On July 10 blogger and multimedia artist Theresa Duncan took her life. A few days later her soul mate Jeremy Blake stripped his clothes off and entered the ocean never to return. Both were video game designers, Blake was an established video artist, his video for Beck shown above. The Newsweek story below touches upon the link between technology and mental illness that sometimes manifests in disastrous ways. The more interesting angle is the creeping paranoia towards the end of their lives that they were being sabotaged by Scientologists, perhaps triggered by the project for Beck (who is a Scientologist).
I wouldn’t go so far as to blame the media for this sad story, though I’m sure many have considered it (there is a hint of the wagging finger in the Newsweek story), but am interested because the strangest part is how the couple lives on within the digital realm. This confirms what some (such as Mary Ann Doane) have written about concerning the subconscious motive of our civilization to create media: so we can capture death and contingency in order to escape life’s impermanence. Of this I’m certain: Duncan and Blake will be immortalized by film, for this story has the perfect intrigue of a noire script. But the screenwriter will most certainly have to omit Scientology from the script; otherwise it will never appear in a theater near you (or a small box on your computer screen for that matter). Maybe Twain was right when he said the only thing certain is death and taxes, but we can add to the list as well that our digital apparitions will be eternalized as long as we still have electricity.
Duncan’s digital remains: Wit of the Staircase
For some, technology and mental illness have long been thought to exist in a kind of dark symbiosis. Blake and Duncan’s case follows a long history that began when the electric age upended daily life with baffling, complex innovations. The first victim is believed to have been James Tilley Matthews, an 18th-century British merchant who thought France planned to take over England with a mind-controlling magnetic machine using technology developed by Frank Mesmer—from whom the word “mesmerized” is derived. More recently, the introduction of television inflamed the minds of patients who believed that their TVs were watching them or broadcasting secrets about their lives. In this regard, the Web is especially powerful. “The condition of being super-social and super-isolated at the same time is an Internet-era kind of thing,” says Fred Turner, a media historian at Stanford University, who speculates that as Blake and Duncan withdrew from friends, “their only reality check left was the wisps of information on their computer screens. And unfortunately, that isn’t a very powerful check.”
These high-tech evangelicals could be straight out of sci-fi. Except they are real, and they know how to use media against media. Like a Maoist opera on steroids, BattleCry might be marching on your doorstep soon. Should we be scared? The strange thing is that I nave taught media literacy to fundamentalists, which shows me that anyone can use media criticism as a weapon. In this case it is in the hands of a Christian youth army that looks and sounds cool if you don’t have the critical capacity to see beyond the style of the message to truly understand its content. I don’t understand why Right Wingers are so scared of so-called “Islamo-fascists” when there is a slick Taliban right in their own backyard. America watch out.
An afterthought: I’m aware that often what we oppose is really a way of expelling our inner demons. I have no doubt that is why I have focused my attention on media. The danger is whether we truly process these inner monsters, or use our activism as a kind of penance as we continue to hurt and destroy people, as has been the case of many fundamentalists of all persuasions, including media activists. Also, when I see these kids feeling genuine love, I believe it is real. But rather than take ownership of it, they attribute it to an outside force. This is why they claim allegiance to a cross, and not a circle.
With the Greek statue of Victory at Ancient Olympia surrounded by fire, we see a perfect visual metaphor for the state of our world. From where I write I can see the island of neighboring Sicily and the smoke from fires that have been raging here in Calabria for the past couple of weeks. With a searing North African wind called the Scirocco (pronounced “Sheeroko”) gusting through, the combination of aridity and increasing temperatures are too much for the regional environment to sustain. Fire is purifying the land and our efforts to control the world.
The Greek statue embodies the ideal of rational man as separate from nature. This worldview smolders like the fires surrounding Olympia. Our mechanical, technological world is a direct consequence of the ancient Greek template to isolate and amplify our left-brain functions through the alphabet and to reject a right-brain, holistic conceptualization process of so-called tribal cultures. To be civilized was to impose upon nature certain ideals that don’t harmonize, but facilitate greed and selfishness. It’s fitting that the fires were started illegally to clear forest for development because it is not legal to build if there is forest in the location.
Even the concept of Olympia is questioned by the image: containing the force of the body through competition so as to restrain it within predictable outcomes is no match when the rivalry is with nature.
Finally, the photo itself is a kind of “truth” that we accept. By its fact of existence, we believe the reality that it contains to be valid as well, yet the truth is that a mediary chose to frame the perspective and point-of-view that is embodied within the photo. In this case he or she recognized that there was something significant in the relationship between the ideal of permanence set against a backdrop of catastrophe.
