14 julho 2003

TECNOSFERA
Pentagon Alters LifeLog Project: Lifelog is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's effort to gather every conceivable element of a person's life, dump it all into a database, and spin the information into narrative threads that trace relationships, events and experiences.
It's an attempt, some say, to make a kind of surrogate, digitized memory. [...]
Researchers who receive LifeLog grants will be required to test the system on themselves. Cameras will record everything they do during a trip to Washington, D.C., and global-positioning satellite locators will track where they go. Biomedical sensors will monitor their health. All the e-mail they send, all the magazines they read, all the credit card payments they make will be indexed and made searchable.
By capturing experiences, Darpa claims that LifeLog could help develop more realistic computerized training programs and robotic assistants for battlefield commanders.
Defense analysts and civil libertarians, on the other hand, worry that the program is another piece in an ongoing Pentagon effort to keep tabs on American citizens. LifeLog could become the ultimate profiling tool, they fear.