Disruptive technologies disrupt - goodbye newspaper companies

Disruptive technologies disrupt - goodbye newspaper companies | Tom Foremski: IMHO | ZDNet.com

"My definition of a disruptive technology is that it disrupts."

That means the end of newspapers, telephones, cable television, magazines.

It means huge changes for music and movies. The RIAA can sue moms for millions, but it won't put the genie back in the bottle again.

And it means that General Motors is out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Cisco is in.

It also means that our social philosophy needs to change too. That's where ecojoy comes in.

Gun Control and Ecojoy

Dr. George Tiller.

Stephen T Johns.

Two killed recently in Madison.

Guns didn't make them safer - guns killed them.

Oh, I know, "guns don't kill people, people kill people".

People with guns killed people.

The philosophy of Ecology of Joy has three parts:

1. Motivation (what motivates people - joy and fear).
2. Linkage (how people link between themselves - heterarchical and hierarchical).
3. Transformation (how media and technology transform people and culture).
   

Guns are a technology. Guns, by their very presence (even when not being used) transform motivation to fear and interpersonal linkage to hierarchical. They are an eighteenth century technology in the twenty-first century. Guns bring negative value to an Ecology of Joy world.

NOTE: I am not advocating control of guns by government - that would also be hierarchical.

I am advocating control of guns by individual choice. Choose not to have a gun.

Cultural Transformation: Television

TV's Fuzzy Future: Left to Their Own Devices, Viewers Are Cutting the Cord - washingtonpost.com

Cultural transformation, fostered and encouraged by the effects of media...

In this case, the Internet is changing television, which changed radio and movies, and which (Internet) is also changing newspapers.

And each of these media promulgate metaphor, which we all use to construct our own philosophy.

Ecojoy and War Words

White House Czar Calls for End to 'War on Drugs' - WSJ.com

By GARY FIELDS

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration's new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting "a war on drugs," a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use...

This illustrates the third leg of Ecojoy: cultural transformation fostered and encouraged by media. In this case, I the medium to which I refer is the spoken word.

When we use words of war to describe things, words like war on drugs, war on terror, war on poverty, attacking a problem, battle against cancer, and so on, we invoke a metaphor for hierarchical connections.

When war metaphor is used, the mindset is that change is not possible without great cost and peril. War metaphor predisposes us to entrenched thinking, categorizing people as opponents and the assumption that opponents will not change without great pain and loss.

As President Obama's head of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday, the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation's drug issues.

Drug addiction is a serious problem, but drugs can also be seen as a way for people to seek the same feelings as the natural endorphins released during the experience of joy. The purpose of the philosophy of joy is to show people that joy is a natural emotion and is a realistic, indeed optimal approach to success in life.

Ecojoy as a Trim Tab

I see a lot of people on Twitter looking to make money. I want to see the world change. The world is undergoing major transformation, and I hope to help turn things in the right direction.

The elevator of an airplane (the little wings in the back) are what point the nose of the plane up or down, adjusting the attitude. On the back of the elevator, the trim tab is an even smaller movable flap which adjusts where the elevator rests when you are not pushing or pulling on the controls. By simply adjusting the trim tab, you can control the attitude of the entire plane. I want ecojoy to be that trim tab, adjusting the attitude of our cultures.

John Chambers: transformation from Command and Control to Collaboration and Teamwork

In this interview, Cisco CEO talks about, among other things, the transformation from command and control (hierarchical linking|dominator linking) to collaboration and teamwork (heterarchical linking|partnership linking).

Twitter a Medium for Hierarchies of Actualization

Twitter, the social network site, is a medium for the creation of hierarchies of actualization, as discussed by Riane Eisler in many of her writings, like The Chalice and the Blade and The Partnership Organization.

an interview with Eisler

Leading With Love

How to Change the World with Ecojoy

Actually, the world is already changing due to the effects of Internet communications. But we can all move it along a little faster by using the 3 parts of ecojoy:

1. For motivation, find the joy in the things you do, and help others find the joy in the things they do.
2. Make the links with the people around you heterarchical - equal-to-equal, partnership. Interact with your children, your boss, your employees, your readers, even people who disagree with you with respect and appreciation.
3. Learn about and help to develop our understanding of cultural transformation, and share the knowledge with others.

Is Google Rewiring Our Brains?

Is Google Rewiring Our Brains?

This article supports the McLuhan and Ecojoy idea that media not only deliver content, but, independent of content, they "rewire your brain". The effect on culture is cultural transformation.

(Thanks to Tim O'Reilly)

The Importance of Now - Every Day is a Gift

My life partner - my wife is Danielle. In 2001, she had a hip replaced. I took time off work (thanks to the Family Medical Leave Act and my employer - the UW-Madison!) and nursed her in our living room. We watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center with our adult son and grandson. We wondered what the future would bring.

In October of that year, I lost my sister Nancy due to leukemia.

In November of '01, Danielle was diagnosed with breast cancer. In '02, she had two lumpectomies, a mastectomy and chemotherapy.

In '04, Danielle had another instance of breast cancer, another lumpectomy and another mastectomy.

Since then, she's had the other hip replaced.

Throughout these times, we've learned we had many true friends, that every day is a gift that we can't take for granted, and the importance of now. Don't put off problems for another day. You don't really know if you'll make it.

