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 →
Rethinking 7 Generations
You may have heard of the 7 generations idea or concept or phrase. It is typically understood as being derived from First Nations culture and to mean that when making decisions today we should consider the implications of those decisions on people living 7 generations in the future. As such, it is a useful and... Continue Reading →
Remembering A Cosmic Christmas
My late father Ken was a great writer who spent much of his career working in educational TV. He started writing for Nelvana back in 1975, when the global animation giant was just a gleam in the eye of its founders. He wrote or contributed to many series for them over the years, and many... Continue Reading →
Empathy and Technology – Damned Journalists
This is the first in a series of posts about Empathy and Technology. The next installment will be on Surveillance -- As you may know, I have been following the Leveson inquiry into media ethics in the UK and it continues to yield amazing entertainment and insights. Among other things it demonstrates how very little... Continue Reading →
Improvising Poetry and Our Digital Future
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: An Unfinished Conversation (Race and Language in the Digital Age)
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 →
Phone Hacking and the Future of Privacy
I have been keeping tabs on the Leveson Inquiry in the UK, which continues to deliver the most astonishing insights into contemporary media culture and its effect on the lives of British citizens. Today's testimony was perhaps the most remarkable yet, although its hard to measure degrees of amazement when almost every witness offers mind-boggling... Continue Reading →
The Publication Studio – an Interactivist Publisher!
In my last post I talked about the iDC listserv. Today I was contacted by a lurker on that listserv. His name is Matthew Stadler and with his partner Patricia No he runs an extremely interesting organization called The Publication Studio, which describes itself as 'makers and destroyers of books'. How cool is that? Better... Continue Reading →
Happy Birth Day!
Today is my birthday and I am feeling good. Not just because I can be thankful for another year of relatively good health, a loving family and a peaceful, prosperous homeland, but also because with this blog post I am kicking off an exciting new phase of my professional life. Giving birth, if you will,... Continue Reading →
