Charles Stross has written an interesting article on a potential future where all human experience is recorded for future reference:

“In the long term, almost all human experiences will be recorded. And in the very long term, they’ll be a gold mine for historians.”

Is that a good idea, or a terrible idea? I suppose it depends on your point of view.

There are times in my life, for instance, where I embarrass myself. I will relive those situations, in my mind, a few times until I eventually forget it. It would be awful for that situation to be recorded and available as a last reminder.

There are also times in my life when I wish I could go over a situation and see whether there is anything I could learn from it. It would be great to see if from other people’s perspective too.

There are other issues too.

The more we use a machine to remember for us, the less we will remember, it’s inevitable. I’ve written about this before. Would there come a point where we could no longer do anything useful because we didn’t have enough memory available to do it?

I also wonder whether our brain doesn’t retain everything for a good reason. Not because it is limited, but because it’s good for us not to remember everything.