Would a life in bits be a bit of life?

Once, I saw a cartoon of a tombstone that had the name of the dead inscribed as something like this: [email protected]. Pretty soon, I think tombstones will also have the copyright symbol on them. Try as you might to carry the copyright of your life with you, you may have to contend with the unintended consequences of a technology that will have the details of your whole life — tens of millions of photos, hundreds of thousands of videos, Web pages you have visited, every word you have written or read, every phone call you have made, even the three billion heartbeats of your lifetime — recorded and archived so that they are accessible long after you are gone.

Microsoft’s research project called MyLifeBits, featured in the March 2007 issue of the Scientific American, foresees that 20 years from now, a comprehensive stack of the memories of a life of a hundred-year-old human being could be electronically stored for about $600. How will this be done? Well, simply put, it is just a matter of extending the presence of sensors at every aspect of your life. When now you have a digital record of your photos and videos, personal documents and your daily schedules, the sensors will just be embedded more deeply into more aspects of your life — from your bathroom scale to your refrigerator, to your car, to books you read, to your health indicators, even to the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels occurring at the time and the place you were in. A Microsoft employee, Gordon Bell, the co-author of the Scientific American article, had the past six years of his life in this mode. He agreed to have the memories of his life scanned as they happened and then stored for his retrieval later on. Films like The Final Cut, Eternal Sunshine and Deja Vu have depicted a future shaped this way. Would we embrace such a technology?

Every kind of information that is stored digitally is comprised of "bits" (either "0" or "1"). As complex and colorful as human lives are — your first kiss, those words from a literary work that struck you like an eternal song, the "aha" moments in your own mind’s quest for discovery, the painting that grabbed you to paint from your own soul, your baby’s first smile, the arch of a perfect rainbow in a special afternoon in your life, the heavy downpour of rain when you realized you were in love, your last kiss, your last breath- to the digital recorder, they are all just a bunch of 0s and 1s. Microsoft’s MyLifeBits will give us a picture of the past in unprecedented detail to examine. But would a life in bits really be a bit of life? Would more data of life mean more meaning for life?

Whether intended or not, anything that you put a price to — say $600 — becomes a commodity, even if it is the comprehensive details of your one and only life. Memory as commodity. Memory would no longer be tentative. You would be able to go back to what you may not have paid attention to. If we can do that, we can probably solve crimes better and faster. CSI fellows would be out of their jobs. We would all be able to analyze crime scenes. But what about for other things that you can go back to? Would you always be hounded by the thought of what you could have done because you could go back to the past and see what you missed in deciding on something? If so, would we grow increasingly unforgiving of ourselves and of others? Before digital technology, we already had a deep, running record of hate in all levels — from personal to civilizational. That has never stopped us from engaging in them over and over again. An access to the past, in papyrus or in 0s and 1s, is still just a tool. We are not necessarily more or better humans just because we have more access to more of the memories we create. We just are better-tooled humans now in the sense of speed and accuracy. MyLifeBits, just like any technology, is still a stone tool to carve memory on our life abodes, but on steroids.

Imagine a kind of future wherein everyone is on reality TV and not just Paris Hilton. If you allow access by even some to your digital life, people can vote on what they think you should do or should have done. Your life would be some kind of constant "Deal or No Deal" with those whose opinions you allow to access your life’s data. This will either boost your confidence or heighten your insecurity further since your mother (if you do not put her in your blocked access list) will always have her opinion known to you on that dish you just cooked or that man you just dated. But of course, you may manage your health better, too — your doctor can, before you set off in an ambulance, warn you about health indicators that have been growing worrisome because of your stressful routines. Your boss can redirect your computer searches into what he thinks will be more productive to the company. Your own personal memories will have co-authors no longer only metaphorically but also digitally!

We seem to always really confuse data with knowledge and meaning. Meaning comes from perspective and it is not guaranteed by more data of anything. In fact, with existing technology now, the master of his or her own game is the one who can make sense of the universe of data out there by making creative choices. And when it comes to one’s own life, meaning is something you get by questing for it, not mining it. To quest is to make friends with your own strengths and more importantly, with your own limitations. Otherwise, faced with an endless array of possibilities, you spend your days like an unobserved electron being everywhere at the same time, not seizing the moments when they come. The tyranny of endless choice may soon spell the death of your own imagination. In the end, you may be left with a file that represents every pixel of you eternally at the cusp of every possibility and never realizing any.

I saw a mandala made by Buddhist monks when I visited Bhutan a few years back. A mandala is a symbol of one’s own life’s perspective, in relation to the universe. It is like a painting painstakingly drawn by colored sand, grain by grain. The monks worked on this for several days at least, on their hands and knees. After the intended viewers have seen it, the sand mandala is destroyed and the grains are collected in an urn and poured into a flowing river or stream so that the "blessings" or the bits of the creative soul that moved the sand art could flow where they may. The sand mandala is destroyed as a testament to life’s impermanence but also to the lasting memory of a creative and meaningfully lived life. It is to me, a poignant embrace of one’s own eventual obscurity in the flowing sea of countless human stories, after a mindful effort to live and create, sweat by sweat, blink by blink, grip by grip, a life with color and meaning, while you are making the sand art that is your own life. MyLifeBits wants to frame that sand art that is your life not only when it is made but while it is being made. You will no longer be plagued with the sweet forgetfulness that goes with every sand that is poured into the stream as you let go of a life before it turned completely digital. And the deepest lesson that we learned from letting go completely? It is no more. Gain a pixel, lose your soul.

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