My Second Life

The Brain Archive
One thing I have been thinking about lately is all the video and
photographs I have. Mostly it is video and photos of my kids growing up.
Their events, birthdays, performances, games and so on. I think that in
the future, I will be able to take their digital images and incorporate
them into a permanent part of my own memory. I would be able to review
the images and sound in my own head. To that end, I will attempt to
maintain a cache of files that I want to be a part of my permanent
memory. Of course, initially the memory will be a disk or disk drive of
some sort. Maybe just a large hard drive. Eventually these files wil be
accessible directly to my mind. Another thought that came about was the
series-on-DVD phenomena. Jack and Pat both say how great "The Next
Generation" was. I have never watched much of it. But if I got the DVD
collection of the series, I could save it - perhaps forever - and view
it "eventually".

It would be a nice thing to have if one of my loved ones passes away.
Not to be ghoulish, but those images could form the basis of AI
constructs that lived inside my skull. Everything they have ever said
could be catalogued by age, and a library of responses, simulated
thoughts and opinions could be built.

The environments within the
photos and videos could be transformed into virtual realities I could
daydream in. Daydreaming would be incredibly real.

I would like to use future nano brain tools to help me recall some of
the distant hazy memories of my past, and perhaps re-live some of the
better ones :)

I could digitize my favorite books, such as Linda Nagata's books, "The
Bohr Maker", and "Vast". If I wanted to, I could begin to assemble a
visual storyboard around the text, or even a virtual world. All inside
my augmented brain.

In time, I might be able to share these new "augmented" memories with
other people, and experience their memories/stories/worlds.

Look at the movie "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise. In it, he replays some old
videotapes. They have a synthesized 3-D look to them, as they were
apparently mapped onto topographic data gleaned from edge-recognition
data.

My own digital memories could likewise be enhanced.