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ChatGPT and its ilk are making it easier for remote workers to secretly hold two or more full-time jobs »» More: ‘Overemployed’ hustlers exploit ChatGPT to take on even more full-time jobs »»

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A new app called Rewind promises you “perfect memory,” the ability to find anything you’ve seen, said, or heard …as long as you let it monitor and record your laptop. But, wait. How are they going to make money?

A CYNICAL AND long running joke is that we, as a collective society, never really needed a "Big Brother" style government to install an Orwellian surveillance state. We happily did it ourselves.

As everyone knows, most every email and DM we’ve all ever sent —not to mention every social media post, Google search, TikTok made or viewed, or Tweet retweeted— is all permanent and infinitely searchable, and in some way shape or form, sellable. And most of us are totally cool with that.

A new-ish app called Rewind, wants to take this whole situation one step further.

WOULD YOU LET an app record everything that comes across your screen, or through your computer speakers or —best part— everything you say near your laptop's microphone?

That’s literally what Rewind does. All that data is then compressed 1000s of times so that it can fit on basically any Mac’s internal hard drive (that part is key) and stored locally.

But the neat trick, one that Rewind has spun into a US$75m valuation, is that all that data is then instantly searchable (by you, and you alone). The idea is that Rewind will supercharge your memory —or at least your memory of everything you see, hear, type and say at your laptop.

DOES THAT SEEM like a valuable tool to you?

Maybe, and certainly if you have a lot of contentious conversations on —or in front of— your laptop that require you to recall, quite specifically, what you or others have said.

Users seem to like it:

But those benefits probably have to be weighed against some issues, like: if you're a Rewind user, do you have to let everyone you DM with (for instance) know that you're recording their every message as it shows up on your screen? What about people who happen to be talking around your laptop, given that Rewind keeps tabs on whatever your laptop’s microphone hears?

REWIND DEFINITELY SEEMS like a valuable company to a16z.

The all star VC firm put US$10m into Rewind. And despite the lovely investor note they wrote about productivity gains, a16z probably likes Rewind because they know the most valuable resource in the world right now —far more valuable than oil— is data. (And don’t just take that last fact from me, take it from The Economist, who have been saying exactly that since 2017.)

And the data that Rewind is collecting includes some the finest, triple-A grade sweet crude that the world has ever known: your own (heretofore) private notes, searches, reading material, and 1:1 conversations.

Rewind is going to have to answer a big, billion dollar question sooner or later: what, o what, to do with all of that data?

QUESTION NUMBER 1A any investor would logically have for a software company that collects data is how exactly they will monetize it.

It seems to me that synthesizing it into information and then distilling that information into insights they can then sell on is the only way to do so.

Bottom line: if you choose to let an app like Rewind record everything that transpires on your laptop in order to help yourself remember things, you should probably also remember that the only way a company like that can make serious billions is by turning all of that raw material they’re collecting from you into a way more valuable, polished product they can sell on an industrial scale.

That means selling that data, or more accurately the insights gleaned from it, to others, most likely advertisers.

PS— LIKE IT or not, stuff like this is coming.

Rewind doesn't seem like an especially unique bit of software. What stopping Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, OpenAI, or Elon's new company x.ai from literally doing the same thing?

Nothing.

Your memories, emails, browser search and viewing history, Zoom calls, private Slack messages, and random notes are destined to fuel the future of advertising. Ready for that?

More:

Rewind’s new feature brings ChatGPT to your personal information »»

The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data »» 🔐

On internet privacy, be very afraid: ‘Surveillance is the business model of the internet’ [from 2017] »»

How social media is pushing us toward 1984 [from 2020] »»

Rewind official site »»

a16z’s case for investing in Rewind’s seed round »»

List of public corporations by market capitalization »»

Written by Jon Kallus. Any feedback? Simply reply.