Total Recall

Microsoft research scientist Gordon Bell says we’re headed toward the day when electronic devices will be able to digitally capture our every moment. Technology will follow us, recording each person we meet, each walk around the block, each moment of disappointment and triumph. We’ll be able to tap into a digital database at any time in order to see our exact location at a specific time. His book Total Recall envisions easily finding our lost keys or discovering the name of a person we briefly bumped into on the street. We’ll be able analyze our routines and find ways to make our lives more productive.

What will happen to our sense of privacy? The courts may have found legal grounds for itin the constitution while at the same time, technology has pushing toward limiting it. Do we really want the ability to preserve all of our past?

Psychologists will tell you that when it comes to our past, we have selective amnesia. Like a cheerleader’s megaphone (with a small mouth on one end and a large opening on the other) we filter parts of our past, preserving only select memories. You can’t retain it all, so the types of events you decide to recall says something about you. Many mothers say they don’t remember the pain of childbirth, only the overwhelming feelings of bonding and holding their own child for the first time during its first moments of life.

But what happens when there’s no escaping what we’ve been through in life? Instead of painful memories fading over time, we’ll have the option of replaying them vividly in our mind over and over again. Some of us already do that... living in history's prison - unwilling to forgive ourselves or someone else and move on.

Stephen Goforth

What Can’t you Live Without?

Facebook is more important than having a flushing toilet. That’s the finding of a survey by London’s Science Museum. It asked 3,000 adults what things they couldn't live without. Facebook came in 5th while a toilet ranked 9th. The winner was sunshine, followed by being on the internet, clean drinking water and a refrigerator.

The tools of the digital made a strong showing. Email was 8th and possessing a mobile phone 10th. Google came in at 22, Ipods at 37, Computer spell-checks claimed the 41st spot and the last position went to Twitter. The Wii and Xbox made the list as well.

The point of the survey was to show that many people do not have access to fresh water.

The survey indicates just how much the essential things in life are taken for granted, such as water and fresh food, which so many millions struggle to find everyday to survive.

Another way to approach the question: If your house were about to burn down, what would you grab on your way out the door? And why?

See the complete list here.


Stephen Goforth

Flash Mobs

You’re walking through New York’s Union Square when thousands of people suddenly begin plummeting each other with pillows. This yearly tradition is part of a global fad known as flash mobs. Groups gather through social networking at a particular location. They may stop and remain still for one minute, offer synchronized applause or create some other harmless disturbance.

The man who started this phenomenon was Bill Wasik. He’s written a book called And Then There’s This.

Wasik suggests that our new internet world is moving at such a rapid pace we are wasting our lives on the trivial. We must “feed the beast” with our texting, blogging, twittering and emailing. Never able to pause without falling behind, we begin to “seize upon these tiny little things and try to elevate them into sensations but of course they can't bear up under the weight of it.. the challenge is to try to find ways to partially unplug ourselves. To carve out spaces in our lives away from information. Away from the sort of constant buzzing of the hive mind.”

Read more in a Salon interview with Wasik.

Stephen Goforth

Appreciating What We Have

It’s not so much this generation coming up that’s the trouble but human nature itself. Once our expectations are set a certain way, it is difficult to change them, even when we appear ridiculous in context.