Your Life, Uploaded

As I was looking for the PowerPoint presentation discussed by Kirschenbaum in “Mechanisms” (100) about the MyLifeBits , I stumbled upon the Total Recall blog: a living archive of the authors’ research regarding life-logging tools, platforms and mechanisms.

If you are interested in this topic, you may also want to read Everything is Miscellaneous – The Power of the New Digital Disorder.

Abstract: 

Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place–the physical world demanded it–but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by “going miscellaneous,” anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.

(qtd. in Amazon.com Review).

 

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