My Autobiography: Building a Living Digital Legacy for Generations
In Short
Discover how creating a digital autobiography can preserve your life story, memories, experiences and achievements as a living digital legacy for future generations.
Share :
My Autobiography: Building a Living Digital Legacy for Generations
Harman Wander is looking into how artificial intelligence can help humans capture the stories and experiences which form their lives and the wealth of wisdom they have acquired over the years
Each generation passes on a legacy of its own.
While for some people, it could be pictures and other media. It may be letters, family stories, professional achievements, books, videos or experiences passed down from conversations. There is a lot more to the experience of a life than most of it gets captured on record.
The reasons behind some crucial moments, experiences that led to learning through failures, beliefs formed over the years and the knowledge that one has gained over the decades could get lost with the person who lived them all.
The Canadian entrepreneur and technologist Harman Wander is trying to overcome this issue with the help of his company’s My Autobiography AI-based technology platform, which helps people record their life experiences and legacy digitally.
Rethinking the Meaning of an Autobiography
An autobiography has historically been a book someone would write to reflect on their life experiences.
My Autobiography takes a completely different angle at looking at this concept.
It does not encourage an individual to wait and write about life stories when they grow older; instead, it is a way to build one’s story during their lifetime.
Experiences from childhood, family events, career development, successes and failures, photos, videos, reflections, and lessons learned can be a part of the growing personal library.
There is a completely different approach to storytelling.
One’s life story is no longer something that is complete; it is an evolving experience where one can add more things.
It reflects the change in the process of documenting the life.
With the advent of social media, people now can record individual moments better than ever before, but these moments are scattered all over social media pages.
My Autobiography is being developed to unite more of that personal history into one place.
Preserving the Story Behind the Information
Technology has been incredibly successful in capturing memories.
Clouds can store your pictures. Mobile phones can record years' worth of videos. Social media can record countless individual moments.
However, just because technology has successfully recorded information does not mean that it has succeeded in recording your memories.
A picture can capture an event but not necessarily the reason why the memory was important.
A video can capture your voice but not necessarily the lesson you learned during the experience.
Social media accounts can record all of the events but may miss the viewpoint of each event.
This is how My Autobiography is being created.
Where Artificial Intelligence Enters the Picture
One of the innovations that could make this concept work in a much deeper way is artificial intelligence.
The AI Personas feature of My Autobiography creates virtual personas from data that people want to save.
It is not just another chatbot.
The overall vision is to make it possible for a person’s experience, knowledge, memory, and viewpoints to be interactive in some way.
Imagine the next generation being able to explore preserved family history by asking questions about their childhood, profession, decisions or wisdom learned throughout life.
They would be able to do more than read the story in the book cover to cover.
The company sees this as one of the ways to enable people to create a "living legacy."
Keeping the Human Story at the Centre
The rise of generative AI has also created an important question around authenticity.
If technology can generate realistic writing, voices, images and digital personalities, how can people ensure that their preserved stories continue to represent their own experiences?
For My Autobiography, the information begins with the individual.
The platform is designed around content and experiences that people intentionally choose to document. AI can then potentially help organize, interpret and make that material easier to explore.
That distinction matters because the objective is not to replace someone's story with an artificial version of it.
The objective is to give the story another way to remain accessible.
A Digital Legacy for Ordinary Families
Legacies are often tied to well-known personalities.
There may be many books written, interviews conducted, documentaries made, biographies created, and archives kept of them.
For ordinary families, however, the situation is quite different.
There may be an old photo, an exchange of thoughts around the dinner table, memories of a parent about his/her childhood or those of a grandparent about the past age.
Such legacies are no less important for those to whom they pass on.
"My Autobiography" is tailored to appeal to such an audience too.
Parents can record their experiences for their children. Businessmen can record their learning from the process of running a business. Educators can record all the years of experience. Creators can record their life story. Families can make records of their family histories for those who are yet to be born.
The philosophy of the company is encapsulated in one statement:
Every life is valuable. Every life story is worth recording.
From Memories to Interactive Experiences
The company's long-term vision is more than just writing digital autobiographies.
My Autobiography is currently researching immersive technology, which includes virtual reality as an application, as another medium for personal stories.
Rather than simply browsing through photos or reading through the written story, future users will have the possibility of diving into the stories through immersive digital media.
A person's history could eventually become something that future generations do not simply read about, but actively explore.
A Founder Shaped by Different Industries
Harman Wander’s career history himself has spanned multiple sectors.
Some of those include construction, business consultancy, real estate investments and technological pursuits in Canada.
This diversity of expertise finally gave rise to a general question regarding what becomes of all the knowledge one gathers over a lifetime?
Companies document processes. Organizations document information. Individuals document transactions and achievements.
However, sometimes the most important information becomes that which is personal.
It becomes that which is experienced.
It becomes that which is made in errors.
It becomes that which occurs in conversation.
And it is lost when the individual who holds this knowledge is no longer there to convey it.
My Autobiography is an effort to use new technology to document this human knowledge.
Building Beyond the Traditional Digital Profile
The profiles that you come across online are all about the identity of a certain person at a particular time.
Professional profiles are more about the experience of the person professionally. Social media profiles are more about selected incidents. Website is more about achievements.
But the idea behind My Autobiography is that there is something even bigger involved here. The narrative that combines all the incidents into one story.
We should aim at making our profile an account where not only the achievements but also the incidents leading to the achievements are captured.
Early Access and the Road Ahead
My Autobiography remains in its early stage, but the company has already opened an early-access program and says it has secured undisclosed funding to support further product development and AI capabilities.
In addition to evolving its technology and platform, the company is working on forming an initial user base comprised of individuals who are interested in keeping their personal stories.
The overall vision for the platform is rather ambitious – to provide a means for preserving experiences, maintaining the history of a family and for future generations to benefit from the knowledge and the point of view that was intentionally left behind.
With further development of artificial intelligence and other forms of immersive technologies, the concept of autobiography itself can become completely different.
It will no longer be confined to pages of a book.
An autobiography can become a growing pool of experiences, knowledge and perspective – all of which will be available in the future for generations to come.
That’s the mission of Harman Wander and My Autobiography.
Those who wish to learn more about My Autobiography can visit www.myautobiography.com.
About Harman Wander
Harman Wander is a Canadian entrepreneur, business consultant and technology innovator and the founder of My Autobiography.
His professional background spans construction, business consulting, real estate investment and technology.
