apologies for any cross-posting
dear all
can I strongly recommend members of the list look at the following:
“Memories for life: Managing information over a human lifetime" at:
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/Grand_Challenges/proposals/Memories.pdf
This document is based on the UKCRC (UK Computing Research Committee’s) Grand Challenges in Computing workshop held last year which put forward seven themes as grand challenges for computing science in coming decades. For more information on UKCRC and its Grand Challenges initiative, see
http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/Grand_Challenges/
This document is very pertinent in a whole raft of broad themes in digital preservation and it is interesting to see these positioned in terms of mainstream computing science research. It should be of interest to all members of the list and offers several possible bridges between these communities.
Also today's Guardian article "How to save your life" by Jack Schofield accessible (at least within UK) at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1285531,00.html
A very interesting article on "life-caching" and summary of current research and industry trends which mentions the UK Computing Research Committee’s Grand Challenge. It provides an interesting context for and extension to previous postings to the list in this area (eg Microsoft's Mylifebits project).
For an overview of content and technology industry trends in this area I would recommend life-caching at trendwatching.com :
http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/LIFE_CACHING.htm
some extracts from the Memories for Life Grand Challenge document as follows:
"People are capturing and storing an ever-increasing amount of information about themselves,including emails, web browsing histories, digital images, and audio recordings.This tsunami of data presents numerous challenges to computer science, including: how to physically store such “digital memories” over decades; how to protect privacy,especially when data such as photos may involve more than one person; how to extract useful knowledge from this rich library of information; how to use this knowledge
effectively, for example in knowledge-based systems; and how to effectively present
memories and knowledge to different kinds of users. The unifying grand challenge is
to manage this data, these digital memories, for the benefit of human life and for a
lifetime."
"From a scientific perspective, this proposal is a challenge for many areas of computing
research. The above examples have alluded to some of the specific scientific
challenges in artificial intelligence, information retrieval, and human-computer interaction,
but there are many challenges for other areas of computer science as well. For
example, we will need to develop techniques for storing large amounts of complex data
over decades and indeed centuries, in a manner that is robust to changes in hardware,
operating systems, and indexing strategies. The computer and programs which operate
on the data will change frequently over a human lifetime, but the data must outlast the
systems which analyse it. Questions will be asked of the data which were not predicted
when the data was indexed, so the indexing strategies must change over time.
Security research must face the challenge of protecting information over decades, in a
way that is robust to advances in computational power or mathematical knowledge, but
without imposing untenable constraints on the user’s activity; and also the challenge
of rigorously proving to a sceptical public that their memories are secure from hackers,
amoral companies, and “Big Brother” governments. These are just a few of the
scientific challenges of Memories for Life, more are listed below."
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