Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Internet as Metaphor
To understand the metaphor, it helps to understand the Internet.
There is no single Internet - it is a network of networks, with a series of voluntary specifications (called RFCs) of how the networks interconnect.
Email messages, World Wide Web pages, instant messages, everything sent over the Internet is digital in form and is reduced down to a packet - a group of characters or bits. Each packet has a payload - the contents, and headers, which include the From address and the To address.
There is no center of the Internet - and no central control system. Institutions and corporations each operate their own parts of the Internet. Special computer-operated interconnect switches called routers switch these packets across the Internet to get closer to their destination. In order for the routers to know the location of other addresses, routers exchange information with each other.
The topology of the Internet is a perfectly described by the term heterarchical. The relationships between the various institutional and corporate networks can be described as partnership.
The Internet fosters and encourages heterarchical linking and partnership thinking.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Surf Music
Surf music began in the 1960's, before the World Wide Web. In the 1990s, the Web was invented by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The process of navigating the web came to be called surfing.
McLuhan used Edgar Allen Poe's A Descent into the Maelström to illustrate the swirling, whirlpool effects of the modern world of electronic communication - and this was almost 30 years before the emergence of the Internet.
McLuhan also described a cultural change fostered and encouraged by electronic communications: the change from information classification to pattern recognition - surfing.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Effects Media and Technology
For example, songs, television programs, records, oil companies named after Route 66. The highway no longer exists. It was one of the first US highways. What would people think about the song before the highway was built in 1926?
Wilson Pickett's Mustang Sally (written and first recorded by Mack Rice) is a rich example: The Ford Mustang car gives Sally freedom. The car is named after the wild horse known as the mustang. Would the song make sense in the days of horses as transportation?
Monday, August 25, 2008
Smiles and Ecojoy
When we know that Ecojoy is a viable, supportable philosophy, we can smile, and others, seeing us, feel happy too.
I just got back from the grocery store. At the store, I saw two sets of parents with children. I smiled at them, and waved at the kids. The parents smiled cautiously, and the kids smiled widely. It was late, they were tired, but a smile created a small bit of joy for them - and for me!
Heros, Villains and Quests
These myths create and perpetuate the fundamental good and evil dichotomy. As discussed earlier, good and evil is binary, black & white thinking, a kind of thinking fostered and encouraged by print media. Electronic media, and especially the Internet foster and encourage multiple ways of thinking, multiple solutions to problems.
Many of the challenges we currently face are the result of millions of us making suboptimal decisions, like driving individually-operated cars and trucks. Instead of a single hero, we need millions of them - we all need to be heros.
more War Words
When people have a serious illness like cancer, they are said to be battling cancer. (When Danielle had breast cancer, she didn't feel comfortable with battling, so she imagined a bunch of little social workers escorting the misbehaving cancer cells out of her body.)
And we have so many more: the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the battle for equality, fight for rights, and so on.
Words are like tools. A quotation attributed to Abraham Maslow: "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail".
This is an allegory for how media and technology offer us metaphors for thinking about the world, and thus limit or frame our way thinking. If we use the words of war, we frame the linking between ourselves and others in the hierarchical form, rather than the heterarchical form.
[music example Love is a Battlefield by Pat Benatar]
Sunday, August 24, 2008
It's NOT a Dog Eat Dog World
Other similar phrases:
- kill or be killed
- only the strong survive
Those are not Darwin's ideas. And they don't describe the world around us.
Friday, August 22, 2008
TED
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It [is a conference that] started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).
The conference and website has fascinating insights and presentations from a wide variety of thinkers.
When Gloria Steinem Came to Madison...
I wanted to say - but I wasn't ready yet - that ecojoy was such a way to unify those movements.
Now, with ecologyofjoy.com and this blog starting to come together, I can say that:
Ecojoy is a way to unify movements for feminism, racial equality, economic opportunity, social justice, the environment, animal rights, and peace!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Politically Correct
Holding Their Feet to the Fire
In this case, the medium of speech fosters and encourages dominator thinking and hierarchical linking.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Media Education Foundation
The Media Education Foundation produces and distributes documentary films and other educational resources to inspire critical reflection on the social, political and cultural impact of American mass media.
Media Ecology Association
What is Media Ecology? (Neil Postman)
Media ecology looks into the matter of how media of communication affect human perception, understanding, feeling, and value; and how our interaction with media facilitates or impedes our chances of survival.
The word ecology implies the study of environments: their structure, content, and impact on people.
An environment is, after all, a complex message system which imposes on human beings certain ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
- It structures what we can see and say and, therefore, do.
- It assigns roles to us and insists on our playing them.
- It specifies what we are permitted to do and what we are not. Sometimes, as in the case of a courtroom, or classroom, or business office, the specifications are explicit and formal.
In the case of media environments (e.g., books, radio, film, television, etc.), the specifications are more often implicit and informal, half concealed by our assumption that what we are dealing with is not an environment but merely a machine.
Media ecology tries to make these specifications explicit.
It tries to find out what roles media force us to play, how media structure what we are seeing, why media make us feel and act as we do.
Media ecology is the study of media as environments.
—Neil Postman, “The Reformed English Curriculum.” in A.C. Eurich, ed., High School 1980: The Shape of the Future in American Secondary Education (1970).
and they have an email discussion list:
Friday, August 15, 2008
Fostering and Encouraging Change
McLuhan mentioned many times that different media create different types of sensory balance, and frequently people will resort to violence to restore the balance to the previous comfort zone. But it doesn't have to happen that way.
