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A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people live their lives. In recent years, some lifelog data has been automatically captured by
wearable technology
Wearable technology is any technology that is designed to be used while worn. Common types of wearable technology include smartwatches and smartglasses. Wearable electronic devices are often close to or on the surface of the skin, where they detec ...
or
mobile devices
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
. People who keep lifelogs about themselves are known as lifeloggers (or sometimes lifebloggers or lifegloggers).
The sub-field of computer vision that processes and analyses visual data captured by a wearable camera is called "
egocentric vision
Egocentric vision or first-person vision is a sub-field of computer vision that entails analyzing images and videos captured by a wearable camera, which is typically worn on the head or on the chest and naturally approximates the visual field of ...
" or egography.
Examples
A known lifelogger was
Robert Shields, who manually recorded 25 years of his life from 1972 to 1997, at 5-minute intervals. This record resulted in a 37-million word diary, thought to be the longest ever written.
Steve Mann was the first person to capture continuous physiological data along with a live first-person video from a
wearable camera. His experiments with
wearable computing
A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.
Wearables may be for general ...
and streaming video in the early 1980s led to the formation of Wearable Wireless Webcam. Starting in 1994, Mann continuously transmitted his life — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — and his site grew in popularity so much that, on February 17, 1995, it became the
Cool Site of the Day
Cool Site of the Day is an early website created in August 1994 and originally maintained by Glenn Davis. Linking to one single recommended site off its homepage each day, it soon became an arbiter of taste on the Internet.
Within a few months o ...
. Using a wearable camera and wearable display, he invited others to see what he was looking at, as well as to send him live feeds or messages in real-time. In 1998 Mann started a community of lifeloggers (also known as lifebloggers or lifegloggers) which has grown to more than 20,000 members. Throughout the 1990s Mann presented this work to the U.S. Army, with two visits to US Natick Army Research Labs. He was also formally invited to talk.
In 1996, Jennifer Ringley started
JenniCam
Jennifer Kaye Ringley (born August 10, 1976) is an Internet personality and former lifecaster. She is widely regarded as the first camgirl. She is known for creating the popular website JenniCam. Previously, live webcams transmitted static shot ...
, broadcasting photographs from a webcam in her college bedroom every fifteen seconds; the site was turned off in 2003.
"We Live In Public" was a 24/7 Internet conceptual art experiment created by Josh Harris in December 1999. With a format similar to TV's ''
Big Brother'', Harris placed tapped telephones, microphones and 32 robotic cameras in the home he shared with his girlfriend, Tanya Corrin. Viewers talked to Harris and Corrin in the site's chatroom. Harris recently launched the online live video platform, Operator 11.
The lifelog
DotComGuy ran throughout 2000, when Mitch Maddox lived the entire year without leaving his house. After
Joi Ito
is a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is a former director of the MIT Media Lab, former professor of the practice of media arts and sciences at MIT, and a former visiting professor of practice at the Harvard Law School. Ito has ...
's discussion of
Moblog
Mobile blogging (also known as mobloggingIto, M. (2002) 'Mobiles and the appropriation of place', receiver magazine, 8, www.receiver.vodafone.com) is a method of publishing to a website or blog from a mobile phone or other handheld device. A moblog ...
ging, which involves web publishing from a mobile device, came
Gordon Bell
Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engi ...
's
MyLifeBits
MyLifeBits is a life-logging experiment begun in 2001. It is a Microsoft Research project inspired by Vannevar Bush's hypothetical Memex computer system. The project includes full-text search, text and audio annotations, and hyperlinks. The "exper ...
(2004), an experiment in digital storage of a person's lifetime, including full-text search, text/audio annotations, and hyperlinks.
