Mediacology

Michael Wesch has created some of my favorite YouTube videos about the current technology zeitgeist. The Chronicle of Higher Education did this pretty cool article and video (posted above).

A new article about an old friend, R. Buckminster Fuller, featured in the New Yorker, “Dymaxion Man”.

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 [...]

The Surveillance Camera Players doing tactical media.

One of my favorite media theorists, Geert Lovink, wrote the indispensable Dark Fiber, a collection of critical essays published by MIT about media activism and networks. His discussion of tactical media as an alternative to culture jamming is why I put any kind of media activism under that category [...]

When I say the medium is the message, I’m saying that the motor car is not a medium. The medium is the highway, the factories, and the oil companies. That is the medium. In other words, the medium of the car is the effects of the car. When you pull the effects away, the meaning [...]

I Heart NY designer Milton Glaser has some heads-up advice about how to treat your brain. If you click the link below you can see the other nine things he’s learned about life.
Milton Glaser Inc.:
7 – HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the [...]

Maybe he’d be happier if he considered collective intelligence.
“A Song Alone”
By Neil Young
No one song can change the world. But that doesn’t mean its time to stop singing.
Somewhere on Earth a scientist is alone working. No one knows what he or she is thinking. The secret is just within reach. If I knew that answer [...]

Photo of LA billboard by Antonio Lopez
ChangeThis :: An Eater’s Manifesto:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.
We are entering a postindustrial era of food; for the first [...]

OK, don’t ask me how I came across the above video, but it features Andre J, one of the finest people I have ever met. S/he used to work at the fashion store below the Dharma Punx meditation studio in Manhattan. Before meditation I’d hang with Andre to chat about life. S/he is one of [...]

I stumbled on this nice little interview snippet with William S. Burroughs talking about Carlos Castaneda. Meanwhile, it reminded me of the Burroughs’ piece, Thanksgiving Prayer, which is posted above. Gobble Gobble.
Burroughs on Castaneda:
BURROUGHS: …You’ve read Castaneda’s Don Juan books. Don Juan says that nothing can be accomplished magically. Stopping the internal dialogue, in [...]

Do you have an hour? Sit back and put your seat-belt on, Naomi Wolf deconstructs the steps towards a fascist state. This has everything to do with media because media are responsible for diseminating the big lie. To quote the master propagandist himself, Joseph Goebels:
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, [...]

Mediacology readers know that I am a big fan of Douglas Rushkoff. His recent interview for WorldChanging is full of beautiful gems, but I’ll highlight one in particular, his insight that we unconsciously inhabit an architecture of centralized currency, and its fraking us big time.
WorldChanging: Tools, Models and Ideas for Building a Bright Green Future: [...]

AlterNet: Paul Hawken: How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future:
I estimate today that there are between one and two million organizations in the world that are addressing social justice and the environment, human rights and ecological restoration. It’s not only the largest movement in the world, it is so large [...]

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter
if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own
common sense.
Buddha

“We are one planet.”

Technorati Tags: carl sagan

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 [...]

Paolo Soleri:
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 [...]

Slate does a nice tribute to Tony Wilson, the man who first put the Sex Pistols on TV and was the inspiration for the amazing movie, 24 Hour Party People. I find this mediological because of his unique combination of talents that superseded commercialism, and because of his connection to the history of punk, [...]

Man Turns Down Billions for His Ancestral Homeland:
Just one man, 36-year-old Jeffrey Lee, holds the title to this unfathomably valuable piece of real estate – and he says it’s not for sale.
Lee, an Australian Aborigine, won’t condone the destruction of his ancestral land at any cost. As the sole survivor of the Djok clan, he [...]