Robotic Nation Evidence

Given that the price and performance of digital storage technology is far outstripping that of Moore's Law when it comes to cpu chip power, look at what's happened to flash memory in the last 3 years, storage won't be the problem.

Where the bottleneck is going to be is in being able to sort through massive amounts of visual data.

I've tried to track down this story, to no avail, that ran in Wired, the print edition, years ago about an MIT Media Labs Project whose aim was to teach computers to be able to watch security cameras and know when something wrong was afoot.

The reason you want to "teach computers to watch TV", especially security tapes, is that for us humans it's a boring and odious task much like watching Driver's Education Safety Films in driving school. Much better to have a 'puter scan through it at high speed and point out what's the important part to watch.

The closest thing I was able to find about it was this piece:

http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/sw04034.htm

"Computer Vision and Real-World Applications

Over the next five to ten years, computer vision is expected to play a significant role in simplifying the interaction between computers and users. As we equip computers with the rudimentary functions of sight, we make them more aware of their surroundings. Developers have used our code in diverse applications ranging from security to space exploration, and toys to industrial manufacturing.

Take security, for example. A computer can watch an airport parking lot. Using pattern-recognition software, it builds up a database of normal activity patterns. The system doesn't watch people per se, but watches the patterns of people coming and going. When someone enters the parking lot and breaks the pattern — by going from car to car, for example — the computer system can send an alert that something unusual is happening. In industry, this technology is used for quality control; it can spot the 'bad' potato chips before they go into the bag.

As computer vision applications become more sophisticated, they might use gesture recognition to alert security groups to aggressive behavior, or spot known terrorists' faces on security cameras. Or an intelligent camera, mounted high over a public swimming pool, could serve as the lifeguard's second pair of eyes by recognizing dangerous behavior."

When there is a breakthough in this area such recording devices will become as ubiquituous as the iPod is today.
 

Memory is nothing without contextual understanding. However, I would imagine sometime in the next 30-40 years you'll be able to enhance your intelligence and memory artificially, possibly even add a secondary intelligence to your own. Everyone will have a split personality! LOL.