skip to main content
10.1145/1394445.1394474acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesdisConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

The past is a different place: they do things differently there

Published: 25 February 2008 Publication History

Abstract

This paper reports the trial of a wearable data capture device, SenseCam, as a resource for digital narratives and uses data from the trial to reflect on the models of the 'mind' that underscore HCI. More particularly, over a period of one week, 5 participants and 2 researchers used SenseCams to capture digital traces of their experiences, and used the same to create 'story telling' materials for presentation at a workshop at the end of the trial. The study found that all users delighted in the devices, but found that the traces that SenseCams produced were not analogues to their own memory. Instead, SenseCam data presented a picture of daily lives which was at once different to the one recollected by participants and yet brought a sense of wonder, depth and felt-life that was strangely enriching; furthermore, SenseCam data enabled participants to create artistic and evocative stories about prosaic activities that would not normally merit being recounted; and finally, SenseCam data could be used to tell parables about 'life' and hence about the characters in those parables. The paper will comment on the implications these findings have for digital narrative technologies, on concepts of memory prosthesis devices, the sociology of memory and for the concept of mind that underscores HCI.

References

[1]
Arrington, R. & Glock, H. (1996) Wittgesntein and Quine, Routledge, London.
[2]
Austin, J. L. How to do Things with Words, J. O. Urmson, (ed) (1962), Claridon Press, Oxford.
[3]
Bell, G. (2001) 'A personal digital store,' Comms of the ACM, 44(1), 86--91.
[4]
Brown, B. Green, N. & Harper, R. (Eds) (2001) Wireless World: Interdisciplinary perspectives on the mobile age, Springer Verlag, Hiedleberg and Godalming.
[5]
Berry, E., Kapur, N., Williams, L., Hodges, S., Watson, P., Smyth, G., Srinivasan, J., Smith, R., Wilson, B. & Wood, K. (2006), 'The use of a wearable camera, SenseCam, as a pictorial diary to improve autobiographical memory in a patient with limbic encephalitis,' Neuropsychological Rehabilitation.
[6]
Button, G. Coulter, J. Lee, J. & Sharrock, W., (2005) Computers, Minds and Conduct, Polity Press, Cambridge.
[7]
Connerton, P. (1989), How Societies Remember, CUP, Cambridge.
[8]
Ebbinghaus, H. (1985) Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology, Dover, New York.
[9]
Grice, P. (1989) Studies in the Way of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
[10]
Hodges, S., Williams, L., Berry, E., Izadi, S., Srinivasan, J., Butler, A., Smyth, G., Kapur, N., and Wood, K. (2006) 'SenseCam: A retrospective memory aid' Proc. Ubicomp 2006.
[11]
Höflich, J. & Hartmann, M. (Eds) (2006) Mobile Communication in Everyday Life: An Ethnographic View, Frank & Timme, Berlin.
[12]
Loftus, E. F. (1980) Memory, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
[13]
Malcolm, N. (1977) Memory and Mind, Cornell University, Cornell.
[14]
Misztal, B. A. (2003) Theoies of Social Remembering, Open University Press, Maidenhead.
[15]
Neisser, U. & Hyman, E. (2000) Memory Observed: Remembering in natural Contexts (2nd ed), Worth, New York.
[16]
Winch, P. (1958) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London
[17]
Wittgenstein, L. (1952) Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, Oxford.

Cited By

View all
  • (2022)Understanding Self-Tracked Data from Bounded Situational ContextsProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533498(1684-1697)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
  • (2021)Memory Augmentation Through Lifelogging: Opportunities and ChallengesTechnology-Augmented Perception and Cognition10.1007/978-3-030-30457-7_3(47-69)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2021
  • (2019)Personal Knowledge Base Construction from Text-based LifelogsProceedings of the 42nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval10.1145/3331184.3331209(185-194)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2019
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. The past is a different place: they do things differently there

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    DIS '08: Proceedings of the 7th ACM conference on Designing interactive systems
    February 2008
    487 pages
    ISBN:9781605580029
    DOI:10.1145/1394445
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 25 February 2008

    Permissions

    Request permissions for this article.

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. SenseCam
    2. analytic philosophy
    3. digital narratives
    4. memory
    5. memory capture
    6. memory prosthesis
    7. psychology
    8. sociology
    9. storytelling
    10. wearable data capture

    Qualifiers

    • Research-article

    Conference

    DIS08
    Sponsor:
    DIS08: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2008
    February 25 - 27, 2008
    Cape Town, South Africa

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 1,158 of 4,684 submissions, 25%

    Upcoming Conference

    DIS '25
    Designing Interactive Systems Conference
    July 5 - 9, 2025
    Funchal , Portugal

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)30
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2
    Reflects downloads up to 20 Feb 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2022)Understanding Self-Tracked Data from Bounded Situational ContextsProceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3532106.3533498(1684-1697)Online publication date: 13-Jun-2022
    • (2021)Memory Augmentation Through Lifelogging: Opportunities and ChallengesTechnology-Augmented Perception and Cognition10.1007/978-3-030-30457-7_3(47-69)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2021
    • (2019)Personal Knowledge Base Construction from Text-based LifelogsProceedings of the 42nd International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval10.1145/3331184.3331209(185-194)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2019
    • (2019)SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation AwardExtended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290607.3313772(1-5)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2019)JourneyCamProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300860(1-15)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2018)RewindProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/32870692:4(1-20)Online publication date: 27-Dec-2018
    • (2018)Life Logging: A Practicable Approach2018 Fourth International Conference on Computing Communication Control and Automation (ICCUBEA)10.1109/ICCUBEA.2018.8697516(1-4)Online publication date: Aug-2018
    • (2018)Medical Image Security with Cheater Identification2018 Fourth International Conference on Computing Communication Control and Automation (ICCUBEA)10.1109/ICCUBEA.2018.8697460(1-6)Online publication date: Aug-2018
    • (2018)AppendixLifelogging for Organizational Stress Measurement10.1007/978-3-319-98711-8_2(39-72)Online publication date: 27-Sep-2018
    • (2017)How to Remember What to RememberProceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies10.1145/31309031:3(1-20)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2017
    • Show More Cited By

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    Figures

    Tables

    Media

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media