Should Packaging Machines have Total Recall?

A new technology application called Total Recall could, in the foreseeable future, change the way we interact with people and live our lives. In the even shorter term, this technology could change the way we interact with, design and support machines. Should we be thinking about our machines being built with total recall?

I mentioned in another of this month's blog posts the two periodicals that I regularly read cover to cover. In the Fall issue of Invention & Technology, Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell have provided an synopsis of their book Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything.

They point out that the intersection of three technologies; digital sensing and recording, digital memory, and search engines; will enable people to create, maintain and access a complete digital record of their life. Consider that $200 will presently buy you enough memory to store everything that you would ever read, everything that you would ever hear, and 10 photos per day for an entire lifetime. I can remember when $200 wouldn't buy enough memory to store just one average photograph! Think about where a few more years will take us!

Bell and Gemmell maintain that the world of Total Recall will result in a change for the coming generation as significant as the change brought on by the computer for the present generation. Imagine being able to recall any document, conversation, landscape, piece of music, film, face or experience that you ever encountered! Would you want to?

Let's leave the philosophy and psychology of Total Recall to others. But, if we are on the cusp of such a breakthrough for people, consider how much easier it would be for machines. Without spending too much extra, we could know every position, bump, temperature, humidity, voltage, speed, reject, operator, maintenance procedure, ... your get the idea ....., ever seen by the machine. If our machines had total recall, could we design them better? Could we maintain them better? Could we operate them better? I think we could.

This idea is not unlike the concept of hierarchical computer integration of machines, but in earlier concepts, the computers that maintained the data were somewhere up the network. In this concept, every machine maintains its own data, and much more than ever envisioned in computer integrated manufacturing. It's like the difference between your mom writing entries into your baby book and you recording every aspect of your life.

I think that a Total Recall Machine has merit. What do you think?

Comments Keith, Still waiting for my flying car from 1966 Auto Show. However, I do embrace change. I just wonder about simple database management issues with all this saved data. Just like when we discuss serialization with each product scannable by end user for verification. Where in the world will all these valuable messages reside? Is the new counterfeiter just a great hacker? Forget copying product, hack unique data and change numbers, etc. Posted by: Jim Chrzan on November 30, 2009 Absolutely. "E-squared PROM" chips started doing this (remembering myriad machine settings by job/item) on flexible packaging extrusion laminating lines 20-some years ago. It is invaluable to maintain process repeatability and save setup time and waste. "Total recall" is a logical evolutionary step. Posted by: N. J. Boone on December 1, 2009 I think it has merit although it's difficult for me to separate the moral and psychological implications from a seemingly useful technology that's frighteningly named (for you Arnold Schwartzennegar fans) "Total Recall". Many good things could result, though - it's worth a look, yes. Posted by: Elaine Spitz on December 1, 2009 I think it would be great, especially for troubleshooting and validation purposes. In the medical device industry this would be invaluable. Data management of all this information and how to handle it and analyze it would be a valid issue over time. Posted by: Glenn Whiteside on December 3, 2009 Great post. I had some comments that started getting incredibly long so I posted a response on our blog: http://www.garvey.com/2009/12/total-recall/ Posted by: Ben Garvey on December 8, 2009 Post a comment (If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.) Name: Email Address: URL: Remember personal info? Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style) Type the word 'packaging' (required):