Remember This?

Reading about Gordon Bell’s SenseCam and archive, I thought it seemed pretty pointless. I doubt anyone will be interested in looking at so many photos of this one man’s life. I understand putting one’s old photos onto a computer so that they can be stored for longer than if only on paper but I can’t understand why Bell would want to archive thousands of photos from each day of his life. Maybe if the photos were put together into a quick movie, it could be interesting. But Bell has tried this and for some reason doesn’t like the results. Reading this article, I was reminded of my photos, and that I have too many of them so I periodically go through and try to delete ones that I no longer want because they take up so much space on my computer. However, I feel attached to my photos and that I may want to look at them in the future, so I never end up deleting that many. On the other hand, I rarely wish that I had taken more photos.

What is the point of Bell cataloguing such small details of his life if the collection has become like “a black hole” where “everything went in and nothing came out.” Why does he collect unimportant data such as every website he has visited? It seems like by having such a large collection, he makes it impossible to go back and find information when he wants it.

I would never want to be taking photographs all the time. I think that creating such a detailed collection of things and photos from one’s life would cause one to overanalyze oneself. Bell must always be choosing what to photograph, which photographs to save or delete, and what information to upload to his archives. Maybe his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will enjoy his “lifelogging” but to me it seems like it would be quite unpleasant and a waste of time to so obsessively document one’s own life.