储存库，既然移动产品有了摄像机，你可以把每天发生的事件储存在该软件系统中。“用户将最终能够把读过的每一份文件，看过的每一张图片，听过的所有音频信号以及看过的某一段华章锦句保存下来”。 Gemmell说道。Bell believes that for some people, especially those with memory problems, MyLifeBits will become a surrogate memory that is able to recall past experiences in a way not possible with the familiar but disparate records like photo albums and scrapbooks. “You'll begin to rely on it more and more,”he believes.Bell认为对一些人，特别是记忆有问题的人来说，“我的生活片段”软件将成为代替的记忆，它能够回忆过去的生活经历，而该软件的记忆功能是照片簿和剪贴簿这些我们熟悉但零散的纪录方式所无法相比的。“你会开始越来越依赖它，”他认为。A really accurate, searchable store of events could also help us preserve our experiences more vividly for posterity. Doug de Groot, who works on computer-generated beings called avatars and other types of digital “life” at Leiden University in the Netherlands, says Bell’s system could eventually form the basis for “meet the ancestor” style educational tools, where people will quiz their ancestors on what happened in their lifetimes.一种真正准确的，日后又便于查找的事件储存还可以为我们的子孙后代更鲜明生动地保存我们的生活经历。Doug de Groot,在荷兰来顿大学从事计算机产生人的研究，该项研究被称作“人的化身和其他数字化‘生活’”，他说Bell的系统可以最后为 “与祖先会面”教育性工具建立基础，人们可以用它考查他们祖先的一生曾经发生过什么。A system like MyLifeBits was first suggested in 1945, when presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush hatched the then farsighted idea of an infinite personal archive based on the emerging digital computer. His ideas also inspired the Internet archive website."我的生活片段"软件系统是在1945年首次被提出， 届时负责的技术顾问Vannevar Bush策划了这个在当时具有远见的主意--用数字电脑创建无限私人档案。他的主意也启发了英特网文档网站。

New Scientist

《新科学家》