Black Box Heirloom Edition 2014

Design concept on the topic of privacy and the potential implications of data mining and one’s personal life.

Copy credits: Kyle Barron-Cohen.

Most families, at different points in their histories, have had self-selected archivists—someone to keep track of who was who, where someone was born and how they died, what exchanged hands under what circumstances, all while cataloguing the gossip, dirty deeds, and secret shames common to every family throughout time.

Unfortunately, with the onslaught of data, “productivity” tools, longer working hours, the dispersal of family members, and the passing of the old guard, it’s becoming harder and harder to rely on a single person within a clan to document and protect a family’s legacy.

BlackBox Heirloom is designed to be the family tie that binds. The app connects and quantifies the BlackBoxes of multiple family members, pulling out repeated words and tags to identify common interests and shared memories. It can show how close or disconnected a family is, draw parallels between generations, and create a hypothetical window into the future based on the past.

BlackBoxHeirloom goes far beyond a means of keeping up your family tree. It becomes a way to create family myths, legends, alliances, and words of wisdom for generations to come.