My Writings 
Brief Updates 
Shared Links 
Shared Videos 
Read Books 
My Week's Music 
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.