Gordon Bell

In response to "Remember This? A project to record everything we do in life." in the New Yorker:

Gordon Bell has certainly accomplished something impressive---gargantuan is a better term for it. But how relevant and useful is this archive he has assembled? He himself admitted to not really having an efficient system of organization in his digital archive. He doesn't seem to use the archive for anything. He collects for the sake of archiving. Some of the things he hopes to see in the future---like a computer program that monitors your caloric intake and health---are great ideas and probably will appear sooner or later. But even if they were to appear tomorrow, his archive is unsuitable for any sort of thorough, precise search. I also have a problem with the fact that most of his archive was previously extant in paper form---and was already organized and filed as such. If you already have a good system in place, why trade it in for a flashier, technology-based one? Even in terms of the archival lifespans, the jury is still out on whether digital files will outlast pieces of paper. Bell is right to be worried that the JPEG format won't last far into the future. As internet connection speeds and CPUs get faster, the need to compress images for quick viewing will be phased out (my guess).

For a system like Bell's to make sense and be useful, information and data need to be in digital form at the moment you recieve them. Scanning, while useful in the preservation of historical documents, is inefficient and not suited for everyday living. Bell had to hire someone to scan for him on a full-time basis. Personal life archives would be extremely useful if there were a standard, efficient system for organizing them and if digital data were formatted and designed with the archiving in mind.