Best tech story I read today

Clive Thompson, who consistently turns in some of the most interesting, in-depth technology stories, profiles Gordon Bell and his MyLifeBits project in Fast Company magazine.

MyLifeBits is an ambitious project to digitally capture every moment of Bell's life via cameras, tape recorders and other means.

Snippet:

Gordon Bell will never forget. His goal is never to forget anything.

For the past seven years, Bell has been conducting an audacious experiment in "lifelogging"--creating a near-total digital record of his experience. His custom-designed software, "MyLifeBits," saves everything it can get its hands on. For every piece of email he sends and receives, every document he types, every chat session he engages in, every Web page he surfs, a copy is scooped up and stashed away. MyLifeBits records his telephone calls and archives every picture--up to 1,000 a day--snapped by his automatic "SenseCam," that device slung around his neck. He has even stowed his entire past: The massive stacks of documents from his 47-year computer career, first as a millionaire executive then as a government Internet bureaucrat, have been hoovered up and scanned in. The last time he counted, MyLifeBits had more than 101,000 emails, almost 15,000 Word and PDF documents, 99,000 Web pages, and 44,000 pictures.