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 →
Occupying Wall Street – The Bad, The Good and the Uncertain – Part 2
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 →
Occupying Wall Street – The Bad, The Good and The Uncertain
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 →
My Mobility Shifts Talk
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 →
The Army of Love and Software – NY update 1
So I've been in New York for a few hours now and plan to head down to do my Public Gifting action at Occupy Wall Street this evening (Friday) after I attend a talk by Geert Lovink at the New School. Yesterday, Geert, a Dutch new media activist, and his collaborator Franco Berardi released an... Continue Reading →
I’m Going Gifting @ Occupy Wall Street. Want To Join Me?
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 →
The Foundering Fathers
It fascinates me how often political arguments in the United States revolve around the words of America's 'founding fathers'. Of course it is not all their words that matter, just the ones that were written down. And specifically, Americans are obsessed with the words these fathers wrote in the founding documents of American nationhood, namely... Continue Reading →
Killer Cows and You
Not many people know that cows are killers. Or rather, cow milk. But yes, according to the Canadian Government, the milk that comes out of a healthy cow is toxic and we must at all costs be protected from it. Welcome to the OS2 world. Farmer Michael Schmidt of Durham Ontario is just one of... Continue Reading →
What You Know vs. Who You Know
Last night I was speaking with Moses, a visitor from Kenya, about the difficulty young people have finding jobs in his homeland, even when they have a degree. Because, he said, "It is not what you know that matters but who you know." Now this is a phrase I have also heard used to describe... Continue Reading →
Excerpts From A Discussion About DIY Education
For some years now I have been an active contributor to a terrific listserv called the Institute for Distributed Creativity (iDC), run by Trebor Scholz of The New School in NY. From now on I'm going to cross-publish my iDC posts here. My first such reposting is below. Subject: Re: [iDC] Can DIY education be... Continue Reading →
