Posted 19:12 by Mark Federman permanent link


The Village Voice features an article by Richard Goldstein, that describes the new genre on television, the hyper-reality, or Shock and Awe Show. It is a worthwhile read in that it identifies many of the McLuhan-type effects now playing in the televised war coverage.

The Pentagon's current strategy in allowing "in-bedded" reporters is an interesting risk. Certainly, the war planners do not want a repeat of Vietnam, during which the reality of the horrors of war, beamed directly into the living rooms of America nightly, fueled the Anti-War Movement of the 1960s. Neither do they want the cynicism of the 1991 Gulf War coverage, that later became known as "the videogame war," and resulted in the move, Wag the Dog. Here, we are retrieving grainy, shaky television. The images are those reminiscent of 1960s television via aerial (anyone remember "bunny ears?"), the time when television was a far "cooler," more engaging medium.

There are two problems with this approach. First, what we are seeing are cool images, embedded within a hot medium. It is questionable whether the relative coolness of the videophone-transmitted images will cool down the hot medium of today's television, or whether the heat of CNN-style, hypnotic repetition of short clips will counter the cool green view through the night vision goggles.

Second, at the beginning of the war, advertisers were reluctant to run their commercials along side coverage of bombing, mayhem, destruction and death. Regular programming was pre-empted in favour of around-the-clock, breathless commentary of what was expected to be a quick victory. (After all, haven't we been conditioned by television to expect a resolution to most dramas in one-hour time slots?) However, financial necessity dictates that advertisements return and so do regular programs. Should the war continue for several weeks, or even months, "Live... from Baghdad... it's Saturday Night!" will become just another destination for channel-surfing coach potatoes. The condition of war will become normal, and worse for the White House, ignorable.

Television is not a friendly medium to the dogs of war, and neither to their masters. Thank heaven for television.
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Posted 15:45 by Mark Federman permanent link


At the recent PC Forum, Tim Berners-Lee spoke on the semantic web. Some details of a subsequent conversation were captured and recorded on this wiki page. "TBL" made this observation:

" there are people on both sides. people worried of the web being owned by one content channel. the world needs little cults. and it needs some global understanding. we need everything in between. the world is a big fractal mass. people are their own fractal mass. people want small and big worlds, to participate in both. there will be all sorts of data systems, some big vocabularies and global formats, and some middle scale formats but still large in scope, and lots of small scale things. and the web will support that. we need some global standards. but if it becomes all global, that would be awful."

He's right, of course. One size does not fit all in all circumstances. This resonated with me, as my class in "Applied McLuhanistics" explored the topic of Emergent Democracy this past week. Based on the "happening" organized by Joichi Ito, and the resultant paper on Emergent Democracy, we looked at the proposed evolution of democratic processes based on increased engagement of individuals: It is the beginning of a proposal of something that is not quite direct democracy, but not entirely our current representational democracy either.

The run-up to the current war in Iraq made it eminently clear that events in far off places affect all of us, whether the far off place is Baghdad, Washington, London, Paris, New York or Fredericton, New Brunswick. It is clear that global geo-politics, and the unique, but bizarre, machinations that are the United Nations are not adequate to reflect the views, and obtain the guidance from, the people these bodies are purported to represent. Representative government reverses into non-respresentative government, and, of necessity, must evolve into a form that more accurately reflects the realities of... not global village, not even global theatre (as McLuhan noted with the advent of communications satellites), but global theatre of the absurd.
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Posted 15:15 by Mark Federman permanent link


In the "put your money where your mouth is" department, I recently gave the Opening Keynote Speech at the Information Highways 2003 Conference in Toronto. In that talk, I used McLuhan thinking tools to derive the obsolescence of proprietary intellectual property from an analysis of the evolution of Knowledge Management. After the keynote, one person asked me if I "proprietarily" protect my own work. A good question!

