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Memoto Releases Documentary On Lifelogging Tweet This   Forward This

25 April 2013

Memoto. Three of the wearable video gadgets next to their predecessor.

No idea what "lifelogging" is? No problem. Memoto sent two film students around the world for six weeks last summer to "meet pioneers, entrepreneurs and users of lifelogging services" and document what they found in Lifeloggers.

Memoto is the Swedish company whose wearable video camera lets you "effortlessly track yourself," as it puts it. The weatherproof button-free Memoto camera automatically takes a GPS-encoded photo every 30 seconds and uploads them to the Memoto Lifelogging Cloud when you charge the battery every two days. It also organizes them for you in the Cloud "using image algorithms." You can share the photos or keep them private.

Why would you do that? People who do it, Memoto claims, "say it makes them healthier, more aware of their presence in life, more able to appreciate life as it happens." The documentary sets out to demonstrate just that.

Or will in a couple of days. Lifeloggers will be released on May 28. But until then you can watch the trailer for the documentary.

The company engaged film student Amanda Alm and Ville Bloom to find out "how lifelogging might change how we remember our lives, how we take care of our health and if there are any risks with documenting your life." They hit the streets in the summer of 2012 to do their research.

One hitch: the Memoto video camera wasn't available at that time so they had to resort to more conventional gear.

A Mann's Job. Professor Steve Mann has "invented a whole new way of documenting people's lives," the filmmakers say.

"We didn't know anything about 'lifelogging' but we soon realised it's a trend that will affect all of us" Alm said. "It was super exciting to meet people like Gordon Bell and Steve Mann who more or less have invented a whole new way of documenting people's lives. What they had to tell about the future was fascinating."

If the unexamined life is not worth living, as the ancient Greeks put it, lifelogging provides a lot more to chew on. But we're left wondering who has time to watch the life they lived? And if you do, are you lifelogging that?

See you at the movies.

Memoto Releases Documentary About Lifelogging

SWEDEN -- Memoto, a Swedish startup which hopes to give everyone a photographic memory, has financed and produced a film about "lifelogging." The documentary was recorded by Amanda Alm and Ville Bloom, two young students from a film school in Stockholm.

They spent six weeks in the summer 2012 traveling the globe to meet pioneers, entrepreneurs and users of lifelogging services. The question they posed was "How will lifelogging change our lives?"

"We didn't know anything about 'lifelogging' but we soon realised it's a trend that will affect all of us" Alm said. "It was super exciting to meet people like Gordon Bell and Steve Mann who more or less have invented a whole new way of documenting people's lives. What they had to tell about the future was fascinating."

Lifelogging, the documenting of your life with technical tools and services, has been an obscure hobby for a few technically minded people. But with wearable computers getting cheaper as well as the number of smartphone apps tracking everything from sleep (i.e Sleeptrack) to exercise (i.e. Runkeeper) exploding, the interest for lifelogging has grown.

"Memoto is a part of this trend" explained Memoto CEO Martin Kçllstrom, "and we wanted to listen to what other people, who have been active lifeloggers for years, think about the future. Instead of just emailing and asking and keeping the answers to ourselves, we decided to meet them in person, film the meeting and make a movie out of it so more people can take part of the results."

Lifeloggers will make its public debut May 28. The trailer for the film is already up.


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