An interesting commentary on new animal programs with their shifting narrative arcs designed to satisfy human agendas. I think wildlife programs are a double-edge sword. On the one hand it gives us a more intimate understanding of the animal world, on the other hand if further promotes a sense of separation, first by “othering” animals as something “out there,” second by making nature into an entertainment spectacle, and third excluding humans from a relationship of partnership.
But for as much as Meerkat Manor sounds like Laguna Beach and Arctic Tale looks like Survivor, such word play might not be enough. Roger Scruton, a research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences who writes widely on animal rights issues suggests we need a new framework for our animal-human relationships. He argues that “negotiation, compromise and agreement” are the foundation of all human communities and that rather than assigning animals rights based on a moral framework, we should give them rights based on how we use them: as pets, food or scientific study.
BTW, if the subject of nature and media are interesting to you, I highly recommend the following book,
A viral sci-fi video on MySpace called Afterworld (this is the first in 130 2-3 minute movies) has an animated character lamenting that his contribution to the spread of technology led to the end of the world. Hmmm. So maybe we should take him for his word and believe that some day an animated program will wake up and there will be no more humans. To me that is more plausible than the statistical anomaly of the last man in the world would be a rich white guy, considering that he would only represent about 1% of the world’s population.
PS It is really annoying that the video I’m posting has an embedded BudTV ad. That makes me mad!
When I was running amok in LA as a punk rock teenager, the feeling at the time was to respond to the general condition of our society as a kind if mirror. Through our dress we would expose the hypocrisy of our repressed tendencies by adorning bondage and military clothes, and ornamented with scornful iconography. Our sonic response was of noise: pure, unadulterated feedback, distortion and wickedly fast rhythms that mimicked the ever-increasing speed of the technological world. Sadly, punk mirrored one other dysfunctional by-product of the world we rebelled against: substance abuse. I have long felt that punk—in its southern California incarnation at least—had become a surrogate family for the various broken homes many from that tribe had come from. By 1980, divorce was common and the psychoanalytical hangover of alternative therapies and cults had not cured the abuse manifested in drugs, alcohol and sex so openly celebrated in the wake of the ’60s counterculture. Unfortunately the family of punk had succumbed to social demons, and was never able to transcend its nihilistic tendencies.
Having been nurtured by such an in-your-face cultural rebellion, I find it strangely odd that I’ve come to realize that in our current mental, spiritual and media environment, the most radical act of our age would be one of silence. That is, unplugging and sitting quietly in reflection without various gadgetry wired to our minds. This should not be mistaken as a neo-Luddite call to disengage from technology. I feel that is impractical and counterproductive. However, it is possible to balance our addiction to media, entertainment and information with walks through the desert and contemplative meditation. Rather than create a false dichotomy between nature and technology, it’s better to mindfully >engage the process, and utilize it as a kind of fulcrum that enables us understand how our minds work. As we externalize our brains, as I think our current trend in networked computing is doing on many levels (not replacing our minds, but rather enhancing and mirroring them), let’s use this datafog as an object of meditation.
Belout College’s annual list of how the leaders of the future will know the world. An interesting list that is at times more snarky commentary on the present than insights about the real thinking habits of young people.
The Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in the year that the entering first-year students were born.
Our effort is to identify a worldview of 18 year-olds in the fall of 2007. We take a risk in some cases of making generalizations, particularly given that our students at Beloit College for instance come from every state and scores of nations.
The “Class of 2011″ refers to students entering college this year. They are generally 18 which suggests they were born in 1989.
The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students as they commence higher education and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory education.
Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.
1. What Berlin wall?
2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
3. Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
5. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
6. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
7. They have grown up with bottled water.
8. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
9. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball. Continue reading ‘Thinking ahead’
Another good one from Robert Greenwald, this video juxtaposes the build up to war with Iraq with the drumbeat of war now being made to go after Iran. You can follow the link below to sign a petition to encourage the networks to behave themselves.
“My station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at FOX News.”
That is CNN’s Christiane Amanpour explaining why the major television networks failed to accurately inform the public in the lead-up to the Iraq war, choosing instead to follow FOX’s lead.
Now, FOX is beating the drums for war with Iran. Robert Greenwald’s short film, “FOX Attacks: Iran”, outlines the evidence from the station’s own broadcasts, comparing their reporting before the Iraq war with what they are saying now about Iran.
You have a sacred responsibility to the American people to provide accurate and reliable information so we can best make the decisions which affect our lives. We urge you to accurately and thoroughly report all sides of this important story.
Please do not blindly follow FOX down the road to another war.
