Quote: Although Gemmell emphasises that total recall is for personal use rather than for putting every detail of your life online, there have to be privacy implications.
What’s the legal status of your digital memories? Oystercard travel records have already been used as an alibi in court, so could you be forced to disclose your GPS tracks or pictures of who you’ve met? And what about bad times you’d rather forget?
Although he freely admits there are issues, he says they’re not going to stop the trend; “Nothing is going to stop this.” Early cars were, noisy, dirty and scared horses, but the car still changed the world, he points out. “There is going to be a total recall revolution and it is coming because the technology is there.”
“The consumer desperately wants this. The only thing slowing this down is I can’t trust you to store it all and back it up and make it safe, so I just do a little bit manually. As long as we make it safe, they’re going to do it. It’s not a matter of will this happen, but how much of it will you use personally.” |