I got the term from Rudy Rucker's The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul: What Gnarly Computation Taught Me About Ultimate Reality, The Meaning of Life, And How to Be Happy (2016):
...a lifebox is a small interactive device to which you tell your life story. It prompts you with questions and organizes the information you give it. As well as words, you can feed in digital images, videos, sound recordings, and the like. It's a bit like an intelligent blog. Once you get enough information into your lifebox, it becomes something like a simulation of you. (11)...The original meaning of "gnarl" was simply "a knot in the wood of a tree." In California surfer slang, "gnarly" came to be used to describe complicated, rapidly changing surf conditions. And then, by extension, something gnarly came to be anything with surprisingly intricate detail (99)
...Part of being a colorful speaker or writer is having the gift of choosing words whose subsidiary meanings complement, contrast with, or comment upon the primary meaning. (288).
And from Nested Scrolls: The Autobiography of Rudolf von Bitter Rucker:
...With the thesis word, "lifebox," I meant a large database that might include, in my case, my books, my journals, my interviews, my photographs and perhaps an overarching memoir—with the various pieces connected by hyperlinks. A lifebox might resemble a large website....Our perceptual system is all about perceiving patterns—even if they're not there.
and still more recently, on his blog:
...The idea, which is fairly familiar by now, is that you might be able to emulate a person if you have a really large database on what they've written, done, and said. And if it's SF, then we add some AI to the lifebox so it's an intelligent mind.(not sure I'm ready to go there yet...)
...and there's Rudy's fascinating record of the process of creation of the book: Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul (pdf)