DK, the most excellent energy force behind the UK-based media education project, Media Snackers (check his great intro video), has just posted a podcast interview with me. I’m honored to have been asked to do it because DK has been interviewing great people for this series, and his project is really awesome, so I feel like I’m in good company. Please check it out (and the other interviews as well). I think the short piece (12 minutes) sums up my work quite nicely and is a good example of what we discussed during the recording: DIY media. Essentially we talked using Skype (you can sign up by clicking on the ad on the right hand column and scroll down a bit), and he recorded it using a tool like Audio Hijack, and then edited it with a simple audio editor (I have a Mac so something like Garage Band works really well and is designed for podcasting). He made a nice little intro and outro that can be used with all his podcasts. Enjoy!
With the sound of the other shoe dropping, i.e. the subprime mortgage market collapse, we can now see that chances are very strong that the US Empire will be disintegrating very quickly. People seem to forget that they are spending something ridiculous like a billion dollars a day on Iraq, so we have to wonder, who is going to pay for it? You guessed it. Anyhow, the chorus of Rome and US comparisons is hitting a feverish pitch. Here is just one snip of many flying through cyberspace these days, this coming no less from the US Inspector General (Congress’s autonomous watch-dog organization): FT.com / World - Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned:
The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.
Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.
With the comparisons between the fall of Rome and the dire situation the US finds itself in, I think it would be wise to study history, indeed, but I would liken the situation closer to the fall of the Spanish Empire. There was a time when Spanish currency was the gold standard of the world, but the ruling elite became decadent (surprise!) and the Empire found itself importing more goods from France than they were producing at home. To this the French King said something like, “Let the Spanish spend their gold on our goods!” Perhaps the Chinese are saying the same thing.
But more importantly is the manner in which Spain digressed into its own Dark Age with the Inquisition and purge of its business and intellectual class through the expulsion of the Sephardim jews. Here is where the parallel is dangerously close. The recent anti-immigration fervor is nothing but coded racism, and with little else to latch onto, I predict the Republicans and the desperate Right are going to go all out with semiotic race war. And it won’t just target Latin Americans, but anyone who no longer fits the 1950s fantasy of white American society. The brain drain is on as technical jobs, and even CEOs are being farmed out of the States. The US is in grave danger of a racist purge, so please keep your eyes on the ball folks and make sure this doesn’t happen, because there are desperate people clinging to an outmoded reality, and that usually is a bad recipe for social harmony.
There is an upside to this, but this certainly is one that comes along down the line. As someone who lives in a formerly ruined empire, the nice thing you learn from being in Rome is that life goes on, even after 2, 500 years of a rise and fall of human fortunes (Mexico CIty has a similar fate). You have no idea what a relief it is to live in a place that is NOT an empire. It’s like having a dark gray energy bubble cleansed and released. The burden of Iraq, the stress of war, the faltering economy, the rise of the national security apparatus with the legal blessings of Congress, and the paranoid delusion and paranoia of the “others” is wearing people down. It’s a sad time, but also a moment to completely reevaluate the priorities and decisions of our society. I truly hope that this becomes a sobering moment, as in when the alcoholic finally bottoms out. It’s time to acknowledge that the “powerholic” has finally hit the floor, the face going splat. I just wish there was AA for people addicted to war.
The “one-to-many” model of mass media communications
VS.
The “many-to-many” model of the networked economy
An updated appraisal of how we monitor propaganda in the new media environment. PR Watch’s Sheldon Rampton breaks down the difference between propaganda under an industrial mass media model and one in the new network economy by examining Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model from Manufacturing Consent. What follows is a snip but it is worth reading the whole thing.
I would argue, however, that the five filters described by Herman and Chomsky are specific to the mass media in the United States during the period when they wrote their book. Today, the media are changing.
The rise of propaganda during the 20th century in part reflected the cultural and political effects of two world wars as well as the Cold War. It was reflected the culmination of the industrial revolution and the dominance of certain specific communications technologies — newspapers, radio, television — capable of mass-producing and broadcasting messages for public consumption. As the word “manufacturing” in Manufacturing Consent suggests, the mass media throughout the 20th century were largely based on a model of mass production similar to the assembly lines and railroads of the industrial revolution: a command-and-control system overseeing the production of messages that emanate outward from major hubs. This model was envisioned metaphorically in the now-iconic logo of RKO Pictures, which depicted a huge radio tower atop the earth, from which messages radiated electronically to the planet.
These were the technologies and political forces that defined the media when Manufacturing Consent was written. In 1988, cable and satellite television had only recently emerged as important media and were only briefly mentioned in the text of the book, while the internet was not mentioned at all.
