Total Recall and Your Digital Memory

Photo Courtesy of Flickr / Ian-S

Believe it nor, I actually started using Twitter on May 29, 2008. My first tweet? "celler: This is a test message from my cell phone.” One of those great moments in history, similar to your child’s first words, right? 

Total Recall

What is significant is that for the first time I have a chronicle of my thoughts and reading trends over the last four years, all captured in little 140 character text streams, all in one place. Why is this important? This past summer I started reading a book called Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything [Amazon.com]. The premise of the book is that with the technology we now possess, we can literally capture the ebb and flow of life as it happens. The authors (Bell and Gemmell) argue that we should be actively capturing every detail, every thought, every image, every sound that crosses our path. 

The benefits of a digital memory is clear: imagine the joy of experiencing the life lived by your great grandparents in great detail. Instead, all we have are a few grainy black and white photos taken at high points in their life. When I look at the family history my great grandparents left behind, I could easily combine both my maternal and paternal family legacies into one small envelope. Even with my grandparents, I have a better record, but it is spotty prior to the 1950s, when cameras must have reached a level of affordability that they became a common item in middle-class America.

The disadvantage is finding your way through an mountain of data, both analog and digital. It is relatively easy to index and search my digital trail for the past 10-12 years, but beyond that, it gets more and more difficult. The biggest hurdle is overcoming all of the technological changes and proprietary software that has crossed my path.

Take, for example, the 1980s. While I started using a computer regularly in 1984 (my first computer was an Atari 64 and then I moved up to an Epson Q-20, which ran on an old OS called CPM), my method of storing data changed every few years. The Atari, for example, relied on cassette tapes to store data, while the Epson relied on 5.25-inch floppy disks. Consequently, all of my writing from 1984 until approximately 1989, when I purchased my first IBM-compatible computer, is gone.

Even the 1990s prove to be difficult. My first word processor was Word Perfect. It wasn’t until 1993 that I switched to Microsoft Word. Much of my publication work was in Aldus PageMaker. While you can still open these files in their modern-day siblings, it is a slow process to sort through hundreds of files, open them in a modern counterpart, and save the file as a pdf.

Total Recall Projects

Using the simple rule of baby steps, the authors of Total Recall suggest you tackle one “total recall project” at a time. In my case, I have started collecting and converting my journal writings into a single format that should be time proof. (In researching what formats are time proof, the two that seem most recommended include plain text and Adobe pdf.) While this may sound like a simple process, it is not. I started journaling in 1984. My first years were all paper. Sometime in 1989, I switched to journaling on my computer. Over the next 20-plus years, I journaled in a wide variety of formats, from simple Word documents to various cloud-based apps (Google Docs or Zoho), dedicated journal apps, Microsoft Outlook, and more. Intermixed throughout are times when I clearly tired of the digital forms of journaling and reverted to a paper-based approach, like my beloved Franklin Planner.

So, for almost three months now, I have scoured old hard drives, countless directories, files, and books for scraps and pieces of my journal. What will be fun (not really) is when I have to begin “digitizing” all of my paper ramblings. At first I thought I would simply scan the pages, but in order to have a format that is truly time proof, I will probably retype the handwritten journals so they end up in simple plain text format.

Needless to say, I will still keep the handwritten journals. As much as I appreciate the ease of writing on a computer, nothing beats the memory of a handwritten page. Plain text, while searchable and easy to store, lacks all of the nastalgia of a handwritten page. Looking at my handwritten journals from the 1980s, I can easily remember where I was and what it felt like at the time I was writing those words. There is no similar sense of nastalgia for the typewritten pages. 

What does your digital memory look like? How are you capturing everyday life as it happens?