I was trying to follow this long ago.

Photographs of Steve Mann wearing his early prototypes of wearable tech are enough to convince most of us that this wasn't something we particularly wanted. Over the years his wearables have become smaller and less imposing, but they're still the sort of thing that won't become adopted by the masses. Mann's projects can't really be called life-logging, but his wearables established the basis for collecting the information that's essential to the field. Jennifer Ringley, JenniCam, wasn't life-logging either, but by continually broadcasting her day she was definitely moving in that direction. As I noted back in 1998, the immense audience she accumulated suggested that we were interested in this constant information, though again, this wasn't an experiment in quantifying her life, and through that trying to better understand, or change, it. It definitely changed Ringley's - she (to me not-surprisingly) discovered that a few years were enough.

Back in those relatively early days of the web many were obsessed with this possibility of constantly being on screen, and many others were obsessed with identifying business opportunities. In the same column in which I reported on JenniCam I also referred to a company that installed video cameras in kindergartens and broadcast in real time to a web site that parents could subscribe to. I didn't have a link then, but six years later I did - though today that link is no longer active. It turns out, however, that KinderCam does still have an accessible web site. The very minimal site looks as though it hasn't changed at least since the early 2000s, though the main page notes that the site can be viewed on iPads, iPhones and Android devices. A year ago the Associated Press archives posted to its YouTube channel a short report on the company from 1997. KinderCam today is clearly not a flourishing business, though other companies have successfully cashed in on the parental desire to make sure that their children are safe and happy throughout the day.



Go to: The unbearable tedium of life-logging.