Is the End of Forgetting Things Near ?

At least once a week, we arrive at school or work missing something. In 2015, let’s vow to stop forgetting things and make our lives easier.

Can technology help with this? Certainly, the devices we own and the connectivity they provide make our lives easier in many ways. For instance, the calendar on our phones reminds us where we need to be and when. It keeps us on track.

On the other hand, the explosion of devices also contributes to the complexity in our lives. Count how many mobile phones, remotes, digital cameras, music players, and tablets are in your house. It can be overwhelming just to remember what to use when, and to make sure they are available when you need them.

Using wireless networks and electronic “tags” that we can apply to objects, the ability to offload some of our memory burden is becoming a reality. We can also do things like track our Wi-Fi- and GPS-enabled smartphones via the Web to find them easily if we lose them. In more confined spaces, like the house or car, local networks (often referred to as Personal Area Networks or PANs) can be created to track and locate objects.

Technology like Got My Stuff, a prototype developed at AT&T Labs, is based on radio frequency identification (RFID). Typical RFID tags can be tiny devices, about the size of a postage stamp, that carry a unique ID that an RFID reader unit can identify. The RFID tags used in Got My Stuff are “passive,” meaning they don’t require batteries, and that’s a good thing. The RFID tags can be stuck on backpacks and clothing (or even hairbrushes and toothbrushes to speed the morning routine!).

Technologies like Got My Stuff that promise to enhance our capabilities are on the horizon.  Read the full article on AT&T Thread.