Over ten years ago, Tim Leary was already fantasizing of uploading a person's "consciousness" into an electronic virtual reality realm, something like what the radical theologian Teilhard de Chardin called the noosphere. New trends, emerging from the innovative use of personal media technologies may start the take Dr. Leary's dream away from the realm of fiction. Terry Heaton writes: "Postmoderns (Pomos) reject hierarchical Modernism and its institutions, especially those where authority is granted based on knowledge. They don't trust institutional "experts," because they sense an ulterior motive — the furtherance of the institution. And so Pomos rely on their own experiences or those of their "tribe" members, people they trust based on shared beliefs and experiences. Life caching enables the recording and open sharing of those experiences, "which, I believe, will one day lead to the development of an enormous, experience knowledge base. Experience, as the old saying goes, is the best teacher, and imagine the value of, for example, a health database, where you could search the experiences of anybody who had your malady." "Human beings (fueled by a need for self-worth, validation, control, vanity, even immortality) love to collect and store possessions, memories, experiences, in order to create personal histories, mementoes of their lives, or just to keep track for practical reasons. And with the experience economy still gaining ground -- with consumers more often favoring the intangible over the tangible -- collecting, storing and displaying experiences is ready for its big moment. Why? Well, thanks to the onslaught of new technologies and tools, from blogging software to memory sticks to high definition camera phones with lots of storage space and other 'life capturing and storing devices', an almost biblical flood of 'personal content' is being collected, and waiting to be stored to allow for ongoing trips down memory lane.TRENDWATCHING.COM, a very interesting online resource tracking hot emerging consumer trends and related new business ideas, has dubbed this emerging mega trend 'LIFE CACHING': collecting, storing and displaying one's entire life, for private use, or for... find out more about the specific technologies and changing lifestyles that are making this trend emerge. A fascinating must-read.