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LifeloggingI am Apollo Lemmon and this is my lifestream. I invite you to join me in my exploration of an integral life. I am focused on discovering what it means to live a life rooted in integral consciousness and I explore spirituality, art, community, technology, fitness and other aspects of a fully engaged life. I am now living in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
I can always be reached at apollo@apollolemmon.com
We have been benefitting from improved memory given by technology throughout history —the book is an obvious example of this— and have just entered an exciting new wave of memory enhancement that will enrich our lives and the lives of every generation to come. E-memory is coming of age and in its wake we’ll have freedom and ability that we’re only now beginning to recognize. Imagine a world where we can retain and recall any information or event with ease for the rest of our lives. It’s here, today.
We are on the cusp of an era in which, if you choose, you can create e-memories of everything, forget nothing, and keep them in your own personal archive. You can have what we refer to as Total Recall. Souvenirs and mementos will belong to another era. More and more is being recorded about each one of us than ever before, and it is bound increasingly to include reading habits, health, location, and computer usage. Archivists, who are already beginning to deal with digital curation, will have to grapple less with physical objects and more with the potential analysis and distribution of the information those objects represent. And library patrons will be a new breed, “a digital person,” with their own personal digital libraries of everything they’ve ever read, seen, and heard. ~“The E-Memory Revolution”
Jim Gemmell and Gordon Bell, two highly respected researchers at Microsoft, released Total Recall in September and have inspired an increasing interest in e-memory. Their work promotes technology as a means to enhance human memory by freeing it from tedious work and enhancing it dispite our physical limitations. They offer an exciting, yet practical, roadmap of our future relationship with our memories.
E-memory —also known as lifelogging— is the digital storage of all kinds of data about our lives, from the intimate to the abstract, and “our magical new ability to find the information we want in the mountain of data that is our past”. Beyond this will be the ability to have computers analyze our data and reveal ways we can improve our lives. Imagine being able to correlate dietary changes and better performance at work or a new hobby and better health. The insights we will be able to gain about our unique life patterns will be endless and may well reshape society for the better.
It is becoming increasingly easy and affordable to record information about our lives: Bell has worn the SenseCam for years, having photos snapped for him throughout his day; Fitbit monitors activity level and quality of sleep; GPS cameras take photos and tag them with location and time information; sites like Daytum allow for easy manual tracking and visualization of life data; we already record our e-mails with services like Gmail; track our social life with Facebook and IM chat logs; and groups like The Quantified Self are creating new avenues of exploring lifelogging and e-memories. What is most exciting is that projects such as MyLifeBits are underway to make it easy for each of us to record, manage and use all this information. We are in the early years of a very exciting change in the way we relate to memory, but already it is shaping us.
We are being given the opportunity to retain more about our lives than ever before, and not just for ourselves. We will be able to leave wonderful records for generations to come that will allow all we have learned, sensed and done to be better preserved and re-experiened. One example Bell and Gemmell point out is the use of avatars. Imagine leaving such a detailed record of our lives that we can leave interactive guides for our grandchildren, with all the wisdom, warmth and uniqueness we can record. E-memories may be the seeds of this sort of invaluable breakthrough.
For more about e-memory, I can’t recommend Total Recall too highly. Aside from the book, there is a great Total Recall blog by Bell and Gemmell. There is a lot more to be said about this fantastic change and I’ll be writing more about it in the coming months.
Podcasts present some of the best media in the world; the very brightest of our futures, the strangest notions and the most startling warnings make their way into podcasts. In my first two Podcast Selections posts I focused on fiction, personal development and spirituality; now I will showcase an assortment of the best podcasts that cover pop culture, geek culture, counter culture and other strangeness.
The Hour has become Canada’s best interview show due the superb interviews conducted by its host, George Stroumboulopoulos. The show covers a wide range of topics that include —but are not limited to— science, politics, arts and ethics. The Hour offers both video and audio podcasts, as well as full episodes, marking it as one of the most web-savvy major television shows.
