GVCS in 2 Minutes – High Resolution from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

Imagine if Survival Research Labs cultivated its inner child and went eco? I think you’d get something like Open Source Ecology‘s Global Village Construction Set, a DIY Open source machinery ensemble for self-sufficiency. You can’t get more awesome design than that!

Anyhow, I was alerted to a great new tool which is making my life so much easier and I want to pass that info along to you. Omnisio is a fantastic Web video service that enables you to past together all those movie fragments on YouTube or Google video (BlipTV is also supported) into one continues feed. For my undergrad class I have been stringing together clips so I can view some of these documentaries seamlessly. You can view my channel here, which will grow as I add stuff. Currently I have a documentary on PR and Propaganda, The Century of the Self, and PBS NOW’s treatment of Net Neutrality up.

The only thing I would add is an ability to adjust the width of the embed file. I know it’s possible to do it manually in the embed code, but it’s hard to figure out the correct proportional adjustment for height. If it’s possible to set the width before it generates code, that would be great.

You can download the guide here.

Global Voices Online » An Introductory Guide to Global Citizen Media:

A change is taking place in how we communicate.

Just ten years ago we all learned about the world around us from newspapers, the television, and radio. Professional journalists would go to faraway places and bring back stories, photographs and videos of the situations they witnessed and the people they met.

Sometimes at dinner we talk about these stories with our friends and family. But ten years ago we rarely, if ever, communicated directly with the journalists themselves. Leading members of society wrote editorials expressing their opinions about various issues, but the rest of us could only share our opinions and thoughts with a small group of friends.

Over the last few years everything has changed. Thanks to new tools like weblogs, it is now possible to easily publish to the Internet. From Turkey to Kenya to Bolivia, everyday people like you and me are starting to share their stories and opinions with the rest of the world.

While this new form of communication is now freely available to anyone, most of the people participating still live in the wealthy neighborhoods of urban cities.

The purpose of this guide is to show that anyone with an internet connection can participate in the emerging global conversation. Our understanding of the world is now shaped not just by the newspapers and television, but also by each other.

Against The Stream: Connecting Punk with Buddhism

Was Buddhism the first DIY spiritual path? According to Noah Levine, “Sid” (Siddhartha Gautama AKA Buddha) was history’s earliest punk. He went against the prevailing guruism of his day, eschewing the caste system by inviting women, criminals and the poor into the enlightenment camp. Like punk, Buddhism’s user interface is decidedly personal and open source. Akin to the proverbial Sniffin’ Glue punk dictum—”Here’s a chord, here’s another, now go start a band”—Buddha said, here’s the Dharma, now go get enlightened.

Levine’s new book, Against the Stream, is DIY boot camp for the spiritual revolutionary. Unlike his biography, Dharma Punx, Against… is a practical hands-on guide to getting your dharma on. I give Levine tremendous credit for branding the Dharma Punx idea. I don’t mean that cynically, but in a zeitgeist kind of way, because when I first encountered Dharma Punx, and subsequently Noah in person, I found a kindred spirit who grokked the suffering of fellow punks and other social outcasts. I didn’t know there were other spiritually oriented old school punkers like myself; in doing so it was like finding a lost brother. Many apparently share the feeling because Dharma Punx and its ever-expanding community of sanghas (“communities”) have taken a life of their own. Noah gladly has let the inmates take over the asylum.

The attraction of Dharma Punx goes far beyond the Noah personality cult, something we half-joke about, but his charisma is definitely attractive to many—and a total turnoff to some. Admittedly it’s a bit strange to hear a bald guy with tattoos on his neck and hands espouse a philosophy based on love, not fear. But I think he strikes the right tone, which is balanced delicately with the practical applications of Buddhism with the desire to radically change the world.

Like hardcore punk, which I consider to be the monochrome canvas of music, Theravada‘s mindfulness approach is a more minimalist approach to Buddhism, i.e. no shamanic renderings of the Dharma that were added later by other branches. Periodically Noah held debates at the NYC sangha with Shambhala practitioner Ethan Nichtern (author of another great book, One City: A Declaration of Interdependence), who also teaches at the same Bowery space across the street from the now-defunct CBGBs. It’s fun to hear Noah slash and burn with three-chord Dharma to get to the essential: no astral glamour or speculative metaphysics. It’s all about the here-and-now, literally, between you and the cushion or you and the skateboard, as the case may be. What makes Noah’s take on Buddhism essential is that it’s streetwise, partly from his experience from teaching in prisons, also in part because he’s from the streets. You get a lot of that in Against the Stream, with doses of “homie” sprinkled about in his discussions of the suttas. In the Dharma Punx sangha, the language in his talks is far more colorful.

