Last night I attended an excellent event put on by the Public Policy Forum called Social Media and Democracy: What Can Be Done? at which no less than 5 smart and highly informed guest speakers from journalism, government, academia, civil society and the tech sector discussed the state of the internet and the threat of 'surveillance... Continue Reading →
In my book Digitopia Blues – Race, Technology and the American Voice, I described Dylan's impact this way: Dylan signaled the triumph of oral poetry for white America, the reconciliation of the word and the body, of the singer and the song, of the poet and the community. From here on in, it was a... Continue Reading →
If I have been away from this blog for a while (I have) it's only because I have been so totally focused on The Media League, my brand new digital business/digital culture venture, which has been exciting but all-consuming. Happily, here's a link to a new article about us featuring an interview with yours truly:... 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 →
A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the Toronto Reference Library as part of an excellent series called Treehouse Talks. It was a lovely event, attended by about 100 people and held in the spectacular 5-story atrium of the library. I gave an updated version of the talk that I call Know Your... Continue Reading →
Late afternoon last Saturday I found myself walking past Grossman's Tavern on Spadina in Toronto when a thought suddenly struck me: "Hey, don't the Happy Pals play here every Saturday afternoon?" I went in and sure enough, the best traditional jazz band north of N'awlins was just setting up, as they have done every Saturday at... 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 →
Jazz was - among other things - a century-long political conversation between Black Americans and White Americans. It was a musical, intellectual and spiritual conversation within a highly politicized social context whose axes were language, race and power. Jazz was also a conversation about technology, and about techno-cultures. To be specific, in jazz the conflict... 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 →
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 →
YOU ARE YOUR MEDIA 