Pentagon Kills LifeLog Project

The Pentagon canceled its so-called LifeLog project, an ambitious effort to build a database tracking a person's entire existence.

Run by Darpa, the Defense Department's research arm, LifeLog aimed to gather in a single place just about everything an individual says, sees or does: the phone calls made, the TV shows watched, the magazines read, the plane tickets bought, the e-mail sent and received. Out of this seemingly endless ocean of information, computer scientists would plot distinctive routes in the data, mapping relationships, memories, events and experiences.

Private-sector research in this area is proceeding. At Microsoft, for example, minicomputer pioneer Gordon Bell's program, MyLifeBits, continues to develop ways to sort and store memories.

David Karger, Shrobe's colleague at MIT, thinks such efforts will still go on at Darpa, too.

"I am sure that such research will continue to be funded under some other title," wrote Karger in an e-mail. "I can't imagine Darpa 'dropping out' of such a key research area."