Past guests of the show have included Eckhart Tolle, David Suzuki, Jimmy Carter, Larry King, Henry Rollins, Alanis Morissette, The Smashing Pumpkins, Richard Dawkins, Al Gore, Tony Robbins, Margaret Atwood, Levar Burton, Cory Doctorow, Naomi Klein, Blue Rodeo, Stephen King, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Morgan Freeman, Moby, Spike Lee, and Margaret Cho.
George Stroumboulopoulos is the host of The Hour, Canada’s late night talk show. Now in its sixth season, the program has won seven Gemini Awards (Canada’s equivalent to an Emmy Award), three for best talk series in Canada; three for best host in a talk program or series; and a Gemini for the production design of The Hour’s set. The Hour has also won a 2009 Gracie Award – the first international award presented to The Hour for Outstanding TV Show – Public Division, by the American Women of Radio and Television.
The Hour is unlike any program on television. It is a hybrid of news and celebrity, reflected through in-depth conversations and dynamic production. It covers politics, the arts, entertainment, the environment, human rights, sports and more. George is one of the most respected journalists in Canada, equally comfortable speaking with a world leader as he is a rock star. He has interviewed many of the most influential and recognized people in the world.
Podcasts can push us to our edges of wisdom, insight and growth. Spiritual practice and personal growth are essential for becoming the greatest humans we can be, and gaining the perspectives and insights of masters is invaluable. I am showcasing the four podcasts that I return to week after week to challenge me to grow.
Brian Johnson‘s Philosophers Notes challenges us to “get our wisdom on” and engage in building the best lives we can. Each episode is a very short overview of a key insight from one of the best books on spiritual and personal development. The Big Ideas he shares several times each week are immediately useful in our growth. Philosophers Notes also exists as a premium site delivering excellent summaries of “life-changing Big Ideas” from the best books in the self-development field.
Philsophers Notes brings insights from a staggering number of great minds, including Abraham Maslow, Krishnamurti, Shawn Phillips, Osho, Tony Robbins, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, Stephen R. Covey, Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Eric Butterworth, Martin Seligman, James Allen, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Buddha, Any Rand, Seneca, David Deida, George Leonard, Marcus Aurelius, Joseph Campbell, Russell Simmons, Esther & Jerry Hicks, Robin Sharma, Gay & Katie Hendricks, Dan Milman, Nathaniel Branden, Dennis Genpo Merzel, Michael Beckwith and Lao Tzu.
Brian Johnson nets out the great lessons of humanity for you by synthesizing the latest books on human potential, philosophy and life-empowerment. Get key takeaways, 3 times a week, in synopsis form.
Join Brian as he goes straight to the “big ideas” from the world’s great personal development teachers including: Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Eckhart Tolle, Abraham-Hicks, Tony Robbins, Stephen Covey, Dan Millman, Paulo Coelho, Nietzsche, Rumi, Ayn Rand, Joseph Campbell, Marcus Aurelius, Abraham Maslow and Napoleon Hill.
Get your wisdom on with PhilosophersNotes as you tap into inspiration on everything from discovering (and living!) your purpose, tapping into the laws of affluence and spiritual economics, mastering your time management skills, nurturing your relationships, optimizing your health and fitness and pushing through fears to live your greatest life.
“Brian Johnson is a national and international treasure, and his consciousness is a gift to us all. I’m delighted that his new service, PhilosophersNotes, is having such a large global impact. It’s rare to discover a service that springs directly from the creator’s genius, and rarer still to find something so useful that makes life richer and simpler. I encourage you to subscribe to PhilosophersNotes and tune to Brian’s frequency.” ~Gay Hendricks, Ph.D., Author of “Five Wishes”; Co-Author, with Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks, of “Conscious Loving”
Podcasts have become the source of most of the storytelling I experience. The high quality of readings and the stories being read are too good to keep quiet about, so I’m beginning a series of entries on podcasts with the best in science fiction, horror, fantasy and mainstream fiction that I have been lucky enough to find.
