Total Recall

Microsoft research scientist Gordon Bell says we’re headed toward the day when electronic devices will be able to digitally capture our every moment. Technology will follow us, recording each person we meet, each walk around the block, each moment of disappointment and triumph. We’ll be able to tap into a digital database at any time in order to see our exact location at a specific time. His book Total Recall envisions easily finding our lost keys or discovering the name of a person we briefly bumped into on the street. We’ll be able analyze our routines and find ways to make our lives more productive.

What will happen to our sense of privacy? The courts may have found legal grounds for itin the constitution while at the same time, technology has pushing toward limiting it. Do we really want the ability to preserve all of our past?

Psychologists will tell you that when it comes to our past, we have selective amnesia. Like a cheerleader’s megaphone (with a small mouth on one end and a large opening on the other) we filter parts of our past, preserving only select memories. You can’t retain it all, so the types of events you decide to recall says something about you. Many mothers say they don’t remember the pain of childbirth, only the overwhelming feelings of bonding and holding their own child for the first time during its first moments of life.

But what happens when there’s no escaping what we’ve been through in life? Instead of painful memories fading over time, we’ll have the option of replaying them vividly in our mind over and over again. Some of us already do that... living in history's prison - unwilling to forgive ourselves or someone else and move on.

Stephen Goforth