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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Great story, thanks! I don't believe in the collecting of experiences through past lives thing. However, I sometimes think if the Borg are misrepresented in Star Trek: wouldn't it be great if we could save all experiences and thoughts of all beings on earth living now and also have a way to easily browse this vast collection? The Internet to the n'th degree.

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My impression of the Borg was that they weren’t disliked because of their goal, but because they forcefully recruited.

Sure, but they were depicted as ugly and, well, borg-like. Whereas I would envision such a race to be highly rational but also emotional (you have access to the world's emotions), perhaps like Ancient Greece, on steroids!

Though I don't really get why the borg need all organisms of a species. If they just took a few millions here and there, nobody would complain - or at least not that loudly.

> wouldn't it be great if we could save all experiences and thoughts of all beings on earth living now and also have a way to easily browse this vast collection?

No.

I'm thinking of a short story I read long ago, about a man who invents a device which can be used to view the past, despite mysterious attempts to sabotage his work.

As I recall, it does not end well.

You might be referring to "The Dead Past," a classic short story by Asimov.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dead_Past

That sounds like a business idea (that I'm already working on actually). Archive everyone's personal online history and let them contribute/share their experiences with the 'collective'

See, I think Borg-like archiving is the easier part of the problem (although of course, I have no idea to capture and save perception, I believe it can be done, and anyway simpler capture process, like yours can be created). The real challenge is how to catalog and browse such a database. When I enter my personal history, it needs to be analyzed, main themes (and memorable parts) labeled using an ontology and all this needs to be presented using an intuitive UI.

Researchers have pursued similar goals for image/video databases for more than a decade now, with little success (think how you search YouTube or Flickr: mainly through manual tags). Any that is a much simpler problem.

Good feedback, I agree completely. Got some ideas on meaningful ways to curate the data so it can be browsed. Need to get it built!

The ultimate form of social networking. We will be more connected than ever! So this was what Zuckerberg has been planning all along...LOL

I hope not! Hoping he gets lazy and would rather acqui-hire it!

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