There's a time value of money... it increases in value over time. And a network effect for Web 2.0 companies... the more people on the network the more valuable it is. But there's also a time value of information.
In many circles the value of information decreases over time.
Take the stock market. Knowing the price of a stock at 11AM helps you a little at 2PM, less at 3PM, less still the next morning and is essentially worthless a week from now.
Take scientific knowledge. While there are always gems hidden in old scientific papers, in general the majority of scientific papers become obsolete by being disproven or expanded upon. The value of scientific papers, in general, deteriorates with time.
In our hyper-information-driven age we tend to think that the most current information has the most value. Twenty four hour news channels beat into our heads that we need headlines from around the globe within seconds. RSS feeds give us updates from our industry-of-choice in seconds. Phones now feed us news on tiny screens. The message is clear: get your information now, while it's still hot.
But when you look at personal information you see the exact reverse time value curve.
Sharing, for example, a written account of your trip to the supermarket has little value today, tomorrow or next week. It's a mundane occurrence. Your memory of it is clearer than your writeup.
But look at that same written account ten years from now and it'll have tremendous value. You'll relive the day. You'll analyze your choice of words and chuckle at the way you used "dude" and "um like" all over the place. You'll wish that you hadn't bought that third box of Twinkies. You'll remember other things from that period in your life. The written account is more valuable to you ten years from when it was written.
Personal information grows in value over time.
This is why that crusty old picture of your great grand parents is so valuable. And why that love letter from your great aunt to some dude in Vienna during WW1 is framed in atmosphere-controlled glass. It didn't start its life there. No, no, no... it spent its first 50-odd years in a shoebox with credit card reciepts at the back of a closet. But eventually the time value curve of personal information elevated it to a place of prominence.
This concept is nothing new. People have kept diaries, journals and scrapbooks forever.
I've known for years, and often mentioned on this blog, that personal information has tremendous value when captured over time. I truly enjoy looking back at posts from even a few years ago. I can't wait to look back over a lifetime of information.
Nostalgia triggering is what I call it. The personal information never replaces memories. It triggers them. The more richly you capture a moment, the more nostalgia triggering you'll experience later on. If you had a cell phone camera at the supermarket and snapped a few photos they'd help you relive the moment. Better still, some video.
Reger.com's long-term goal is to be a personal nostalgia repository. A place to collect, organize and review your life. In addition to the quality of information collected, the tool itself can also aid in the nostalgia triggering. Sometimes via user interface that makes information make more sense. Sometimes via graphing. Sometimes via organization. Sometimes by finding related events. Reger.com does all of these things today and has a number of even cooler ways to increase nostalgia triggering in the works.
As I've mentioned before, there's much work to be done in the area of data collection. It should be easier for you to capture your life. This is necessary precisely because of the fact that personal information doesn't have much value today. So people won't naturally go out of their way to capture it.
But if we can create devices to automatically capture it and store it for them then they'll be able to see the value in it later on.
We'll start with audio, image and video. And geo-location... gps coordinates so that you can see where you were at any time throughout your life.
But what then? How about biometrics? Heart rate, body temp?
Then sensory capture? Smell? Touch?
Then mental state? Happy vs. sad? In pain vs. not in pain? Horny vs. not horny? They can tell that sort of thing via magnetic sensing outside the head today.
Then memory capture? The ability to synthesize and replay portions of your life?
Lots to do. And yes, conspiracy theorists, there are privacy concerns. You won't ever see me forcing you to use Reger.com. If you're concerned about somebody else knowing where you were on your 32nd birthday, don't use our stuff. We'll do what we can to protect your data, of course, but you can't focus on the negative. You have to believe in the positive... the value that your data will have a long time from now. (Please don't read this as me not believing in protecting data... I do everything I can to protect personal data... I'm just making an argument that if you fear the worst then you'll never take advantage of the tools available.)
I suppose this is one of my driving forces. Every day I sense how much of my life could be captured but isn't. I have a palpable sense of how valuable that data will be in a few years... or a few decades. I want to capture it... but can't.
This is my quest. I want to make it a company. Maybe it won't work as a company. Nah, it'll work as a company. Better put: maybe I'm not the one to make it work as a company. Either way, I'll be capturing as much as I can for as long as I can. Somebody has to provide this tool.
Rule: Personal information increases in value over time.
SoCon08