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.
<br><br>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.<br><br>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.
<br><br>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.)
<br><br>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,
<a href="http://rsync.net">rsync.net</a>, or a hosted webserver.<br><br>Mike<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/22/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Alexandros Papadopoulos</b> <<a href="mailto:apapadop@alumni.cmu.edu">
apapadop@alumni.cmu.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Dear all<br><br>Inspired by the unbelievable bureaucracy that hunts my daily personal and
<br>professional life, I'm beginning to feel the need for a software application<br>that will make it easier to record anything that might be of use for future<br>reference.<br><br>Let me explain it by example: These days I'm fighting some physiological
<br>challenges. In order to reclaim some of the money I'm spending on doctors,<br>hospitals, prescription drugs, physiotherapy etc, I need to have absolute<br>proof of everything I spent and when, how, for what.<br><br>
The need also arises to trace back to some examinations from a previous life<br>(10 or more years ago) that someone has stored somewhere, but noone is<br>exactly sure...<br><br>Wouldn't it be great if an application existed to be able to track all that
<br>jazz? It would be able to perform string searches and look up anything from<br>anytime. All drugs, prescriptions, diagnoses, examination results would be on<br>its database. It would be easy to link one doctor's visit and the resulting
<br>diagnosis to future paperwork/X-rays etc.<br><br>Is anyone aware of anything that could remotely satisfy this need? I recently<br>read on the MyLifeBits project<br><a href="http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx">
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/mediapresence/MyLifeBits.aspx</a> that has<br>some aspects of what I'm looking for but no working prototype.<br><br>This doesn't have to be medical only. I'd love to have the financial angle too
<br>and be able to track my expenses in accordance to other events.<br><br>The closest I can think of is a wiki, but it's too static in terms of data<br>presentation... Any ideas?<br><br>Cheers<br><br>-A<br>_______________________________________________
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