Memories, Belonging and Life Logging

There is a growing trend in Life or Web Logging. Could this be the result of an increasing sense of wanting to leave a legacy due to the frenetic speed of modern life?

A common response to feeling out of control is to return to the familiar. We seek ways to promote our sense of belonging by showing others who and what we are, according to Professor Tim May, a social relations expert from the University of Salford and the author of successful books on social relations.

“We live in a world that we perceive to be more insecure so we look for ways of belonging – and belonging comes from memories and recognition that others afford you,” said Professor May. “That is why we seek ways to represent ourselves, to show how we feel about ourselves and to transmit messages about ourselves to others”.

This, according to Tim May, comes from “a sense that everything in the world is speeding up and getting out of control. In the face of this people have a concern about their legacies. Who did they meet? What sort of things did they do and with whom? All of this helps to address the question: who am I? Some people may write books, but there are technologies that enable us to compile vivid records of ourselves to promote this sense of belonging and to leave a legacy for others.”

Professor May was referring to the launch of LifeThemes and how that fits into his analysis of social relations. LifeThemes allows you to save photographs or video clips, record audio pieces or write text about people, places, family, pets, special events or treasured memories. Thanks to the program’s powerful ability to link data, these elements can be easily combined into rich multimedia panoramas of your life that can span decades and be passed on from generation to generation.
Published in the UK by LifeStyle Software, LifeThemes also features a unique system of individual diaries that help you run your daily life.

“Modern life is highly stressful and lived on the run, so recording what is happening is a way of slowing things down to keep a sense of reality and gain an appreciation of our experiences,” said founder of LifeStyle Software, John Willis. “The Life Logging trend is underlined by Microsoft’s recent announcement of plans for SenseCam, a wearable camera that records a video diary for download to a computer and by the Nokia LifeBlog, but we predicted the trend some time ago when we started developing LifeThemes.