I had an interesting meeting with Myron Kassaraba from Boston this afternoon.

Myron has been part of the digital imaging world since the inception of digital imaging. In fact, Myron was part of the launch of the first digital scanner. I realized that we've definitely come a long way when Myron was showing me very cool things you can do with GPS and geocoding in digital photos.

The photo you see here (not the most flattering of me, but that's just my ego talking) was taken with his cameraphone and published directly to Flickr. Okay, so that's no big deal, but the big deal is that he trained his cameraphone to know exactly where he is and so our global position was embedded in that shot as he took it.

This could be scary kind of breach of security stuff, but it also has very cool implications. Myron pointed me to an article on Trendwatching on Life Caching. Not for everyone, Life Caching is a growing phenomenon that I believe is the driving force behind tagging itself.

From the article:

Human beings (fueled by a need for self-worth, validation, control, vanity, even immortality) love to collect and store possessions, memories, experiences, in order to create personal histories, mementoes of their lives, or just to keep track for practical reasons.

and

Why do we think this trend is ready to take off? Well, the necessary enablers are now all in place: required hardware and software are ubiquitious, there's ample availability of affordable storage space, blogging mentality is hitting the masses, and some of the major 'new economy' brands are getting in on the game, promising mass LIFE CACHING products at mass prices. We're talking Nokia, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Samsung and many more. All of this is putting in place an infrastructure for LIFE CACHING that will soon have GENERATION C and 'Generation Digital' caching every second of their existence.

I think I've told this story before (be patient, I'm getting older and tend to repeat myself), but I had a particularly inspirational professor (Eli Silverman) once tell me that women should record their lives because history has been written by men. I took on the task after that statement of sitting down with my very amazing Oma and interviewing her and collecting all of her old journals and getting her to record other stories and memories in a volume of books. Now that she is gone, I have her life story on record - from the mundane to the exciting and it won't die with me. I plan to do the same with my Mom.

But I don't have to rely on my son to record my life. I'm doing it with every digital photo, every blog post and every email I save in my 'keep' file. I have reams of files and old photos and records that I refuse to give up. I don't know if it will matter to anyone else, but my life's history will outlive me. If someone wants to build a portrait of 30-something women at the turn of the century involved in technology, they can use my data to add to the portrait. If it just sits, gathering dust, so be it.

Are we merely data? Well, no. But we've sure come a long way since the days when only a handful of people recorded history. We all have the opportunity to record ourselves into history.

We can already pull up a photo that was taken at a specific time in a specific location of ourselves and remember that moment. Others can pull up the same photo and start to build a story around it, either true or fictional.

I think this is a beautiful thing. I'm less concerned about stalkers, murderers and government spies than I am about my experiences dying with me. I've always felt that history and experiences are important to our future. Without the knowledge we have built on over the years, we would just be spinning our wheels. And, yes, I'm just narcissistic enough that I believe I can contribute (althought I think everyone can).

The next step is for us to loosen the grips on data that the traditional businesses hold - telecom, publishing, the music industry, etc. etc. so that we can start to weave our stories and experiences together without coming up against roadblocks. The Creative Commons is helping us own our own data (remember to donate), hopefully we can help them expand.

Either way, I'm hopeful that Life Caching (aided greatly through tools like tagging and the growth of the internet) will be more than just a generational trend.

Tags: tagging, lifecaching, autotagging, GPS