In the sangha I have observed a really diverse demographic (young and old, multiethnic, assorted subcultural styles, etc.), but at the core I am attracted by a particular Gen X sensibility that’s pissed off, ironic, and yes, highly dysfunctional and addicted. Having been there and done that, my theory is this: back in the old punk days we had created a tribe and surrogate family as a means for dealing with our alienation, both from the fucked-up system, but also from badly broken homes. Many of us who grew up in the ’70s were dealing with a very bad ’60s hangover. Divorce, drugs, free love, experimental therapy, cults, and abuse were common among us. Sadly, punk never overcame its nihilism and generally internalized to the extreme all the social dysfunction we railed against. This is why I found the documentary American Hardcore so depressing. Before seeing it, I had high expectations of seeing my youth displayed and documented authentically; I wanted to re-live the excitement and vibrant energy that I remember about punk. Instead I left the theater depressed. I had blocked out the violence, and the scene in which Henry Rollins, who was singing for Black Flag at the time, sucker-punched an audience member recalled the ugly side of our youth movement. It was a depressing reminder of the dark side of our generational aesthetic.

Sadly, some have “sold out” to market this lifestyle, best symbolized by the disembodied, postironic tone of advertising voiceovers. But not Noah. When he sits on the cushion with you it’s because he’s been through the shit; it’s not some highfalutin gimmick espousing phony guru crap. If there is one thing you will glean from Against the Stream, it’s the practicality of his approach and how it remains true to the spirit of rebellion. And if there is one bit of sage advice that springs from it, it’s something that Noah repeats often: don’t believe a word he says. Try it for yourself and see if it works for you. Because that’s all that really matters. The rest is bullshit.

Admittedly before reading the book I had fallen of the Dharma wagon. This could mean a lot of things. Some might object to some of the precepts, in particular the ones against harmful sexuality or no intoxicants. The definitions are somewhat flexible, because we are lay people and these teachings are meant for householders, not monks. A lot of Dharma Punx are AA-ers. Some are uncomfortable with that aspect of the sangha, but like all punk communities (I use the term loosely here to describe an attitude, not a look), the slam pit is fairly large. In the years that I participated, everyone one of us blew it a few times, picked up old habits, fell of the wagon, etc, but we all supported each other when the time was right and returned to the cushion. This is not a scene where people are judged for their weaknesses or failings.

I realize that not all will share the same feelings I had when I first sat in the Dharma Punx sangha, but for me there was an intense feeling of coming home. Maybe Against the Stream will also offer you that sense of welcome.

Technorati Tags: DharmaPunx, NoahLevine, Buddhism

The Pocket Film Festival is for videos only made with cell phones (click here for the Japanese site). I’m a big fan of utilizing the resources that you have. It’s no longer necessary to make a six digit investment in equipment when your cell phone and a Web site like Jumpcut will allow you to upload your footage and edit online. Then instant distribution. Bingo! There’s no shortage of creativity, but in the online video world there is certainly a lot of noise. I’m glad there’s a festival out there to filter some of this stuff.

PS When talking about new media, Isn’t film a misnomer at this point? And footage?

Technorati Tags: Pocket Film Festival

Here’s a fun activity that doesn’t involve drugs or video games.

Center for Citizen Media: Blog » Blog Archive » Citizen Media: A Progress Report:

* Be skeptical. We need to be skeptical of just about all media. This means not taking or granted the trustworthiness of what we read, see or hear from media of all kinds, whether from traditional news organizations, blogs, online videos or you name it.

* Use an internal “trust meter.” But being skeptical of everything doesn’t mean being equally skeptical of everything. That’s why we need to bring to the modern media the same kinds of parsing we learned in a less complex time when there were only a few primary sources of information. Imagine a credibility scale ranging from plus 10 to minus 10. I give a New York Times or Wall Street Journal article an automatic plus 8 or 9; I don’t assume perfection but I do trust that, in articles by most reporters for those publications, a strong effort went into getting it right. An anonymous comment on a random blog, by contrast, starts at minus 8 or 9; it would have to go a long way to merely have zero credibility.

* Learn media techniques. Younger people are getting pretty good at this already. What I suspect they — and almost everyone else — lacks in this regard is understanding how communications are designed to persuade, and how we can be manipulated. We need to teach ourselves, and our children, about how media work in ways that go far beyond knowing how to take a snapshot with a mobile phone or posting something in a blog.

* Keep reporting. No one with any common sense buys a car solely based on a TV commercial. We do some homework. It’s the kind of research and follow-up that journalists do. So let’s call it reporting. We need to recognize the folly of making any major decision about our lives based on something we read, hear or see — and the need to keep reporting, sometimes in major ways, to ensure that we make good choices.

Technorati Tags: puppy

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to drive in the Information Highway’s slow lane? The International Centre for Physics has created one so you can see how it feels to be in the losing spectrum of the digital media revolution. Click on the link below to try it out.

ICTP Digital Divide Simulator:

We have elaborated an on-line simulator with which you can experience browsing the web with low bandwidth and compare it with the bandwidth you are used to. To make use of it select the website you want to test, then select the bandwidth you want to simulate, and click “simulate”. You will be presented with two pages: one at full speed and one at the limited speed. You can then compare the two.”

Technorati Tags: digital divide