“The citizens of my day live with their place in history always in mind, and always at hand. Their memories and those of their ancestors are recorded in amazing detail and their interconnections have been mined to show the interwoven personal histories of all of human kind. In retrospect, “recorded history” began with records in stone and paper; “retained history” began with the digital record. The new archeology of my time is the ongoing effort by all to reclaim and bind together human history through digitization and final integration with the ultimate record of time.”

- “Inez Drew”

There are two things to know about me. First, I have a muse, who I call Inez. Second, Inez has seen the future.

I have been enjoying the new beta of the AMD Fusion Media Explorer and thinking about a future where we can explore the digital memories of our distant past. Imagine the digital record potentially available to our descendants, browsing photos a thousand years old, connecting their knowledge of the past and the present to all of human kind. Imagine if we had a window to our past, a camera on thousands of ancestors from our distant past? A living history that showed a personal connection to the people and history of the last thousand years?

With the AMD Fusion Media Explorer I cannot synthesize images of my distant past, but I can enjoy digital memories and browse them in a way which makes me feel like a citizen of the future. The ribbon invokes a “fabric of time” and with it I can view my entire history or probe just a piece of it. I can quickly browse images and preview videos using a thoroughly modern interface that complements the functionality of Windows. I can search for family members or places. Even recall a specific week or a specific day. My friends can share photos on Facebook and I can see them at once without navigating online to each friend and each album, seeing them as an integral part of my own history.

The technology of Fusion Media Explorer is a glimpse into the future. The interface is rendered in 3D using the graphics engine of an ATI graphics processor. This allows images to bend on the ribbon, the use of reflections on the black mirrored surface beneath, and accelerates playback while improving the quality of high definition video. For search of local media, the AMD Fusion Media Explorer integrates the powerful file indexing engine of Windows Vista.

With AMD Fusion Media Explorer I have been able to retrieve memories lost on my hard drive and to better organize them by putting them in a proper place. It gathers my photos and videos and feels like a natural extension of my visual memory, reminiscent of the future proposed by Inez.

Here are images of AMD Fusion Media Explorer navigating my recent past…

Be sure to check out Casey’s introduction to Fusion Media Explorer and the free download. And you can also see my prior blog “Virtual Purgatory on the Path to the Cloud”

Simon Solotko is a Senior Advanced Marketing Manager at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.