[wplug] application/framework to record heterogeneous personal information

[Michael H. Semcheski]

I read a book called 'The Long Walk', which was the story of a Polish
officer after WWII who was sent to a prison camp in Siberia.  Before heading
to Siberia, he was held for a few years in tight confinement at a prison,
and beaten and tortured with the aim of coercing him into signing a
confession.  He held out, refusing to confess to anything, and was sentenced
to 20 years in a Siberian work camp.  All evidence indicates that everyone
who signed confessions was more or less promptly executed.

What's interesting about this is that one of the most brutal regimes in
history, which killed tens of millions of citizens, wouldn't do anything if
the paper work weren't in order.

Anecdotally, I've heard similar things about other totalitarian regimes --
the record keeping and bureaucracy is second to none.  The idea behind this,
I believe, is to discourage independent action and accumulate power in the
upper levels of the bureaucracy.

I only bring this up because I too have thought quite a bit about an
inclusive personal record keeping and information tracking application.  My
gut feeling is that it would be quite a bit of work to keep everything up to
date in this database, and if it wasn't kept up to date, and wasn't entirely
inclusive, what's the point?  (Also, I worry that I would turn into a
totalitarian dictator, or worse, a creepy person.)

But, if I were doing this, I would want the data stored off-site, simply
because it would probably be a relatively small dataset, and it would be
most useful if I lost everything, such as if there were a fire or robbery.
Therefore, I'd probably try to build it on top of Amazon's S3, rsync.net, or
a hosted webserver.

Mike

On 3/22/07, Alexandros Papadopoulos <apapadop at alumni.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> Dear all
>
> Inspired by the unbelievable bureaucracy that hunts my daily personal and
> professional life, I'm beginning to feel the need for a software
> application
> that will make it easier to record anything that might be of use for
> future
> reference.
>
> Let me explain it by example: These days I'm fighting some physiological
> challenges. In order to reclaim some of the money I'm spending on doctors,
> hospitals, prescription drugs, physiotherapy etc, I need to have absolute
> proof of everything I spent and when, how, for what.
>
> The need also arises to trace back to some examinations from a previous
> life
> (10 or more years ago) that someone has stored somewhere, but noone is
> exactly sure...
>
> Wouldn't it be great if an application existed to be able to track all
> that
> jazz? It would be able to perform string searches and look up anything
> from
> anytime. All drugs, prescriptions, diagnoses, examination results would be
> on
> its database. It would be easy to link one doctor's visit and the
> resulting
> diagnosis to future paperwork/X-rays etc.
>
> Is anyone aware of anything that could remotely satisfy this need? I
> recently
> read on the MyLifeBits project
> http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx that has
> some aspects of what I'm looking for but no working prototype.
>
> This doesn't have to be medical only. I'd love to have the financial angle
> too
> and be able to track my expenses in accordance to other events.
>
> The closest I can think of is a wiki, but it's too static in terms of data
> presentation... Any ideas?
>
> Cheers
>
> -A
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