A simple example of augmented memory would be a traditional scheduling program which alerted you just before important meetings. Your wearable would simply whisper the information in your ear, or flash it to a heads-up display. More interesting are applications similar to the Rememberance Agent (RA) system being worked on by Bradley Rhodes, which as a user types or walks around continuously looks for documents with content relevant to the user's current situation. The file names or salient lines from these correlated documents are then continuously displayed at the bottom of the user's word processor in order of similarity. The system can find similarity based on the words currently being typed, people currently present, current location, and other physical information. On a wearable equipped with sensors like GPS, an indoor location system, face recognition, and speech recognition, the RA can give information based not only on what the wearer is typing but also based on his or her physical environment. For example, on meeting somone at a trade show or conference it could remind the wearer who this person was, what their vital information is, and bring up the notes taken at the last meeting with this person.
The RA can also be used to create a "group mind" by sharing databases of files. For example, the annotations and corrections one student makes over the course of a term may be very valuable to another student. The RA can index other people's notes, and automatically bring up their notes and expertise whenever it is most relevant to me. This can be especially useful for knowledge transfer and on-the-job training for new workers.