In 2003, a project called
LifeLog
A lifelog is a personal record of one's daily life in a varying amount of detail, for a variety of purposes. The record contains a comprehensive dataset of a human's activities. The data could be used to increase knowledge about how people liv ...
was started at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), under the supervision of Douglas Gage. This project would combine several technologies to record life activities, in order to create a life diary. Shortly after, the notion of lifelogging was identified as a technology and cultural practice that could be exploited by governments, businesses or militaries through surveillance. The DARPA lifelogging project was cancelled by 2004, but this project helped to popularize the idea, and the usage of the term lifelogging in everyday discourse. It contributed to the growing acceptance of using technology for augmented memory.
In 2004, conceptual media artist Alberto Frigo began tracking everything his right hand (his dominant hand) had used, then began adding different tracking and documentation projects. His tracking was done manually rather than using technology.
In 2004 Arin Crumley and Susan Buice met online and began a relationship. They decided to forgo verbal communication during the initial courtship and instead spoke to each other via written notes, sketches, video clips, and Myspace. They went on to create an autobiographical film about their experience, called ''
Four Eyed Monsters
''Four Eyed Monsters'', an American 2005 film by Susan Buice and Arin Crumley. It roughly follows Buice and Crumley's real life relationship; the couple initially communicated only through artistic means inspired to continue their online digital ...
''. It was part-documentary, part-narrative, with a few scripted elements added. They went on to produce a two-season podcast about the making of the film to promote it.
In 2007
Justin Kan
Justin Kan (born July 16, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He is also the cofounder and former ...
began streaming continuous live video and audio from a webcam attached to a cap, beginning at midnight on March 19, 2007. He created a website,
Justin.tv
Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to br ...
, for the purpose. He described this procedure as "
lifecasting
Lifecasting is the process of creating a three-dimensional copy of a living human body, through the use of molding and casting techniques.GPS tracking
A GPS tracking unit, geotracking unit, satellite tracking unit, or simply tracker is a navigation device normally on a vehicle, asset, person or animal that uses satellite navigation to determine its movement and determine its WGS84 UTM ge ...
to simultaneously document one's location and what one can see. Lifelogging was popularized by the mobile app
Foursquare
Four square is a ball game.
Four square may also refer to:
Internet and entertainment
* Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app
* ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show
* ''4 Square'' (TV series), a Canadian children's s ...
, which had users "check in" as a way of sharing and saving their location; this later evolved into the popular lifelogging app,
Swarm
Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...
.
Life caching
''Life caching'' refers to the social act of storing and sharing one's life events in an open and public forum.
Modern life caching is considered a form of
social networking
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
and typically takes place on the internet. The term was introduced in 2005 by trendwatching.com, in a report predicting this would soon be a trend, given the availability of relevant technology. However, life log information is privacy-sensitive, and therefore sharing such information is associated with risks.
Mobile and wearable apps
To assist in their efforts of tracking, some lifeloggers use mobile devices and apps. Utilizing the GPS and motion processors of digital devices enables lifelogging apps to easily record metadata related to daily activities. Myriad lifelogging apps are available in the
App Store (iOS)
The App Store is an app store platform, developed and maintained by Apple Inc., for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS Software Deve ...
,
Google Play
Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store and formerly the Android Market, is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certified devices running on the Android (operating sys ...
and other app distribution platforms, but some commonly cited apps include:
Instant
In physics and the philosophy of science, instant refers to an infinitesimal interval in time, whose passage is instantaneous. In ordinary speech, an instant has been defined as "a point or very short space of time," a notion deriving from its ety ...
, Reporter, Journey,
Path
A path is a route for physical travel – see Trail.
Path or PATH may also refer to:
Physical paths of different types
* Bicycle path
* Bridle path, used by people on horseback
* Course (navigation), the intended path of a vehicle
* Desire p ...
, Moves, and HeyDay, insight for Wear (a smartwatch app).
Xperia
Xperia () is the brand name of smartphones and tablets from Sony. The name Xperia is derived from the word "experience", and was first used in the Xperia X1 tagline of "I Xperia the best".
Sony Mobile was previously known globally as Sony E ...
also has a native mobile application which is called Lifelog.
