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 →
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 →
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 →
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is in trouble. The league locked out the players months ago, bargaining has failed, and now the players have disbanded their union and are taking the league to court to contest the most basic notions of player-league business relations. Things like player drafts and even the notion of 'owning a... Continue Reading →
Jazz musicians are extremely skilled collaborators. Jazz musicians who are complete strangers can create thoughtful and beautiful new music together in an instant. This is partly because they share a language but more importantly because they share a dialogical skillset. They have mastered the rules of collective improvised conversation between strangers. Whereas those of us... Continue Reading →
I have been talking about the need for leadership from the digital sphere to offer new models and strategies for the Occupy movement, strategies that are not reactive and not based on 'fixing' the existing financial system. But we also need leadership from oral elders who can reorient the Occupy movement away from self-defeating aims... Continue Reading →
The OWS movement keeps growing. More and more people keep celebrating resistance, protesting against corporate greed, getting arrested, speechifying, and making excellent media. Yesterday some Egyptians who had been involved in the Tahrir Square revolution put in an appearance and further stoked the flames of inspiration. Huzzah! Yet I worry. For all their energy, the... Continue Reading →
Part 3 - The Uncertain (previously: The Bad) (previously: The Good) Strangely enough I want to start with certainties. Knowing what I know about Occupy Wall Street should help me to know what I don't know. So what am I reasonably certain about? I am certain that America is approaching the status of Police State,... Continue Reading →
Part 2 - The Good (previously: The Bad) Saturday was a glorious fall day with blue skies and bright sunshine. At 3:30 pm I was in The New Schools' Wollman Hall, having just given a talk on post-literate activism at the Mobility Shifts conference, when we started to hear the unmistakable sounds of the Global... Continue Reading →
PART 1 - The Bad Cops, cops and more cops. Cops on horses. Cops in vans. Cops on motorcycles. Cops on scooters. Cops in paddywagons. Cops on foot. Cops on bikes. Cops in portable security towers. Cops everywhere. Watching. Waiting. Working. Thoroughly controlling the park perimeter. So much so that entering the park felt a... Continue Reading →
YOU ARE YOUR MEDIA 