A searchable database of all your memories—creepy? Or a blessing for your shrinking attention span? Either way, Google has scored a patent for just such a device.
To be clear, this doesn’t have anything to do with your brain. We’re not talking about an embedded chip literally storing your memories, as depicted in the fantastic dystopian sci-fi series Black Mirror. The patent’s for a digital camera that’d record the audio and video of your life in real-time, then stores those clips for later reminiscing or sharing.
It’s described as a “wearable computing device,” so presumably something along the lines of a mountable for the ill-fated Google Glass.
“Memory” searches are triggered by queries like “What was the playlist of songs at the party last night?” or “What were the paintings I saw when I was on vacation in Paris?” Perfect for people like me, who are totally oblivious to their surroundings, though it could quickly spiral into a black hole of paranoia and stalking—the application also says that users could make their “memories” searchable across social networking sites.
The application was filed over three years ago, in June 2012, and was just approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday.
[US Patent and Trademark Office via Slate]
Image credits: YouTube and USPTO