I've found that it is important to give people "room" to change. That means that people need to consider the change over a period of time, and be able to analyze their philosophies in light of their own personal experiences. And they need to feel safe and secure during and after the consideration process.
Religion and Evolution
Homosexuality and Ecojoy
I am not speaking only of heterosexuals. We are all currently swimming in dominator-tainted waters, and it affects all of us, in some ways we don't yet comprehend. It is my hope that in the near partnership future, the need for sexual preference categorization will be relegated to history of sociology courses.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Alcohol and Ecojoy
Alcoholism was difficult for me to understand as a kid. And for adults to understand too. One way to understand is to listen to the song Cherry Red Wine from Luther Alison (go ahead, Google him...). Luther had sadness, anger - desperation in his voice "sittin' here wonderin' what I can do". I received a great chunk of understanding from the book Stiffed (subtitle The Betrayal of the American Man) by Susan Faludi. Faludi tells us that men are victims of patriarchy too. And when men are unable to live up to the patriarchal mythology, they sometimes turn to drugs, alcohol or abuse.
We all possess a Constant Craving (listen to k.d. lang sing it). The craving is for love, joy and attention. We are social creatures. We evolved that way because that adaptation was beneficial. But drugs and alcohol also bind to those joy receptors in our systems and trick us into thinking we were getting what we need (listen to Cocaine, by J.J. Cale or Eric Clapton). Drugs and alcohol weren't around when we evolved to be social, loving creatures, so we aren't equipped to deal with the threat.
So we have to deal with drugs and alcohol in our conscious brains. We need to show people about the ecology of joy, and teach them about the false joy of drugs and alcohol.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Evolution is not Intentional
I just figured it out. One of the ways people talk about evolution is as if it were intentional. For example, fish evolved lungs so they could breathe air on land, or birds evolved wings so that they could fly.
But evolution is not intentional. The way we currently understand it, variation happens randomly, without intention. Then, natural selection sorts out the improvements from the maladaptive changes. Creatures born with particular variations which enhance their ability to survive do a better job of passing on genes with those variations to their offspring than other creatures without those variations .
Ecojoy and Religion
Like cultures in general, religious cultures (churches) are affected by (heterarchical or hierarchical) link modeling in the media (for example, the Bible, Torah or Qur'an) which they use.
Naive
The term meme describes an idea as if it were an independent entity. If dominator thinking were considered a meme, this fear of vulnerability would be a way that the dominator meme protects and propagates itself. As long as ecojoy is considered while in a dominator frame of reference, ecojoy will be vulnerable.
That does not change the fact that joy is still a more effective motivation.
And resolving naïveté is the first challenge on the path to ecojoy.
Binary Thinking
Before the written word, our primary means of communication was oral. Stories, poems and songs were passed around person-to-person. Heterarchical. And many different nuances and variations about things around them.
The written word was in black (ink) and white (paper). The printing press exacerbated the situation. Hierarchical, and still black and white. This favors dominator thinking. For example, because they are printed, all of the Bibles (of a particular edition) are identical - there are no variations, and interpretation is not necessary. The word is there, in black and white.
Radio and Television began the revolution, and the Internet and the World Wide Web are carrying it further. Information is in many forms, visual, aural and written.
Binary thinking is low bandwidth. As bandwidth increases, many voices can be heard and compared.
As communication bandwidth increases, thinking opens up to many options, partnership linking and maximizing joy.
Ecojoy and IT
So organizations in general, but IT in particular would do well to think about the structure of their organization, the forms of communications, and the motivations for success.
Heirarchies of Actualization
WORT and Ecojoy
Joy as a most effective motivator translates perfectly into paid work situations. People who feel joy in their work are more productive, more effective, more creative, have fewer sick days. Joyful workplaces experience lower turnover and lower instances of theft and vandalism.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Darwin Project
"In the Descent of Man Charles Darwin wrote only twice of "survival of the fittest" — but 95 times about love!"Loye is the husband and partner of Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade.
This deeply connects Darwin's Theory of Evolution to the Ecology of Joy.
(I remember a time before I know of David's work when I had called on the telephone to talk to Riane and David answered the phone. We chatted for a few minutes, and I shared my frustration with misinterpretation of the theory of evolution being used to support dominator thinking. I thought it would be an offhand comment, but David and I had a wonderful conversation about his work.)
Link - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online
Saturday, August 09, 2008
Partnership Resources
Language is a Medium
For example, the words of war and violence include kill (a comedian succeeding with a routine is said to be killing 'em, a bomb is a type of football pass))
There are several authors I have met at WisCon, the feminist science fiction conference held each year in Madison, including
who write about peaceful and violent language.
There are many more - please let me know who I missed.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Emotion - Happiness
Brain and Emotions Research
more Brain and Emotions Research
Forgiveness
Up at Bjorklunden
"It's a choice you can make - to have joy, to find joy and to spread joy."
Thanks, Kim!
Monday, August 04, 2008
Rejection massively reduces IQ
From New Scientist Magazine 15-March-2002
"Rejection can dramatically reduce a person's IQ and their ability to reason analytically, while increasing their aggression, according to new research.
"It's been known for a long time that rejected kids tend to be more violent and aggressive," says Roy Baumeister of the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, who led the work. "But we've found that randomly assigning students to rejection experiences can lower their IQ scores and make them aggressive."
Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others." (more at New Scientist)
Dr. Baumeister's large body of work supports connections between positive self esteem and abilities. That is, we do better when we feel better, or we are more successful when we feel joy.