Total Recall - C. Gordon Bell [2]
He is also one of the industry’s most important original thinkers, not only about how to advance the state of the art of digital technology, but also about the role that technology plays in society and in people’s lives. I have so much admiration and respect for the depth of Gordon’s thinking and the quality of his work.
I think I’ve known Gordon for about twenty-five years. But I’m not quite sure. As I was getting ready to write this foreword, I checked with Gordon to see if he could remember when we first met. I recalled a lobster dinner that Gordon hosted in September of 1983 in Marlboro, Massachusetts, when I first got involved with the Computer History Museum that he founded. He thinks it’s possible that we met a few months earlier when he flew to Seattle to discuss licensing DOS for DEC’s Rainbow line of computers. Gordon also checked with a friend who was a colleague at DEC at the time, who says it was probably in 1982, when discussions about the Rainbow-DOS deal first got under way.
I wish we could pinpoint our first meeting with a little more certainty. As Total Recall advances, this kind of information will be available to us as a matter of course. I know we’ll welcome this change.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
Since 1995 the two of us have had a close partnership that has led to the ideas and words in this book. For the sake of readability, we have adopted Gordon’s voice for our four hands. I is Gordon Bell, and we are explicit when a story is about Jim Gemmell.
We chose not to delve into technical detail in the main text. For those who would like to know more about the computer engineering behind Total Recall, we refer you to the Annotated References and Resources section at the end of this book, and our Web site, www.totalrecallbook.com.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
THE VISION
I’m losing my mind.
Not the Gordon-needs-a-high-priced-psychiatrist kind of losing one’s mind, although my teenage granddaughter may disagree. Instead, each day that passes I forget more and remember less. I don’t have Alzheimer’s or even brain damage. I’m just aging.
Yes, each day I’m losing a little bit more of my mind. By the way, so are you.
What if you could overcome this fate? What if you never had to forget anything, but had complete control over what you remembered—and when?
Soon, you will be able to. You will have the capacity for Total Recall. You will be able to summon up everything you have ever seen, heard, or done. And you will be in total control, able to retrieve as much or as little as you want at any given time.
Right now, if someone had even a single photo from each day of her life, we would be amazed. But soon you will be able to record your entire life digitally. It’s possible, affordable, and beneficial.
If you choose, you’ll be able to create this digital diary or e-memory continuously as you go about your life. This will be nearly effortless, because you’ll have access to an assortment of tiny, unobtrusive cameras, microphones, location trackers, and other sensing devices that can be worn in shirt buttons, pendants, tie clips, lapel pins, brooches, watchbands, bracelet beads, hat brims, eyeglass frames, and earrings. Even more radical sensors will be available to implant inside your body, quantifying your health. Together with various other sensors embedded in the gadgets and tools you use and peppered throughout your environment, your personal sensor network will allow you to record as much or as little as you want of what happens to you and around you.
If you choose, everything you see can be automatically photographed and spirited away into your personal image library within your e-memory. Everything you hear can be saved as digital audio files. Software can allow you to scan your pictures for writing and your audio files