C a t h a l     G u r r i n

Lecturer, School of Computing, Dublin City University, IRELAND

Publications Research Lecturing Summary

Human Digital Memories

I have an ongoing interest in Human Digital Memories. What is this? Well....

How much of life are we consigning to our memories? Everyday we consign events and interactions to our memories, typically increasingly unreliable memories as we age. However, with the constant technological progressions of recent years, it does not have to be this way. HDMs provide a solution and will likely have a huge impact, personally, socially and medically in the future. HDMs can create surrogate memories, medical histories, automatic blogs, etc... This is not a new idea, consider the MEMEX concept proposed by Vannevar Bush in 1945 or Bill Gates, in ‘The Road Ahead’ (1995) remarked that soon we will be able to record all we see and hear. A Human Digital Memory creates a digital surrogte of part of our memory, what parts is up to the individual. Microsoft's MyLifeBits is perhaps the best known such project, where many aspects of Gordon Bell's life is digitally captured and organised. Over the past 20 months, I have gathered a HDM archive of almost 2 million photos, including the following data:

Inside a Human Digital Memory

Well, I am not really in a position to publish HDM photos taken with the Sensecam, but here are a few photos that I have chosen because they either contain no people, or only people that are part of this research group, and who have given me their express permission to use these photos here.


Publications on HDMs

There are a number of papers published about our work with HDMs and a full list can be found on the CDVP publications page. Below are four papers that I have been involved in writing on work with HDMs



Publicity on this work with HDMs

December 2007, Fingal Independent. "Balbriggan Doctor shoots 1 million photos". News paper article outlining my, and AIC, research into SenseCams and Human Digital Memories.

Balbriggan Doctor shoots 1 million photos. December 2007, Science.ie. "Title". Review article outlining the research into SenseCams and Human Digital Memories here at the AIC.

Imagine taking over a million pictures of your everyday life, work, holidays and much more. That's exactly what one Irish researcher has done, in a project to develop searchable digital picture diaries of individuals' lives.
November 2007, RTE NEWS, Six-one, November 2007.

News shot for the six pm evening news on RTE 1, concerning the ongoing Human Digital Memories research at the AIC at DCU. Myself, Dr Noel O'Connor and Aiden were involved in briefly presenting our ongoing research into HDMs.

Length: 00:01:55
November 2007, TV3 Breakfast Show, November 2007.

Morning TV interview on TV3 (with Dr. Noel O'Connor) concerning AIC research into Human Digital memories, from the TV show Ireland AM.

Length: 00:09:10
April 2007, The Chronicle of Higher Education "On the Record, All the Time". Periodical article outlining our AIC (and others), research into Human Digital Memories.

...research team has created programs that can scan video and automatically find, say, action sequences. They are now recording their days with SenseCams and creating programs that will scan the pictures to find significant changes in activity, which will help locate the most interesting events... Also, a short article on the DCU news site from November 2007.

© 2007      c a t h a l     g u r r i n.