Experience machines: capturing and retrieving personal content

Fundamental to human existence is the ability to capture, memorize and retrieve personal experiences and to share them with others. After motors have supplemented our muscles and sensors have supplemented our senses, emerging computer systems are on the verge of becoming intimate supplements to our memory. New generations of sensor technology, interaction methods and semantic computers enable the capturing and interpretation of a person’s daily activities and the pro-active assistance of these activities. Semantic computers are the engines of rich digital autobiographic archives that are intuitively accessible for retrieval of personal content. New interaction methods turn computers into experience machines that allow a new and deeper sensory awareness of environmental, bodily and cognitive processes. This paper describes the value and exponential growth of personal content, the urgent need of consumer applications to manage and utilize this content and challenging dilemmas related to capturing and sharing personal content.

(Published August, 2004)

Experience Machines