ONCE IN A WHILE, as I slouch in front of my word processor, I catch myself
wondering at the extraordinary transmutation that has taken it from simple
text-editing tool to a hugely complex entity that does everything except feed
the cat.
I don’t even need to go near the keyboard any more. All I do is lounge on the
sofa intoning clipped robotic sentences into a headset microphone. New
paragraph. What? No, I fed the cat earlier. He is just trying it on. What do you
mean look at the screen?
But even with the sometimes inscrutable voice recognition running, the system
is hardly even ticking over. Whole aeons of computing time are wasted between
each phrase. Hating waste, this led me to wonder what else we could add to soak
up the extra power of these warp-speed computers.
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One complaint I hear from archivists is the lack of a document trail from
people who have given up on paper. Where are the scrawls on the backs of
shopping lists and the notes in margins that are the stuff of biography? If the
only printed copy is the one that appears in the journal, then how will future
generations get inside the minds of today’s Darwins and Einsteins? More
importantly, what will we sell to rich collectors instead of the multitude of
manuscript copies that libraries have squirreled away?
But your computer does have thousands of text fragments scattered like
digital spoor across its disc—sometimes to the embarrassment of users who
don’t know this. What these ephemera lack is context, and I have some ideas . . .
A simple Global Positioning System chipset would add only marginally to the
price of a laptop and offer some huge benefits. Every change to every document
could include precise location and time data. For once, I would know where I was
as well as where I ought to be. True, everyone would know that you legged it to
the pub when the weather turned nasty during fieldwork—but at least they
could see the long hours that you worked.
Why stop there? Temperature and humidity data would prove it was too
unpleasant to work outside. Record olfactory information, and archivists will
know whether you had the brilliant idea over curry or pizza.
Add a couple of channels of compressed sound, binaurally recorded, and you
have a definitive record of where everyone sat, what they said, how grandiose
their theories became as post-field discussions achieved profound
fluidity—and who agreed to pay for the meal. An absolute treat for
posterity.
Now I know what you are going to say, and you’re right. There are serious
privacy and data protection issues here. But as we are already the most
monitored generation in history, we might as well take the initiative and get
something useful out of it.
Testing, testing, one, two, three….