Mediacology

Some sage advice for dealing with technological overwhelm.

Distractions | Tricycle Magazine:

In the age of cell phones and the Internet, many of us have become smitten with the distractions of choice—texting, instant messaging, twittering, listening to iPods, checking email, reading the news online. These distractions can be fun, and, when seen as multitasking, even necessary. The [...]

Blog Action Day 2008 Poverty from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

In my other life I’m a part-time DIY philosopher. So what follows is a short piece I wrote for Reality Sandwich (based on an earlier one I did for Blog Action Day- see video above) that deals with how think about poverty.

Reality Sandwich | Poverty [...]

Modern culture would have us worship before the altar of the thinking mind, with its endless capacity to produce ideas, fantasies, and formulas. We are taught that the thinking mind is the possessor of all wisdom, and we dedicate much of our lives to the pursuit of knowledge and information. Seeing the world and ourselves [...]

I’m still here/out there. Been off the grid in the woods and on the beach. Thought I’d share this nice little piece by Ethan Nichtern about the psychology of consumption. I’m feeling a little strained about the need to “keep up” with the Internet, so I thought this would be a nice interlude as I [...]

Image source
Those of you who have read my book know that I’m not a big fan of how we generally think about memes, because the assumption is that ideas are things that can be passed from person to person without disruption, but in practice communication is much messier. The strange thing about the meme concept [...]

I read the following and wondered if the “big mind” that Suzuki speaks of could also be applied to media:

That everything is included within your mind is the essence of mind. To experience this is to have religious feeling. Even though waves arise, the essence of your mind is pure; it is just like clear [...]

Image source
Is Mathematics Discovered or Invented?:
“The abstract realm in which a mathematician works is by dint of prolonged intimacy more concrete to him than the chair he happens to sit on,” says Ulf Persson of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, a self-described Platonist.
The philosophical debate concerning whether or not mathematics is discovered or invented [...]

One of my favorite books is The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again). This might sound unbelievable, but I actually think Warhol was an enlightened master who simply spoke in the language of his time: mass media. What makes his contribution so important is that he went against the grain [...]

I’m fairly certain that the mindfulness technique that derives from Buddhist meditation practice is designed to deal with what our society cannot: the inability of our caveman brain to moderate itself in the midst of so much abundant materialism and prosperity. As cognitive anthropologists have noted, we have dispositions that are easily manipulatable. For example, [...]

The Buddhist magazine Tricycle has a daily dharma post you can subsribe to. In this one, Jack Kornfield discusses near enemies. I find this a very useful concept for thinking about media, because they deliver nerve stimulation that we often mistake for pleasure. Yes, it’s fun to be entertained– I do it all the time. [...]

In my book I’m making the argument that media forms condition how we think, and the conditioning is so profound that it can prevent us from understanding other perceptual realms. For example the world of print literacy has led us to form a world that is characterized by certain ways of being that are different [...]

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. [...]

Click on the link below for a video by Robert Thurman (yes, Uma’s dad) on becoming a Buddha. I did, and it’s fun!
TED | Talks | Bob Thurman: Becoming Buddha — on the Web (video):
In our hyperlinked world, we can know anything, anytime. And this mass enlightenment, says Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman, is our first [...]

A Gradual Awakening This is by the dad of my meditation teacher and Dharma Punx writer Noah Levine. This is a great primer on mindfulness meditation. The best breakdown on how the mind works and how to transcend the limitations of suffering, written in a beautiful, succinct style.