Why not record my life digitally?

Canon, back in April, announced their new "gee whiz" camera, the 5D Mark II, which pretty much blows the doors open on the world of "wow that's awesome I need it now now now" electronics. The Camera features a full-frame 21.1 megapixel sensor, 29 autofocus points, 25600 ISO, and pretty much every camera option on steroids you could imagine.

However they threw in a bone that I just can't resist mentioning. The camera comes with 1080i HD video recording capability. That means the camera can record video of a similar quality to your HD video channels on your TV. Imagine, you're taking photographs of something great, and suddenly you think "man, I want a half hour of hi-def video of this too," and you just push a button and away you go.

However, it dawned upon me that this possibly is opening up the doors to a new frontier: recording your entire life on DVD. Let's do the math (quickly):

Canon estimates half an hour of HD video will take around 4 GB. So if you are awake for 16 hours a day = 32 half hours X 4 GB = 128 GB a day.

365.25 days/year X 80ish years = 29220 days X 128 GB/day = 3,740,000 GB

And that's 3,740 Terabytes. Currently, on NewEgg, a 1.5 terabyte hard drive is going for $150.00. 3740/1.5 = 2494 hard drives X $150 = $374,000 dollars.

That's right. For a third of a million dollars, you could record someone's entire life in hi-def.

And that's the price for memory today. With the industry turning over to solid state memory drives, and the price of memory plummeting with no floor in sight, it's believeable that by the time you needed to store your elderly years, it might be "one terabyte for one dollar."

How will this change the world? Well, probably Canon's camera won't change the world, but the ability to digitally record everthing and store it forever is setting us up for some interesting scenarios:

- If you only need low quality video for security surveillance, is it so hard to believe that cities might set up cameras everywhere to monitor the streets.

- Set cameras up at every traffic intersection to record people running red lights in hi-definition, making it easier to read their tags and mail them tickets.

- Use those same cameras to read license plates in real-time (using automated software), looking for stolen cars and reporting them to the police (and taking hi-quality shots of the driver).

- Record college students in lecture halls taking exams to spot and document cheaters.

- This puts a whole new spin on the porn industry.

- An explosion of "day in the life" documentaries.

- Entertainment industry starts rudimentary versions of SQUID recordings from the movie Strange Days.

UPDATE: Worried about filling up your house with hard drives? This site claims enough memory to record your entire life digitally will be available in 2026, and be the size of a sugar cube.

UPDATE 2: Think hi-def is a little much, and want to record your entire life on one single 1.5 terabyte hard drive? This guy is doing it (Full article here).