As the world makes the transition from analog to digital a certain level of preciousness is lost. It doesn’t take a massive amount of work to snap a photo. There’s no need to fiddle with rolls of film. No longer a week delay between capture and development. Don’t even get me started on how easy it is to distribute said photo.

There was a time when families would go on vacation and then gather around the projector to replay the holiday. A visit to a home might end up being a full blown presentation, a foray into the families life, as documented in a photo album. Would you like one lump or two?

With digital media being so much cheaper and hassle free does the preciousness really need to go away? Will people in the future clutch to their two gig memory stick the same way that they clutched to a stack of precious photos?

In college I worked with colleagues to develop a concept that captured precious moments. Participants wore multiple sensory devices such as cameras, scent detectors, microphones, and even perspiration/respiratory monitors. The idea was that the more information we capture now the more we can output later. At first we might be able to replay the visual data but eventually with adequate technology users could enter a room to see, smell, hear, and even feel the experience again. Imagine the breeze in your hair, the warmth of the sun light, the sweat from nervous perspiration.

Here’s a short scenario. You are using our device and you meet a young lady. The night goes well and it ends with a passionate kiss. Now flash forward fifty years, you two are married and for your anniversary you take your loved one to re-experience that first kiss. The caveat being that you can replay any of the components to that memory as many times as you want, but if you experience them all together you can only do this once. The trade off may be great but combining all of the sensory data that was archived in theory will transport you both back fifty years. Once done it destroys itself.

You might ask how vivid can playback really be? Consider how our brain recollects memories. A color, a scent, a sound even is all it takes to bring back very vivid experiences. The mind fills in the blanks.

In closing, limitations cause users to think about value.

Extra Credit Reading: Stefano Marzano, Creating Value Through Design