This concept apparently goes back at least as far as Robert Ettinger, the originator of cryonics. From his seminal book introducing cryonics,
We normally think of information about the body as being preserved in the body—but this is not the only possibility. It is conceivable that ordinary written records, photographs, tapes, etc. may give future technicians enough clues to fill in missing or damaged areas in the brain of the frozen.
The time will certainly come when the brain’s method of coding memories is thoroughly understood, and messages can be “read” directly from nervous tissue, and also “read” into it. It is not likely that the relation will be a simple one, nor will it necessarily even be exactly the same for every brain; nevertheless, by knowing that the frozen had a certain item of information, it may be possible to infer helpful conclusions about the character of certain regions in his brain and its cells and molecules.
Similarly, a mass of detailed information about what he did may allow advanced physiological psychologists to deduce important conclusions about what he was, once more providing opportunity to fill in gaps in brain structure.
It follows that we should all make reasonable efforts to obtain and preserve a substantial body of data concerning what we have seen, heard, felt, thought, said, written, and done in the course of our lives. These should probably include a battery of psychological tests. Encephalograms might also be useful.
Reviewing the comments I see only a glancing mention, so I’ll point out the leading projects I’m aware of in this space are those by Terasem folks (Terasem might be poorly explained as a “transhumanist religion”). For example. I recall them doing some work on things like questions to elicit responses that might be particularly useful in reconstructing a person from writing, etc. and then also doing some work on persistent storage of the resulting data.
I still expect something like writing ourselves into the future to be useful, whether or not it takes the form a lifelogging. For myself, it’s an excuse to write about my experiences and thoughts on social media: truly a lifelog for the ages.
With the power of a controllable superintelligent AI, it may even be possible to create very accurate instances of your past self (and you could take action today or in the near future to make this easier by using lifelogging tools such as these glasses).
There is an old LW thread about this, with lots of discussion and links to similar ideas.
This concept apparently goes back at least as far as Robert Ettinger, the originator of cryonics. From his seminal book introducing cryonics,
Reviewing the comments I see only a glancing mention, so I’ll point out the leading projects I’m aware of in this space are those by Terasem folks (Terasem might be poorly explained as a “transhumanist religion”). For example. I recall them doing some work on things like questions to elicit responses that might be particularly useful in reconstructing a person from writing, etc. and then also doing some work on persistent storage of the resulting data.
I still expect something like writing ourselves into the future to be useful, whether or not it takes the form a lifelogging. For myself, it’s an excuse to write about my experiences and thoughts on social media: truly a lifelog for the ages.
One day before this post, @Roko wrote in Poll: What value extra copies?