Daily recap: One weird all-seeing-eye trick to staying focused on your goals

TITLE: Daily recap: One weird all-seeing-eye trick to staying focused on your goals

Background:

People currently carry cell phones that have the ability to record nearly all aspects of life.

  • For example:
  • Location, via GPS
  • Step counting, via accelerometer (and GPS)
  • All Internet usage that goes through that device
  • All text messages
  • All email correspondence
  • Anything said within earshot of the device
  • Etc.

Soon, this self-surveillance will become even more all-encompassing, as people wear watches / lapel pins / fake flowers / whatever with integrated cameras and heart rate monitors. Nothing will be hidden from the all-seeing eye of THE CLOUD.

eye-watchFig 1: A hypothetical wristwatch with an all-seeing eye on it. The eye just watches the wearer 24/7, silently judging. Remember to charge it every night!

Interestingly, the “Telescreen” from Orwell’s 1984 actually gathers less information about a subject than a modern cell phone! For now, we will skip over the obvious dystopian applications for this technology.

Proposal:

1) The watch monitors its wearer at all times, and extracts a few clips of “interesting” things that happened during the day.

2) Then, overnight, it creates a 30 second video montage, complete with a dramatic voiceover narrating the highlights of the day, like one might see in a TV show with a continuing multi-episode plot.

3) When the watch-wearer wakes up in the morning, they are greeted with a “last time in: your daily life” video.

Example:

“LAST TIME IN: YOUR LIFE:

  • FIRST: YOU FAILED TO USE THE COPIER ON THE SECOND FLOOR:
    video clip of the user cursing at a copying machine
  • THEN: YOU MISSED THE BUS: video clip of the user running after a bus as it pulls away from the stop
  • BUT: YOU HAD A DELICIOUS KEBAB: video clip of the user buying lunch at a food truck
  • NOW A NEW DAY BEGINS. . .

 

heart-rate-etc

Fig 2: In order to obtain this information, the monitoring software could examine your GPS location, heart rate, step count, etc. Presumably it could look for interesting combinations of data that had not occurred before, and those would (hopefully) result in a useful recap of the previous day.

PROS: Could motivate the user to stay focused on their goals by providing continuity with their actions from the previous day.

CONS: Depending on the user’s daily routine, the “daily recap” might eventually find nothing interesting. “Highlights from yesterday: you microwaved a frozen meal and then watched a Youtube compilation of car crashes.”