Re: New camera promises to capture your whole life
by gwern on Friday October 16, 2009 @07:01PM
(#886347)
> Why would you want to record your whole life, especially on a pendant-cam that would be bouncy and pointing at something irrelevant half the time.
Family videos are bouncy and pointing at something irrelevant half the time as well.
> Do you keep an audio record of your whole life now? That's been feasible for a long time. Why not? What about video would make you start?
Omni-directional mikes would pick up too much; directional would be inconvenient to aim. Video is vastly easier to navigate, since we think spatially and visually - how do you scroll through an audio recording? With video, you get feedback as to where you are temporally, especially if there's movement from place to place; with audio, you just randomly fastforward hoping to get nearer where you want to hear, if you can even recognize progress towards or away from the clip you want. (An example: I have a video of a boardwalk, versus audio, and I want to look at an encounter. Will it be easier for me to find that encounter if I can look at the video, or if I just have to listen to random ambience & chit-chat?)
Further, video picks up written material, it will pick up gestures and body language of speakers, and, incidentally (and importantly for the hard-of-hearing, like me) makes spoken language much clearer because you can do some lip-reading.
And remember the practical uses thought of for lifelogging; how would an audio recording help you in traffic court? Some background noise, a screech, a honk, and a thud is worthless. An audio recording might pick up your child's first word - but not also his first step, like a video would.
Family videos are bouncy and pointing at something irrelevant half the time as well.
> Do you keep an audio record of your whole life now? That's been feasible for a long time. Why not? What about video would make you start?
Omni-directional mikes would pick up too much; directional would be inconvenient to aim. Video is vastly easier to navigate, since we think spatially and visually - how do you scroll through an audio recording? With video, you get feedback as to where you are temporally, especially if there's movement from place to place; with audio, you just randomly fastforward hoping to get nearer where you want to hear, if you can even recognize progress towards or away from the clip you want. (An example: I have a video of a boardwalk, versus audio, and I want to look at an encounter. Will it be easier for me to find that encounter if I can look at the video, or if I just have to listen to random ambience & chit-chat?)
Further, video picks up written material, it will pick up gestures and body language of speakers, and, incidentally (and importantly for the hard-of-hearing, like me) makes spoken language much clearer because you can do some lip-reading.
And remember the practical uses thought of for lifelogging; how would an audio recording help you in traffic court? Some background noise, a screech, a honk, and a thud is worthless. An audio recording might pick up your child's first word - but not also his first step, like a video would.