Bodies in Motion: Memory, Personalization, Mobility and Design, A conference currently taking place at Banff explores the possibility of “total data memory.” The conference gathers together nanotechnology researchers, medical researchers, and historians to examine the vast realm of memory materials gathered from increasingly ubiquitous devices such as: sensors, personal recording devices, and surveillance technologies. The conference imagines a world where information will be gathered by everything around us. Our clothes, the walls, we may even find sensors embedded in our bodies. This plethora of information could be used to construct an exhaustive virtual history. But is that something we want?

What drives the contemporary desire in the technology world for total data memory? How does data memory sit beside new kinds of memory capacities in other materials? Memory is closely linked to histories and the interpretations of history. Some of the best mobile experiences combine local memory, histories and place. What models of memory and mind are used in designing technologies that remember? What are the ethical implications of memory machines? What does this mean in time of war, increased security? How do we include the need, capacity, and desire to forget? How do we include trauma?

Marvelous summary of the questions facing us in the coming age of total recall.