Dave

Ecojoy and Abortion

A clinic in Madison has announced plans to perform second-trimester abortions...

• Protesters Rally On Abortion Issue


• Surgery Center's Board Oks Abortion Clinic Plan

How does ecojoy help understand the issue?

Anti-abortion or pro-life thinking is influenced by binary or single-dimensional thinking - something is either back or white, right or wrong. Taking life is murder. The circumstances do not change the outcome.

Support of abortion, or pro-choice thinking is influenced by multi-dimensional thinking - things come in shades of gray, and the rightness or wrongness of a thought or act have multiple dimensions and values.

Po-life thinking is dominator thinking. With dominator thinking, the locus of control is external. Moral leaders determine the morality of abortion.

Pro-choice thinking is partnership thinking. With partnership thinking the locus of control is internal. Since the fetus is growing inside her, it is the pregnant woman's right to choose abortion based on her own life circumstances, her spouse, and information from her doctor and from moral advisers.

Pro-choice thinking involves heterarchical connections between the pregnant woman and her spouse, her doctor, and her moral advisers.

Pro-life thinking involves hierarchical connections between moral leaders, the community, her spouse , her doctor, her moral advisers and the pregnant woman.

Neither one of these ways of thinking is inherently right or wrong. They are consistent within their own way of thinking.

We are in the midst of profound cultural transformation from dominator thinking to partnership thinking. This transformation is being fostered and encouraged by the effects of communications media. The dominant medium of our time is the Internet.

Our culture is changing from a position that abortion is murder to a position that it is a woman's right to chose to end a pregnancy based on her particular circumstances.

We can help ease the negative effects of the cultural transformation by education. We can reassure dominator thinkers that individuals don't need dominator thinking to behave morally, and that partnership thinking is not chaos.

If pregnant women and mothers and their children have community support (safety, food, shelter, information), it is likely that the rate of abortion would be reduced.

The End of Alone

The End of Alone - The Boston Globe

At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant connectedness.


By Neil Swidey
February 8, 2009


Don't get me wrong. I love technology. It's magical how it makes the world closer, and more immediate. Take, for instance, the real-time way we learned about the plane that skidded off a Denver runway and burst into flames in December. One of the passengers on Continental Flight 1404 used Twitter to share everything from his initial profanity- and typo-laced reaction to making it out of the fiery jet ("Holy [bleeping bleep] I wasbjust in a plane crash!") to his lament that the airline wasn't providing drinks to the survivors who'd been penned into the airport lounge ("You have your wits scared out of you, drag your butt out of a flaming ball of wreckage and you can't even get a vodka-tonic.")
(more at link above)

This is an example of how technology is fostering and encouraging cultural transformation. The concept of alone - like a single person out on the Oregon Trail back in the 1800s - the idea itself of alone - is changing in light of the fact of handheld electronic devices and the Internet. Even if the battery goes dead and you really cut-off from communication with the outside world, your concept of alone has been forever changed.

Reason or faith? Darwin expert reflects

Darwin's birthday is coming up on February 12. This just came to me in Wisconsin Week: Reason or faith? Darwin expert reflects
I first became of Professor Numbers was when my daughter and his daughter were childhood friends. I really value living in a community where there is such stimulating thought and discussion.

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

from Dr. Michael Wesch:

presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.
more info: Digital Ethnography at Kansas State University

A Change to Ecology of Joy

I had an insight this morning about the Ecology of Joy web page. I changed the third point from Media and Technology to Cultural Transformation.

Media and Technology foster and encourage the transformation, but transformation is the outcome.

Ecojoy and Objectivism

The current economic crisis is due in part to a failure of the philosophy of Objectivism to accurately reflect the world.

Alan Greenspan, strongly influenced by Objectivism, now concedes his error on regulation

Ecojoy recognizes we are all linked together. Our individual success has little effect in isolation, but a community working together in harmony benefits everyone.

The Prison Ministry Project

For some years, the phrase law and order has been used as a keyword to denote an emphasis on fear and to frame political discussion in dominator thinking. There is binary thinking that people can be divided into good and evil, or honest citizens and criminals. From a partnership analysis, people break laws when they believe the risk of consequences is low, or when they believe they have no other viable alternatives.

Rev. Jerry Hancock started The Prison Ministry Project at the First Congregational United Church of Christ to help prison inmates gain insight and knowledge that can help them transform themselves, and can help victims come to terms with their losses.

The Rise of Open-Source Politics

This is from way back in 2005.

The Rise of Open-Source Politics | | AlterNet

Thanks to web-savvy agitators, insiderism and elitism are under heavy attack. The era of top-down politics is over.

Putting this in Ecojoy framing, the medium of the Internet (the web) is fostering and encouraging a change in politics from hierarchical linking to heterarchical linking.

Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids' Suicide Risk : NPR

Study: Tolerance Can Lower Gay Kids' Suicide Risk : NPR

"All Things Considered, December 29, 2008 · Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens and young adults have one of the highest rates of suicide attempts — and some other health and mental health problems, including substance abuse. A new study suggests that parental acceptance, and even neutrality, with regard to a child's sexual orientation could have a big impact in reducing this rate.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found that the gay, lesbian and bisexual young adults and teens at the highest risk of attempting suicide and having some other health problems are ones who reported a high level of rejection by their families as a result of their sexual orientation."

Family Acceptance Center at San Francisco State University