Media activists and forward thinker Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices, raps on “imaginary cosmopolitanism,” “wisdom of the flock,” and “human curators.” He shows that despite the global nature of networks, most of us still remain within cultural bubbles and there remains little crossover between users of different cultural environments. The solution? We need more DJing.

In my efforts to be more holistic with my media literacy approach I’ve been moving in the direction of not just looking at the content of media, but their entire production process, from the making of content to the production of gadgets. There’s a good book,Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, which takes the “circuit of culture” approach by looking at how representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation are recursive. We need to update this model to incorporate a sense of social justice, as the above video is pushing for, and also the ecological dimension of production. It’s not just that conflict minerals are a problem in the supply chain, there is also disposal and externalization of the toxic byproduct resulting from built-in obsolescence (you know, what happens to your computer or iPod after you upgrade it).

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 Crisis. I’ve pasted a snip below, but do yourself a favor and read the whole article, which is a summary of the book’s thesis. It strikes me as a bit Utopian, so I’ll need to read more closely his assumptions when the book comes out. But frankly, I’m in need of some Utopian thought right now. Something about the tone and outlook of the piece feels right.

The book’s Website has an online reader that will let you read the whole book.

Jeremy Rifkin: ‘The Empathic Civilization’: Rethinking Human Nature in the Biosphere Era:

“Whether in fact we will begin to empathize as a species will depend on how we use the new distributed communication medium. While distributed communications technologies-and, soon, distributed renewable energies – are connecting the human race, what is so shocking is that no one has offered much of a reason as to why we ought to be connected. We talk breathlessly about access and inclusion in a global communications network but speak little of exactly why we want to communicate with one another on such a planetary scale. What’s sorely missing is an overarching reason that billions of human beings should be increasingly connected. Toward what end? The only feeble explanations thus far offered are to share information, be entertained, advance commercial exchange and speed the globalization of the economy. All the above, while relevant, nonetheless seem insufficient to justify why nearly seven billion human beings should be connected and mutually embedded in a globalized society. The idea of even billion individual connections, absent any overall unifying purpose, seems a colossal waste of human energy. More important, making global connections without any real transcendent purpose risks a narrowing rather than an expanding of human consciousness. But what if our distributed global communication networks were put to the task of helping us re-participate in deep communion with the common biosphere that sustains all of our lives?”

I’m glad the issue of conflict minerals is seeing the light of day– literally. As this video depicts, minerals important for our communications infrastructure are often mined by children in conflict zones. Many of the materials that go into the manufacture and out with the disposal of computers, cell phones, etc. are devastating to the “global majorities” (those who actually comprise the majority of the world’s population, but are denied access to the benefits of global capitalism). I think that if we are to take seriously the idea of the transformation of consciousness as a result of communications technology, then we should also critically engage the world system that produces such devices. I’m not suggesting that it should be one or the other (that is no phones versus economic and ecological justice), yet I believe we need to turn the screws on the technology companies to behave more responsibly when they make products, and for us to be wiser consumers. Furthermore, we should think twice about tossing the old cell phone considering the hardship that went into producing its material reality.

This leads to a broader question concerning some of the Utopian thinking about communications technology: is it possible if such futures as the singularity occur, will artificial intelligence be able to gage the issue of social and ecological justice? Currently the programs that buy and sell commodities on international markets are the least interested in such concerns. How will computers sense the livelihood at the root of their own production?