Tony C. Smith has created a superb audio science fiction magazine with StarshipSofa’s weekly Aural Delights podcast. The Sofa collects poetry, flash fiction, fact articles and short fiction by a wide range of the most important people in the science fiction field: writers and guests have included Elizabeth Bear, Spider Robinson, Cory Doctorow, Tad Williams, Larry Santoro, Jeremiah Tolbert, Gustavo Bondoni, Michael Bishop, Amy H Sturgis, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, Charles Stross, and Ted Kosmatka.
A host of SF writers have offered to let the StarShipSofa narrate their works. Writers who have already donated their work include Ian Watson, Pat Cadigan, Harry Harrison, Joe Haldeman, Joan D Vinge, Norman Spinrad, Ian MacDonald, J D Nordley, Bruce Sterling, Gweneth Jones, Alastair Reynolds, Jerry Pournelle, Landon Jones, John Varley, Pat Murphy, John Kessel, Laurel Winter, Jeff Vandermeer, Kevin J Anderson, Bradley Denton and Matthew Hughes.
Tony C Smith host of the StarShipSofa podcast explains that all the authors kindly donated their work to be narrated for free as long as there was no money to be made. Tony Smith says, “I wanted to start getting great stories out there for free and thought the best way to do that was to contact the writers directly. All have been happy to donate works to the StarShipSofa as long as we make no money from this venture. That is exactly what we are doing.” ~PR
I fell in love with Sera Beak‘s take on embodied spirituality when she was interviewed for The New Man Episode 63: “Bust Out of the Cultural BS and Follow Your Own Path” and was drawn in by her energy again when she was featured on Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll. Her wonderful playfulness and willingness to embrace the fullness of expanded personality are sorely missing in many approaches to spirituality.
Beak’s enthusiasm for living, spirituality and beauty is genuinely contagious. So I felt compelled to share a short video clip recorded with Stuart Davis and some rollicking samples of her words.
I wrote The Red Book because I’ve found that many spirituality books are just too woo-woo, academic, serious, traditional, cheesy or boring for my generation. I wrote TRB because I grew giddy when I imagined what this planet might be like if more young women empowered themselves from the inside out. I also wrote TRB for roughly one million personal reasons that sound a lot like my heartbeat and taste a lot like chocolate and if spoken aloud would definitely make a priest faint.
Late last year I discovered John Varley‘s The Persistence of Vision through a superb reading of the story included in Spider Robinson’s Spider on the Web podcast. The story has become my favourite novella and I am thrilled each time I revisit it.
One of the richest elements of the story is the positive vision of polyamoury that Varley placed at the heart of his community. The non-exclusive intimacy was not merely sexual —though it was sexual— and demonstrated the best of what a pragmatic and enthusiastic community can create.
That one aspect of the community resonated with me, but Varley instilled the story with a genuine sense of realism by developing a fictional culture and society that was both functional and beautiful.
Recognizing elements of Utopian narratives led me to a reading of the story that I think works well: this is a functional utopia, one that recognizes the flaws inherent in any idealism and responds to them. The displaced Other of utopian thought is present here, but it is an other able to form a real community; idealism demands constant rebuilding.
This is a timely reading — and not just because the economy is in free-fall. Technology is rupture — each new wave of technological change displaces and remakes us. Today’s technocratic winners are tomorrow’s superannuated losers. The future of human history will be about how we answer the bug in/bug out question.
Cory Doctorow, “Spider Robinson reads Varley’s ‘The Persistence of Vision‘”
Spider Robinson’s reading of the story is warm, loving and damn-near-perfect. You can download “Spider on the Web Episode 57 The Persistence of Vision” at Spider Robinson’s website and learn more about John Varley at his own.