New systems may allow people to record everything they see and hear–and even things they cannot sense–and to store all these data in a personal digital archive

Microsoft Research’s Gordon Bell has launched a research project, called MyLifeBits, aimed at creating a digital archive of all his interactions with the world. Bell’s digital memories include documents from his long career in the computer industry, all the photographs he takes and conversations he records, every Web site he visits, and every e-mail he sends and receives.

Storage requirements are estimated at 18 GB a year, 1.1 TB over a 60-year span.