Quest for ultimate memory begins
Imagine being able to record every interesting conversation you have ever held in your life, not to mention all the photos and writing you have done.
Top internet researchers attending the annual World Wide Web conference in New York this week heard all about a data storage device so powerful it could record every and anything you ever do.
Head of research for Microsoft Corp, Rick Rashid, said there would be very little reason for anyone to throw anything away ever again.
In a keynote speech to the conference, he has described what consumers might do with a terabyte of data storage that costs around $1000 and is capable of holding more than one trillion bytes of computer data.
“You can store every conversation you have ever had, from the time you are born to the time you die,” Rashid said.
Visual record
The memory is such that a person could snap a picture with a 180-degree fish-eye view of one’s surroundings for every minute of every day for the rest of one’s life.
Microsoft researchers in the United Kingdom have built prototypes of such a life-recording device called SenseCam.
They are gearing up for a second generation of photo capture systems no bigger than a necklace pendant, Rashid said.
“Obviously this raises a whole lot of issues about privacy and the control of one’s personal information,” Rashid said.
“But this is where we are going. It’s already the case that kids are walking around with cameraphones taking a lot of pictures. This is just an extension of that,” he said.