First of all, Seamus has this here and that’s why I’m writing on my own site.

Back in the mists of time, ie, around 2014, I did a couple of university modules on adaptive personalisation and collective intelligence. This saw me playing with recommender systems and fighting with people about whether Duolingo was great or not. I continue to take the view that Duolingo is not great for all sorts of reasons including their own statistical summary of why it works (despite a near 90% drop out rate, yes, quite).

One of the things which came up in those modules – can’t remember which but it was the same lecturer – was some research some guy was doing, I think in DCU, about life logging and the fact that he had cameras going the whole time. I hated the idea. I was out of step with the lecturer concerned, who voiced wonder about how the guy’s girlfriend had turned up in his films a few weeks before he actually met her and hooked up with her.

I hated the idea. I hate the idea of CCTV anyway and already, I have severe issues with the fact that you can randomly turn up in a film which someone shot of where you were despite you not asking to be in their film. I hated the idea that just because some guy wanted to record his entire life, parts of my life got recorded as well. I did not then, and still don’t see the point. I’ve lifelogged for the past 25 years using that high tech system called “pen and paper”. From practice, I can tell you it’s faster to check something in pen and paper than searching through a youtube video for it.

In practical terms if you just want to remember stuff writing it down works. Sometimes words on a page evoke a feeling and a memory far better than a photograph ever does.

I still don’t understand why anyone would want to record everything if they haven’t worked out whether or not they would want to re-watch it. Recording stuff rather than writing it misses context – it misses the context of what’s in your mind, how you feel, how you think about something. Memories are a whole lot more contextual than the external film that plays. For thsoe who do want to do it though, they need to consider how that desire impinges on people who do not want to be recorded into their film, to have their moves recorded by a third party who may mean nothing to them.

If I’d met that guy who was lifelogging away 3-4 years ago, he and I would not have hooked up because I would have found it as creepy as hell.