Mediacology

The first Live Earth: The Beatles on BBC’s One World, 1967

I didn’t think I would find myself in front of electrically generated nerve pulses broadcast simultaneously across a globally networked world, but so be it. Live Earth has arrived. Electrical activism against electricity.

Nonetheless, I was impressed by one thing in particular: critics will scoff at the holographic version of Al Gore appearing on the Japanese stage (an image that faintly harks to Star Wars Princess Leia’s infamous distress call projected from R2D2), but it may be the first time a holograph appeared live on TV around the world. It may not have the artistic merit of “All You Need is Love,” which the Beatles performed in 1967 in the first ever live global broadcast by satellite, but it is a sufficient reminder that the holographic paradigm is infiltrating the mass consciousness. Why is this important? Well, as many people have commented concerning the shift in global thinking that is necessary for sustainable change, we all have to start seeing ourselves in relationship to everything else. Some believe the universe is modeled on the principle of the hologram, which simple means that all things contain elements of all other things. There is no separation between me and you. Finally, this is what media should be used for.

Anyhow, last week I blogged about the iPhone and my Web traffic quadrupled. So: iPhone, iPhone, iPhone! OK, with that said, It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I write “Live Earth.” I suspect our technological fetishes will outpace environmental activism for the moment, but as my short screed on the holograph points to, sometimes it’s important to look at the form of our technology as vastly more significant than its content (remember McLuhan’s famous aphorism: the medium is the message). During the broadcast I saw a commercial for a new Nokia phone which is being advertised as a computer, not a phone. I honestly doubt that anyone 20 years ago would have imagined that computers would converge with portable phones, but it is significant that this phenomena was not planned, but self-organized. Despite ourselves, we are connecting quicker than we could have ever have envisioned, and it’s due to a small piece of electronics that fits in the palm of our hands. Let us hope that it doesn’t also give us cancer.

Other thoughts as things develop:

* The best think about the broadcast are all the little films, infomercials and PSAs. I hope they find their way around the Web (and a cell phone near you). You can view them here. Unfortunately they will not let you embed the video. That is so 20th Century!

* Reggae is clearly the international vernacular of music and activism. How ironic that a remote island that has long been victim of the world’s most atrocious colonial practices (and still is as the documentary Life and Debt shows us when it uses Jamaica as a case study for the disastrous polices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) produced the most uplifting and powerful beats in the world.

* You want solutions? Click here for cool information graphics that demonstrate practical tips to alleviate climate change.

* As I watched Al Gore, I also thought about the anti-Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and how much he reminds me of a dinosaur. Then I realized that maybe he really is a reincarnated dinosaur trying to reclaim his ancestors who have decomposed into sludgy oil.

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