Time Machine

Idea:
When I was a kid I would [and still do] have a overwhelming feeling that “I” will invent a time machine. I’m not sure what put(s) this notation into the my head, I’m not obsessed about it but the thought pops into my brain from time-to-time.


Concept:
It also occurred to me that the actual answer to this complex problem will be most likely be a simple one.
I tend to have two levels of thinking; un-constrained & constrained, so to me "simple" in my un-constrained thinking mode meant the solution would lie somehow within the shared memories of other humans.


Scope:
Before Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of worldwide web, my knowledge was limited to what I had read, saw, or was taught.
Although the concept of "home-based global information" goes at least as far back as Isaac Asimov's short story "Anniversary", in which people would “look up” information on a fictional supercomputer called Multivac – [Multiple vacuum tubes analog computer] which was connected by a "planet wide network of circuits" ….. but I digress.

So then, with a little bit of Goggling I recently stumbled across a 1945 document entitled “As We May Think” and thanks to Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham [not Ritchie’s Father] for the invention of the Wiki data this was liked to a summary page document entitled “Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experiences”

In summary it's agurment is; while personal media capture has typically been sparse throughout a lifetime, we now have the technology to consider continuous archival and retrieval of all media relating to ones personal experiences.
From a "time Machine" point of view the interesting thing to note is that continuous archival of ones life will fundamentally alter our relationship to biological memory, since analysis of such media powerfully augments human memory.


Form:
Now getting back to the “time machine” and the concept of shared memories; I now havw learned that storage of a persons “media throughout a lifetime” has been discussed since at least 1945, when Vannevar Bush published “As We May Think”.

Bush conceived the fictional “Memex” device “in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.”
His vision was astonishingly broad for the nineteen forties, including full-text search, annotations, hyperlinks, virtually unlimited storage and even stereo cameras mounted on eyeglasses. Today, with silicon memory storage in the gigabytes, low cost CCD/Cmos sensors, and computing technology have progressed to the point of making a "Memex type" device feasible and affordable.

Intellectual Property:
The IP [this is where the money is to be made] would be to conceive the algorithm to access all living memories and store them in a sort of "personal memory-bank internet" or Life Experience storage vault allowing the other person(s) to have to “live” [vicariously] that persons life - perhaps in another time. Aside for the legal ramifications [would be huge] this solves the classic “time travel conundrum” of altering the future - since your living inside someone’s fixed memories.

NOTE: that the "Memex" approach for me is too constrained with current technology and therefore strikes me as a bit old-school. I mean who’s going to wear camera glasses all the time? I see this memory capture if “hardware” based to be an Omni-present body camera woven into the clothes you and I would wear [more of my thoughts on this in wearable computer Web Log entry]. This would be somewhat like a Life Experience Black Box Recorder or “LEBBR”.

Laterally thinking… the breakthrough could possibly be chemical based. A drug that induces telepathic/ telekinetic abilities allowing one to “time travel” around the world living via others memory experiences. Of course this drug would also need to keep the users memories from fading with age.