X-Message-Number: 8345
Date: Wed Jun 25 04:22:14 1997  PST
Subject: Fwd: VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY, AT CARNEGIE MELLON
From:  (Edgar W Swank)

VIRTUAL IMMORTALITY, AT CARNEGIE MELLON
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University envision a huge multimedia
database that could store minute-by-minute details of your waking life,
all
packed on a hard disk the size of a quarter.  "Your
great-great-grandchildren will be able to ask your database about your
life
and times," says Dr. Raj Reddy, dean of the School of Computer Science. 
As
hard-drive prices plummet, "storing all your visual experiences during
your
5,840 waking hours per year, including all your creative expressions,
will
soon cost less than $1,000," predicts the director of CMU's new Human
Computer Interaction Institute, who predicts that in about 15 years,
storage
costs will fall to about $50 for 100 years of life.  Meanwhile, making
computers think more like people is the goal of the new Center for the
Neural Basis of Cognition:  "Every man, woman and child will soon be
using
information technology as an integral part of their daily lives," says
Reddy.  "So we're spending intellectual capital to understand how to make
IT
like driving a car.  Most people drive, yet they don't care much about
how
the engine works.  Whereas 90 years ago, you had to be your own
mechanic."
(Business Week 23 Jun 97)

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