Media Mindfulness

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This is what the book says: an infant needs to sleep so that she can grow new brain cells. And what about papa? Well, I’m getting by, joyfully, but with little time to focus on work, thus my long absence from the blog. The good news is that my daughter was born healthy and strong. [...]

Deer peeps, due to the impending arrival of my baby daughter, I may be offline for a few weeks. Never fear, I shall be back!

An interesting review of some current arguments about the state of feminism. I’ve been somewhat intrigued by “postfeminsim,” not because I agree with it, but because it traffics in the same language as “postirony.” In other words, when young women where T-shirts with “babe” or hot pants with crude sexual language printed on their butt, [...]

Videos by Andrew Huang | More VMIX videosView more Indie Movies and Shorts videos | Embed this video

(H/T to DK)

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An example of Mexicans playing with Poly Identity
I feel bad for advertisers (OK, not really) because I often here industry pundits complain that the media audiences are too scattered, and have too much ADD to focus on their messages. Too bad, I’m crying crocodile tears. You see, part of the problem concerning people’s inability [...]

The corporate media world loves to lock you out of sharing files. There have been more insidious acts of control as well, such as designating region codes for DVDs so that you are forced to buy media only for the region you live in. This has been a huge pain for me because after moving [...]

I saw Paul Hawken give a talk at the 2006 Bioneeers conference, The Other Superpower (you can download an iPod version here). He recently scribed a book based on the ideas he presented called, Blessed Unrest. His basic argument, which is highlighted below in an article for Orion Magazine, is that there is a massive, [...]

Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti

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I’m attracted to the idea that civilizations are organisms that metabolize. I first came across this idea when reading a book about the history of the Anasazi, a sophisticated and complex society in the Southwestern desert region of the United States that collapsed suddenly. The book’s author suggested that the more centralized a society becomes, [...]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8cmWZOX8Q

Not to belabor the point, but sometimes adults could use a good metaphorical spanking. Watch and listen as this child speaks from the heart about state of the world to a UN panel of so-called grown-ups.

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The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania has created a great classroom Internet news tool, FactcheckED. It has very practical advice for helping students detect fraud in political advertising and propaganda. Another good source for researching PR and spin is the site, PR Watch.
FactcheED provides this simple and awesome checklist for detecting [...]

I was a big fan of Lost, but since moving to Europe I have not been able to watch it. ABC blocks foreign access to the free viewings available in the US. Though news of the Lost college course is being offered is old news, I found the following post interesting. Some critics still think [...]

OK, so this kind of stuff gives me vertigo, but in principle I’m cosigning the self-made, self-organization concept as the paradigm of choice. I’m not enough of a physicist to contend this particular theory, but when it comes to understanding media, societies, cities and braina, these are ideas that are worth pondering.
Cosmic Log : The [...]

A study that examines the monetization of relationships. Who’s your best bud now? Nike or Johnny?
Advertising Age - Digital - What’s Making ‘Friends’ With a MySpace User Worth?:
“It’s when I take the brand, put it on my profile page and then all the people would develop a deeper meaning for what Adidas stands for [...]

Bill Maher, as usual, has nailed the current state of our consumption patterns versus the environment. He’s right to say that every day should be Earth Day. It’s kinda like how the supermarket has one miniscule “health food” section. It implies the rest of the store is unhealthy.
Click the link below to watch the hilarious [...]

I was once on a panel with Lance Strate. He is a thoughtful, smart media ecology expert who recently wrote a provocative blog on the Virginia Tech murders. He is not the first to equate guns with cameras (Susan Sontag and Paul Virilio have each made the connection on a deep level), but I thought [...]

That’s how many earths Americans need to maintain consumption habits. This video illustrates the point nicely. You can take some action here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzXRxP7jBSU

Technorati Tags: ecology, Care2

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Anastasia Goodstein of YPulse and author of Totally Wired refers to a great article in Wired about how some classrooms are getting smart about incorporating online social networks rather than resisting them. At the center of this paradigm shift is an interesting software package, Elgg. I think the idea of a DIY social network [...]

One things I miss about the good ol’ days of modernity is the massive output of manifestos that artists and activists churned out to contest the prevailing ideas of their world. With names like Futurists, Surrealists, and Bauhaus, people seemed to care a lot about having clear and strong opinions. With the advent of the [...]