Scientists are looking for ways to take reminder software and move it into the real world.
Such absent-mindedness may be frustrating to you, but to researchers and technology companies, it presents a potential market for memory aids, devices that will deliver reminders based not on calendar entries but where the user is at any given time. Unlike time-based alarms, like the ones used with a digital organizer or an e-mail program, these devices will sound off when you walk by the refrigerator, for example, or the file cabinet, reminding you of the frozen lunch or the printouts you need to carry to work.
To the scientists who are developing them, memory aids are much-needed appliances, the fruit of advances in computing that could improve the lives of many. But to critics, memory aids could well be an example of innovation driving need, an overkill of sensors and sophistication to do the work of Post-its.
I don’t know. It would be nice to be reminded, when driving past the store, that I had really wanted to pick up butter and eggs. On the other hand, being reminded of that every time I passed by the store would probably mean I would start to tune out the “alarm” — speaking from experience with various other, more conventional reminder systems.