What if you could record and recall everything you've ever done?

Soon, if you choose, you will be able to conveniently and affordably record your whole life in minute detail. In Total Recall, Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell draw on their experience from the MyLifeBits project at Microsoft Research to explain the benefits to come from an earth-shaking and inevitable increase in electronic memories.

In 1998 they began using Bell as a test case, attempting to digitally record as much of his life as possible. Photos, letters, and memorabilia were scanned. Everything he did on his computer was captured. He wore an automatic camera, an arm-strap that logged his bio-metrics, and began recording telephone calls. This experiment, and the system they created to support it, put them at the center of a movement studying the creation and enjoyment of e-memories.

Since then, the availability of personal information in a digitised form (be it photos, videos, e-mails, reports, web pages and even GPSdata tracking themovements ofour cars or phones) and the capacity of digital storage have bothincreased exponentially.

Imagine heart monitors woven into your clothes and tiny wearable audio and visual recorders automatically capturing what you see and hear. The trend for increaseddigital storage is already visible - but how far will we go? Do we want to have all thisinformation available? Is it useful?And, perhaps most importantly,will it be secure?