"Ubiquitous Memories: a memory externalization system using physical objects"

This is a paper I read about a system called "Ubiquitous Memories" which proposes to augment human memory trough interaction with objects. This sounded very interesting at first but parts of the abstract and introduction were a little confusing. It is proposed that the technology will help perform various daily tasks and gives examples; "reducing wasted time, facilitating human to human communication and recycling our experiences". I didnt seem particularly clear to me what their system would do. What exactly is a "recycled experience"?

In a later section the design concept was discussed. The concept is to naturally augment the human memory. The system design was was broken down into the following proceedures. "1: A user perceives an event via his/her body. 2: The perceived event is stored into his/her brain as a memory. 3:The human body is used as media, i.e, memory travels all over the body like electricity, and memory runs out of the hands." At this point the paper completely lost me, and goes on to say the memory is transferred to an object and can be later recalled through touch. Im not sure if these points had some leaning to the actual biology behind memory or they were trying to describe the concept in a very abstract way.

The whole thing makes more sense when the hardware is described. There is a head mounted display over the left eye which can display video to the user. This eye piece also has a camera to record users activities. There is an RFID reader on one wrist. These are both connected to a remote control for the system which connects to a hip mounted wearable computer connected to wireless LAN. Its all very "we are borg". I find the location of the RFIS reader interesting. I wonder how effective this position is at reading tags, it does'nt seem to be mentioned in the paper, and wether it is worth investigating. Basically the system works by recording a users activities. Objects are tagged with RFID tags and when read the user can see a video or scene of an event related to the object. The given example is a trophy will trigger memory of a sporting event.

I thought the testing of the system was done quite well. A number of people were asked to remember specific things and to later recall them. Their memory was helped in different ways one of which being the "Ubiquitous Memories" system, and the best human memory aids could be determined.

Overall the system seemed very innovative with plenty of potential, however much of the paper was extremely abstract and unclear.