Network graph
Today, in place of “broadcasting” we hear increasingly of “narrowcasting.” Rather than a single mass audience consuming the same broadcast information, we have multiple audiences, interests, and information channels. The emergence of new communications media challenge the propaganda/broadcast model by increasing the number of channels through which information reaches the public, and also by lowering the costs of entry to previously-excluded voices. On the internet in particular, blogging, virally-distributed email and collaboratively-written wikis have changed the traditional distinction between “broadcaster” and “audience.” Instead of relying on “one-to-many” broadcasts, people can now get information through “one-to-one” and “many-to-many” systems in which they themselves choose and create their own media from diverse sources.
Once again the fake news surfs the real, and gets down and dirty by reporting on the “real” Iraq. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant commentary how how news is staged.
To cultivate one’s soul is then the quest that will back up the skills of the eyes, the ears, the hands and the body with the synthetic power of the mind and ultimately will cast aside the cages of separateness. Separateness is a peculiar invention of man and it is a menace to his position within the evolving universe. Small or large, the individual work is a contribution toward or an inquiry on the body of the species. The responsibility is personal and awesome and the punishment 1s as intrinsic to the performance as much as are the rewards. Each of us is a universal man or woman because we all are of the universe. To neglect this is purely to neglect oneself, a neglect that kills.
Greenpeace says the human body is as fragile as glaciers like the Aletsch in southern Switzerland and the world’s environment. The glacier itself is now shrinking by about 100 metres (110 yards) a year.
“I want my images to go more than skin-deep. I want the viewers to feel the vulnerability of their existence and how it relates closely to the sensitivity of the world’s glaciers,” Tunick said.
The group hopes its billboard and poster campaign showing people exposed to the cold will send a shiver down the spines of public opinion and politicians, and convince them to do more to tackle pollution and climate change.
Bridging media literacy with ecoliteracy, written by Antonio Lopez, an old school dharma punk and media educator. Occasionally he shoots from the lip, bloviates, misspells and can be tangential.
The fall of the powerholic
With the sound of the other shoe dropping, i.e. the subprime mortgage market collapse, we can now see that chances are very strong that the US Empire will be disintegrating very quickly. People seem to forget that they are spending something ridiculous like a billion dollars a day on Iraq, so we have to wonder, who is going to pay for it? You guessed it. Anyhow, the chorus of Rome and US comparisons is hitting a feverish pitch. Here is just one snip of many flying through cyberspace these days, this coming no less from the US Inspector General (Congress’s autonomous watch-dog organization):
FT.com / World - Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned:
With the comparisons between the fall of Rome and the dire situation the US finds itself in, I think it would be wise to study history, indeed, but I would liken the situation closer to the fall of the Spanish Empire. There was a time when Spanish currency was the gold standard of the world, but the ruling elite became decadent (surprise!) and the Empire found itself importing more goods from France than they were producing at home. To this the French King said something like, “Let the Spanish spend their gold on our goods!” Perhaps the Chinese are saying the same thing.
But more importantly is the manner in which Spain digressed into its own Dark Age with the Inquisition and purge of its business and intellectual class through the expulsion of the Sephardim jews. Here is where the parallel is dangerously close. The recent anti-immigration fervor is nothing but coded racism, and with little else to latch onto, I predict the Republicans and the desperate Right are going to go all out with semiotic race war. And it won’t just target Latin Americans, but anyone who no longer fits the 1950s fantasy of white American society. The brain drain is on as technical jobs, and even CEOs are being farmed out of the States. The US is in grave danger of a racist purge, so please keep your eyes on the ball folks and make sure this doesn’t happen, because there are desperate people clinging to an outmoded reality, and that usually is a bad recipe for social harmony.
There is an upside to this, but this certainly is one that comes along down the line. As someone who lives in a formerly ruined empire, the nice thing you learn from being in Rome is that life goes on, even after 2, 500 years of a rise and fall of human fortunes (Mexico CIty has a similar fate). You have no idea what a relief it is to live in a place that is NOT an empire. It’s like having a dark gray energy bubble cleansed and released. The burden of Iraq, the stress of war, the faltering economy, the rise of the national security apparatus with the legal blessings of Congress, and the paranoid delusion and paranoia of the “others” is wearing people down. It’s a sad time, but also a moment to completely reevaluate the priorities and decisions of our society. I truly hope that this becomes a sobering moment, as in when the alcoholic finally bottoms out. It’s time to acknowledge that the “powerholic” has finally hit the floor, the face going splat. I just wish there was AA for people addicted to war.
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