WILL future historians ever understand how dull and pointless life was in the 21st century? Yes, if a new wearable camera catches on. Memoto, a Swedish start-up, is selling a stamp-sized camera that you can pin on your shirt (see picture). It takes photographs every 30 seconds, ensuring that no experience—however mundane—will go undocumented. The device also has an app and cloud-storage, so your pictorial record of commuting, shopping and preparing pot noodles can be searched and shared.

Something about this idea appeals. Memoto tried to raise $50,000 last year on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform. It raked in more than $500,000. The firm also obtained €500,000 ($655,000) in seed funding from Passion Capital, a British venture-capital firm, enabling it to build a prototype camera.

Exposing the product to the public at such an early stage generated useful feedback. Surprise, surprise, many potential customers are worried about privacy. After a lively debate on Reddit, a web-based discussion board, the firm dropped plans to have pictures automatically uploaded to the cloud.

Those who are unwittingly snapped may be unhappy, too. Unlike a human, Memoto’s device cannot ask for permission before taking a picture. It could therefore run afoul of strict privacy laws in countries such as Germany. Memoto says it will inform its customers when they might need other people’s permission to store images of them.

To make money, the firm plans to sell the cameras for $279 a pop and then offer support services, such as storing pictures, for a subscription fee which has yet to be determined. The balance between the two revenue streams will be tweaked once Memoto has a better idea of what people want. There are no plans to sell ads, despite the wealth of data that will be created about Memoto users’ habits.

At the start of this month Memoto had around 2,000 orders from Kickstarter backers and an additional 2,000 through its own website. But because of the inevitable teething problems that come with designing new software, it has had to postpone its first shipping date several times and is now declining to set a launch date.

Instead it posts regular progress updates on its blog. Memoto’s Kickstarter page is filled with largely sympathetic commentary about the delays, including one post from a backer who wants to know whether her camera will be ready in time for a summer hiking trip.

Lifelogging, as it is called, could prove popular. Most of us know, in our heart of hearts, that future historians will not be interested in what we did last week. But our mothers may be.