DARPA Ditches Backup Brain Plans
from the oh-well... dept
The concept of the "backup brain" - a device that you carry around that records everything going on around you for future use - has gotten a lot of attention over the past few years. Both Microsoft and Accenture announced plans to work on projects in the space, and no one really flipped out. However, as soon as the government suggested they were looking at a similar project, called LifeLog, people began to freak out about the privacy implications. I'm not entirely sure what the worry is. The project wasn't designed to stream back all the data about your life to some government computer, but for the individual's own use. Having dealt with bad publicity over other projects in the last year, however, DARPA seems a bit gun-shy on any controversial program, and thus are killing off their LifeLog project. I'm not sure what the big deal is on this, as it does seem like a worthwhile technology to explore, and research at Microsoft on their MyLifeBits and Accenture's Personal Awareness Assistant (though, scaled back considerably) will continue.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Xerox
[ link to this | view in thread ]