Mediacology

I haven’t read Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future (and a Way to Get There from Here), which is what the following article link and clip are from, but I like the tone and depth of their analysis. Their view of biology and evolution as related to culture and belief is crucial.

The Big Theories Underwriting Society [...]

Jeremy Rifkin is a monster– I don’t mean that in a bad way. He’s a monstrously prolific author and is on our side. I’ve relied on several of his books in the past, and I certainly look forward to reading his new tome, The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in [...]

Let’s move into the positive. Many interesting things are happening by friends out there who are making/writing cool stuff.

Media Meltdown: Written by Liam O’ Donnell, I had a chance to consult on the media lit portion of this gem of a comic. It’s about a group of kids who learn to fight a greedy development [...]

Nice little article about the difference between a sustainable publishing model and corporate media. Makenna Goodman lists several points about the benefits of being a small publisher versus the NYC kind.

Makenna Goodman: The Future of Publishing Isn’t Rocket Science (It’s Sustainability):

1. Publishing is not a dying business; it’s a changing business. It’s a business going [...]

This is indeed the oddest thing about SETI—that we are so plainly surrounded with alien intelligences—bees, whales, porpoises, chimpanzees, DNA molecules, computers, dung beetles, slime mold, even the planet as an ecosystem—but still feel lonely and unable to communicate. How much intelligence and wisdom are found in Chinese civilization, for instance, and how ignorant the [...]

Bob Garfield, a columnist for AdAge, has long predicted the splitting at the seams between media and advertising. His new book, The Chaos Scenario, fleshes out what he’s been hammering at in his column. The above video gives a nice intro.
Here’s a link to the book’s Website.

Google’s ethic is, “don’t be evil.” Well, some feel that its book archiving project threatens to monopolize and control access to a vast digital library of out of print books, thereby changing preexisting copyright law. Democracy Now! reports.

Upon reading Ann Elizabeth Moore’s awesome polemic, Unmarketable, I’m tempted to create a new blog category, “clusterfrak.” This would be necessary for posts in which I feel compelled to document nefarious marketing practices that have infiltrated the counterculture, but in doing so am forced to give free publicity to the offender. What is one to [...]

Van Jones is one of the most powerful speakers I’ve seen, and a brilliant thinker to boot (with a big heart), so it is with no trepidation that I recommend the following profile from the New Yorker.

I’m currently reading his new book, The Green Collar Economy, which is poignant call for turning the US economy [...]

A Webliography is an interesting idea: annotate a book with hyperlinks and whatnot. Thankfully someone took the time to do just that for Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Follow this link for an amazing list of online references.

The above video is based on one of the best books I read last year, Animate Earth, which a love tome by a biologist who makes an intimate and accessible explanation of how Earth really is Gaia. It should be require reading for everyone.
“Animate Earth: Science, Intuition, And Gaia” (Stephan Harding)

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The Colbert ReportMon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Lawrence Lessig

Colbert at ChristmasColbert Christmas DVD
Green ScreenBill O’Reilly Interview

I just started reading Lessig’s Remix, perhaps the most accessible of his books. He makes a great comparison between “read only” versus “read/write” culture. Colbert does a great job of playing devil’s advocate. [...]

“The Ethics of Climate Change: Right and Wrong in a Warming World (Think Now)” (James Garvey)
Everyone has their pet cause (or should at least); mine happens to be media literacy. But I bow down to the mother of all causes, climate change, not only because of the extreme danger it represents, but because it ties [...]

I’m happy to announce that the book Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age is out. It’s a collection of articles from Reality Sandwich, which includes an essay I wrote, “Reality 2.0.” I’m honored to share space with the likes of Daniel Pinchbeck, DJ Spooky, Erik Davis, Stanislov Groth, Peter Lamborn Wilson and a host [...]

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Via Wooster.

James Boyle has a written an important book, The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind, which you can also download for free from his site. He has the following intriguing proposition:
In the tradition of the environmental movement, which first invented and then sought to protect something called “the environment,” Boyle hopes that [...]

“Gandhi on Non-Violence: Selected Texts from Gandhi’s “Non-Violence in Peace and War” (New Directions Paperbook)” (Thomas Merton)

In my summer reading list I forgot to mention this awesome little book of selected quotes on nonviolence by Gandhi. But the best part is the opening introduction by Thomas Merton who deconstructs the Western mind to reveal our [...]

Even though I haven’t been online that much this summer, I have still been pretty mediated, albeit old school style with books. I thought I’d share during this brief blogging pause what I’ve been reading.

“The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape” (Harm De Blij)

So far so good, The Power of Place uses [...]

Written by a former Economic Hit Man, John Perkins‘ The Secret History of the American Empire takes you on an inside journey of “corporatocracy” empire building. The book is fairly simplistic when it comes to history, but it confers with all the more academic sources I’ve read about the subject. What is great about the [...]

Great news! Mediacology is the featured book of the week at the wonderful Website, P2P Foundation.

Also be sure to check out P2P’s Michel Bauwens who wrote a terrific essay at Reality Sandwich, The Peer to Peer Manifesto: The Emergence of P2P Civilization and Political Economy.