The app works standalone but gets enriched when used with Sony Smart Bands.
Swarm
Swarm behaviour, or swarming, is a collective behaviour exhibited by entities, particularly animals, of similar size which aggregate together, perhaps milling about the same spot or perhaps moving ''en masse'' or migrating in some direction. ...
is a lifelogging app that motivates users to check-in, recording every place they've visited, while inspiring them to visit new places.
See also
*
Cathal Gurrin
*
Diary
A diary is a written or audiovisual record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwritten but are now also often digital. A personal ...
*
Digital footprint
Digital footprint or digital shadow refers to one's unique set of traceable digital activities, actions, contributions and communications manifested on the Internet or digital devices. Digital footprints can be classified as either passive or a ...
*
Dymaxion Chronofile
The Dymaxion Chronofile is Buckminster Fuller's attempt to document his life as completely as possible. He created a very large scrapbook in which he documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983. The scrapbook contains copies of all corre ...
*
Egocentric vision
Egocentric vision or first-person vision is a sub-field of computer vision that entails analyzing images and videos captured by a wearable camera, which is typically worn on the head or on the chest and naturally approximates the visual field of ...
*
Gordon Bell
Chester Gordon Bell (born August 19, 1934) is an American electrical engineer and manager. An early employee of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) 1960–1966, Bell designed several of their PDP machines and later became Vice President of Engi ...
*
Lifecasting (video stream)
Lifestreaming is an act of documenting and sharing aspects of one's daily social experiences World Wide Web, online, via a lifestream website that collects the things person chooses to publish (e.g. photos, Twitter, tweets, videos) and presents t ...
*
Lifestreaming
Lifestreaming is an act of documenting and sharing aspects of one's daily social experiences online, via a lifestream website that collects the things person chooses to publish (e.g. photos, tweets, videos) and presents them in reverse-chronolog ...
*
Microsoft SenseCam
Microsoft's SenseCam is a lifelogging camera with fisheye lens and trigger sensors, such as accelerometers, heat sensing, and audio, invented by Lyndsay Williams, patent granted in 2009. Usually worn around the neck, Sensecam is used for the MyLif ...
*
MyLifeBits
MyLifeBits is a life-logging experiment begun in 2001. It is a Microsoft Research project inspired by Vannevar Bush's hypothetical Memex computer system. The project includes full-text search, text and audio annotations, and hyperlinks. The "exper ...
*
Narrative Clip
The Narrative Clip is a small wearable lifelogging camera. Its development began in 2012 by the Swedish company Memoto after a successful crowd funding via Kickstarter. It can automatically take a picture every 30 seconds whilst being worn throug ...
*
Personal knowledge base
A personal knowledge base (PKB) is an electronic tool used to express, capture, and later retrieve the personal knowledge of an individual. It differs from a traditional database in that it contains subjective material particular to the owner, th ...
*
Quantified Self
The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap ...
*
Smartglasses
Smartglasses or smart glasses are eye or head-worn wearable computers that offer useful capabilities to the user. Many smartglasses include displays that add information alongside or to what the wearer sees. Alternatively, smartglasses are som ...
*
Sousveillance
Sousveillance ( ) is the recording of an activity by a member of the public, rather than a person or organisation in authority, typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. The term, coined by Steve Mann, stems from th ...
*
Wearable computer
A wearable computer, also known as a body-borne computer, is a computing device worn on the body. The definition of 'wearable computer' may be narrow or broad, extending to smartphones or even ordinary wristwatches.
Wearables may be for general ...
References
Bibliography
*
External links
"On the Record, All the Time"from the ''
Chronicle of Higher Education
''The Chronicle of Higher Education'' is a newspaper and website that presents news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty and student affairs professionals (staff members and administrators). A subscription is required to rea ...
''
"The Data-Driven life"from ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
''
Lifelogging, An Inevitability(
Kevin Kelly)
{{Blog topics
Technology neologisms
Computing and society
Wearable computers
Recording