He wasn't particularly philosophical about this fact, but I remember thinking this could be very depressing to some people - and jostle others into doing more with their lives. Still, as the narrator of the linked video says, "trying to make the best documentary of my life" seems to take an odd third-person perspective of one's own existence.
In another vein entirely, I've always felt there was something bordering on the "sacred" about memories. They're as personal a thing as you can have. Being able to rewind and see everything that ever happened to me would take something away from that for me. As with many technologies, you'd gain something, but lose something precious too.
I don't have a citation now, but there were studies done that suggest you actually don't have reliable memories of past events; the brain actually recomputes parts of them based on what you know now, thus sometimes making false memories.
Ed: Do you own a video camera?
Renee Madison: No. Fred hates them.
Fred Madison: I like to remember things my own way.
Ed: What do you mean by that?
Fred Madison: How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.
Meditating is one of the most introspective activities, but might not make the best film. If people make a 1 second film for themselves then I think this could have a really positive impact.
If instead people make films for others then this might not be very positive because you are living out entertainment for someone else.
Introspection is a very useful way of analyzing the patterns our thoughts and actions take. Some people like to think while driving, others find ocean waves to clear their mind. For some it's their children, or a jazz song. Don't begrudge others for how they get there, just be happy you've both arrived.
http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1
More on Jamie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston
I don't think you will experience that by downloading an app. Come up with an own idea on how to reflect upon your life.
How about better ways of documenting your children growing up. Documenting yourself getting old. If we want to get really into it, maybe there are ways of finding lessons in our life that can be passed on.
I've heard interesting anecdotes about taking a picture of all food before you eat it leading to much healthier eating.
There have always been great diarists. Sometimes their benefit could only be seen years later. Maybe we can do it beter now with apps and web and video cameras in every pocket.
I've used it mostly for recording my kids growing up (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Nr7pw-I0g ). It's amazing having a chronicle of them imperceptibly turning from newborns into kids and I recommend it for any new parent. Apps like Everyday ( http://everyday-app.com ) do a similar thing on iOS.
He's been taking pictures every day since 2000.
Someone just did.
Combining this with my OhLife daily diary I hope I'll have a pretty good overview of my life and a treasure of memories (I'm very bad at remembering things from my past).
edit: I've now realized that this man was the inspiration for my project (I've seen this before new year) :)
People's infinite capacity to forget things is both a blessing and a curse.
Be prepared, when reminiscing about the good times, to be reminded of some equally bad times.
And the enormous quantity of time spent doing nothing memorable, good or bad.
I used to do this with my desktop using TimeSnapper (http://www.timesnapper.com/), it does provide an interesting view on where your time goes throughout the day.
I know there are counterexamples. But for those things, you'd probably want to take a longer video anyway. What kind of events is a 1-second video the best way to capture, anyway?
It also acts as a fallback version control :)
>"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."
The iTunes store doesn't actually have a mechanism to achieve this, does it? Other than making it free for everyone for quite a while (months?) and using promo codes to fix up any backers who didn't download it in time. Promo codes are limited to 50 per release, I believe.
There is also "Life In Seconds"[3] which has a few good reviews, and a "1 Second Daily Cam" app by Simon Meyborg but that has five one-star reviews on the iPhone UK app store.
A similar idea is One Second Epic[4], which also looks promising.
[1] http://1secondeveryday.com/
[2] http://twitter.com/1SecondEveryday/status/286685321972830208
[3] http://www.lifeinseconds.com/
[4] http://www.onesecondepic.com/http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarkuriyama/1-second-e...
I think 1 second is a little too short...
Make a second version of the app that requires a login. Give the login information to your supporters. IIRC you can even put an app into the store and set it not to appear in searches(?), then you need also to hand out the iTunes url.
Every moment of your life is recorded in your mind with full perceptions and a time tag and is /potentially/ accessible.
Dianetics posits it's pain and unconsciousness that obscures memories, and if you contact and discharge them, memories return (http://www.dianetics.org).
Personally, I found this to be true. It's very interesting (and pleasurable) to recover a "forgotten" experience in a Dianetics session, which you can do by twinning up with another person that's read Dianetics, or by getting a free intro session at a local Scientology organization.
http://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental-Englis...
Instead, the theory states, memory recall is a rapid-fire, iterative process of "generating" details of a memory, then checking whether it matches the original. If it does, then the detail is 'recalled' and the process moves onto other details, in this way hopefully producing a reasonable reproduction of the original memory. There is some experimental evidence of this theory, but as far as I understand it, the theory is not entirely accepted. In my opinion, it's probably part of the story but not all, perhaps as an 'error correction' mechanism that fills in gaps but not for producing the entire memory.
What you're referring to about false memories is somewhat different and much better accepted. There's a lot of evidence that shows that memory recall is a destructive process: after recall, a memory becomes labile and must be reconsolidated into long-term storage. Essentially, recalling a memory destroys it and it must be re-encoded as a new memory. In that time while it is labile, details can be added or removed and changes can creep into it from your own thoughts or the suggestions of others. The changed version is usually indistinguishable from the original.