The Walrus Talk at the Canadian Museum of Nature on Thursday night took The Arctic as its theme, and the evening was as inspiring and illuminating as previous events in this ambitious national series. It also demonstrated with stunning clarity the conflict between communications cultures that is my main topic on this blog. As usual,... Continue Reading →
I read with interest this thoughtful article by Diane Ragsdale about the challenges posed by digital tools to arts audiences, as well as the many excellent comments that followed. I added my own comment, which I will post here as it was fairly substantial: This is a fascinating topic, but I would argue that our... Continue Reading →
Hi. This post lists and links to my first 50 posts on this blog, indexing 50 brief critical essays on contemporary media culture. Topics include The Leveson Inquiry, Occupy Wall Street, Privacy, Music, Food, Economics and more. Try one. 1. Happy Birth Day! my blog is born 2. Gifts and Books, Books and Gifts books as... Continue Reading →
My kids have been invited to a lot of birthday parties over the years. One thing I've noticed (or to be more accurate, my wife has noticed...I only noticed her noticing it!) is that more and more kids are having parties where gifts are politely declined. "No gifts" has been scrawled on more than one... Continue Reading →
Yesterday I introduced the idea that the greatest transformative potential for any social initiative lies in creating feedback loops between OS1 and OS3. By OS1 I mean oral culture and technologies and by OS3 I mean digital culture and technologies. I also said that in order to effectively implement such strategies, which I refer to... Continue Reading →
Interactivism proposes that the greatest transformative potential for any social initiative lies in creating feedback loops between OS1 and OS3. The objective is for these feedback loops to spiral outward, gaining momentum and reach, virally increasing their impact and generating sustainable social transformations. The greatest challenge in achieving this objective is one of reorientation. For... Continue Reading →
A couple days ago I posted a recording called Where The Bears Go by my duo The John Waynes (so named because it consists of John Sobol (me) and Wayne Kelso). Today I posted a second recording by The John Waynes called The Evil I. For those keeping score, Where The Bears Go is a... Continue Reading →
This morning I had the great fortune to tune into the latter part of a talk given in Stockholm by Tunisian web activist and revolutionary Slim Amamou, as part of the ambitious Net4Change conference being held there today. The live feed is available here: http://juliagruppen.se/lang/en/nyheter/ Slim Amamou is a programmer who was arrested in 2010... Continue Reading →
MY MOBILITY SHIFTS TALK You are a tree. You are a bird. You are a fish. You are a flower. You are a cloud. You are a baby. Every atom that comprises you, each of you, all of us, has at one time been a tree, a bird, a fish, a flower, a cloud, a... Continue Reading →
Tomorrow I'll be arriving in New York where I'll be staying for a few days. I'll be speaking at (and attending) a cool conference on the future of digital culture and education called Mobility Shifts at The New School. (My talk is Saturday at 2:30 pm, Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building 65 West 11th St.,... Continue Reading →
YOU ARE YOUR MEDIA 