It's been seven months since the Pentagon pulled the plug on LifeLog, its controversial project to archive almost everything about a person. But now, the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program, under a new name.
Using a series of sensors embedded in a G.I.'s gear, the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology (ASSIST) project aims to collect what a soldier sees, says, and does in combat zone and then to weave those events into digital memories, so commanders can have a better sense of how the fight unfolded.
That's similar to what planners at Pentagon research arm Darpa had in mind for LifeLog, its ultra-ambitious electronic diary effort. But ASSIST's aspirations are more modest, its battlefield focus is clearer, and its privacy concerns are more manageable, military analysts and computer scientists say. All of that combines to give the project a better chance of taking off where LifeLog crashed.
"Welcome to the wacky ways of contracting at the Defense Department. If it doesn't fly the first time around, you can be sure it'll be back. And so it is," said Steven Aftergood, with the Federation of American Scientists. "This time around, though, the work has a slightly more plausible context. And more of an effort has been made to connect it to a military application."
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