Memory Implants

Someone recently asked me, "What's your earliest memory?" I believe that my earliest memory was seeing my father looking down at me from above my crib. Many people do not have memories before the age of 3, so I question whether my memory was "true" or if it could have been influenced by parental storytelling, a video, or some other medium--I don't think so, but I can't say for sure.

On the other hand, my daughter (now 6 years old) claims to remember events from her infant, toddler, and preschool days. I believe this is largely influenced by the numerous photos and videos that I've taken since she was born. I enjoy making home movies with my photos and videos, and while most of the home movies that I've made within the last couple of years are posted on my YouTube channel, I have numerous other videos dating back to her birth, and we periodically take proverbial trips down memory lane to relive those moments. Even though she looked completely different back then, my daughter can unambiguously identify herself as an infant and toddler and recalls specific events because she has seen photos and videos from the early days of her life.

This observation leads to a variety of questions. What is the difference between "real" memory vs. "implanted" memories? Should we place any differential value on the memories based on where they came from? Is one kind of memory more enduring than another? Does the origin of the memory really matter at all, so long as they are memories?

I don't have any defensible responses to these questions, but I do enjoy taking trips down memory lane with my family, whether they are recent events or ones from the distant past. So for now, I will keep shooting more footage.

3D Virtual Reality on my iPhone

One of the current tech trends is 3D virtual reality (VR), so I decided to get some first-hand experience in this area. Perhaps one of the best known companies in this space is Oculus VR which was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for a boatload of money and whose Oculus Rift head-mounted display is considered by many to be one of the industry-leading virtual reality devices even though it is only available for pre-order at the time of this writing.

On the low-end side of VR devices are a number of Google Cardboard viewers. These products are literally made of cardboard, they require manual assembly, and they all adhere to the standard Google Cardboard specifications. And as the name implies, they are all dirt cheap. While there are many to choose from, I purchased the EIGHTones VR Kit XL ($16.99 plus tax at Amazon) for my iPhone 6 Plus. Assembly was aided by a helpful video and was pretty straightforward.

After getting my device assembled, I downloaded some virtual reality apps from the Apple App Store. Here are some free iOS apps that I played with:

• Dive Zombie: This is a zombie shooter game where you aim your gun by simply looking in the direction of the oncoming zombies. The gun fires automatically since there is no "trigger" for the user to pull.
• Moorente: This is a duck hunt game that is similar in concept to Dive Zombie. Note that the app is written in German, but it is fairly easy to figure out how to operate the game even if you cannot read German.
• Roller Coaster VR: This is an app that demos VR capabilities, it basically allows you to look in all directions as you ride a virtual roller coaster.  Pretty neat if you've never seen VR apps before.
• Dive City Rollercoaster: More or less the same as Roller Coaster VR, and this one features a 360-degree loop.
• The Height: In this app, you basically walk through a VR landscape and collect as many items as possible. The only confusing part of this game was that it took a while to figure out that you have to look down to start and stop walking.

All of these apps were more or less designed to showcase VR capabilities so were not rich in features. I suspect that VR games will improve in the future, but playing with these apps was a fun way for me to explore new and interesting 3D worlds on my iPhone.