Photo by incurable_hippie from Flickr used under Creative Commons
Had an interesting epiphany today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about documenting my life because I’ll soon be a father.
As I’ve gotten older, my memory and now, it seems more important (urgent even) to document it somehow in case my kid ever wants to see what a really dull man I am.
A while back, I had a discussion with Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marhsallk) of ReadWriteWeb fame, about GetGlue, a service that lets you checkin to stuff you’re doing, e.g. watching TV, listening to music, watching a movie, thinking about something, etc. Marshall is a fan, see here and here, and I wasn’t entirely sold.
Marshall’s a smart dude, and after listening to him, I made a mental note to try it sometime.
GetGlue has some easy benefits, e.g. it recommends content based on what you tell it, there’s a social element that exposes what your social circle is doing, it has bling and who doesn’t want bling.
As I do with most new stuff, I’ve made a conscientious effort to try it out for week or so to see if it sticks.
Back to the point.
I found myself running some errands and listening to the radio in the car. Since I’ve been testing GetGlue, I decided to checkin to what I’d heard (complying with the no-texting-while-driving laws, natch). I’m still avidly using foursquare, so I also was checking into venues. Of course, I threw in a tweet or two along the way as well.
It occurred to me that tying all these services together produces a journal of my life at a very granular (read, boring) level. For example:
- I listened to Pink Floyd and Metallica on the way to Fred Meyer to do some grocery shopping.
- I listened to Led Zeppelin, Neil Young and Pink Floyd again on the way to Steakadelphia.
- While waiting on my cheesesteak, I watched a little preseason NFL football on one TV.
- I tweeted a bit.
- Then I watched CNN on the other TV, where they were reporting that an American Airlines flight out of SFO was delayed by a tip about hijackers.
- I listened to Eric Clapton and Black Sabbath on the way home to eat my cheesesteak.
This is totally mundane crap, but then, we as people have a storied history of journaling our lives, whether in paper form, in weblogs or in status updates.
Why do we do it? It’s in our DNA.
I know very few people will care about my life in this level of detail, but for those that might, it’s a great way to document our lives accidentally.
Of course, one big issue is that it takes a handful of services to do this, making it difficult to get a complete picture.
Until Facebook sees value in it.
What do you think? Any interest in GetGlue or documenting your life?
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