I recently became aware of an initiative, whose board of directors includes Lawrence Lessig, called Creative Commons. The Creative Commons is an extension of copyright that allows authors, musicians and other creative content types to tailor the precise rights they wish to grant relative to their works. As such, this blog (and soon the entire McLuhan Program website) will be licensed under a Creative Commons "by-nc-sa" license, that is, Attribution (if you use our stuff, you have to give us credit), NonCommercial (if you want to make money from our stuff, you have to obtain additional permission), ShareAlike (if you use our stuff, your derivative work must be similarly licensed - share and share alike, or as I mentioned in my talk, "That which has been achieved by sharing should, in turn, be shared with the rest of the community."
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Posted 10:28 by Mark Federman permanent link


Canadians attending the hockey game at the Corel Centre in Ottawa recently cheered the U.S. national anthem, apparently to show their support for that great nation. As I listened to one of the key phrases in the anthem, I was suddenly struck with the cultural and historical ground that necessitated the invasion of Iraq, and the American administration's overwhelming desire to depose Saddam Hussein. What was the phrase?

"And the rockets' red glare, and bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there."

Juxtaposed with the stark images that are invading our living rooms via the embedded television reporters, this phrase seems to explain the ground simply and clearly.
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Posted 01:54 by Mark Federman permanent link


Those who missed Stelarc last weekend have another opportunity to hear him. Friday, March 28, from 3 to 5 p.m., Stelarc will be presenting "Zombies and Cyborgs; Extra Ear, Exoskeletons and Prosthetic Head" at University of Toronto's Victoria College, Northrope Frye Hall, room 003, 75 Queen's Park Crescent.
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Posted 01:49 by Mark Federman permanent link


Rumour has it that the Discovery Channel Canada segment on DECONcert will be shown Wednesday, March 26 at 7 and 11 p.m., and Thursday, March 27 at 9 a.m. and noon.
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Posted 23:59 by Mark Federman permanent link


If anyone who took video of Friday's DECONversation between Stelarc and Steve Mann would be willing to share their footage with the Program, we would greatly appreciate it!
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Posted 18:06 by Mark Federman permanent link


As an anti-environment to Western news about the war in Iraq, here is a weblog called Where is Raed ? that sounds like it is written by one of the "ordinary Iraqis" to whom democracy will be delivered by bombshell. His entry from March 16 reads, in small part, "the question that has been bugging for days now: how could “support democracy in Iraq” become to mean “bomb the hell out of Iraq”? why did it end up that democracy won’t happen unless we go thru war? Nobody minded an un-democratic Iraq for a very long time, now people have decided to bomb us to democracy? Well, thank you! how thoughtful."

From yesterday (Sunday, March 23): " Today’s (and last night’s) shock attacks didn’t come from airplanes but rather from the airwaves. The images Al-jazeera is broadcasting are beyond any description. First was the attack on (Ansar el Islam) camp in the north of Iraq. Then the images of civilian casualties in Basra city. What was most disturbing are the images from the hospitals. They are simply not prepared to deal with these things. People were lying on the floor with bandages and blood all over. If this is what “urban warefare” is going to look like we’re in for disaster. And just now the images of US/UK prisoners and dead, we saw these on Iraqi TV earlier. This war is starting to show its ugly ugly face to the world.
The media wars have also started, Al-jazeera accusing the pentagon of not showing how horrific this war is turning out to be and Rumsfeld saying that it is regrettable that some TV stations have shown the images."

By definition, "objective reporting" objectifies that which is reported. It is, as one of our researchers here at the Program observed last week, "institutionalized gossip," or a new faith for which the reporters are the new clergy. We are implicitly asked to believe the reporter and the reportage. We need only choose our denomination: the Church of Larry the King, the Ecumenical A-CBC-embly, or the Al-Jazeerah Mosque. Or, voices close to what will undoubtedly be the fires of Hell, like Salam.
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Posted 16:47 by Mark Federman permanent link


Corporate email is more revealing than you might imagine. An article in Nature discusses recent research that was done at Hewlett-Packard Labs in which the headers - to and from information - from email logs were used to derive de facto communities of practice within the large organization. People who collaborate on a given project or endeavour tend to communicate frequently. Their email records tend to reflect this. By developing algorithms to analyze the "betweeness" graphs derived from the to/from information, H-P researchers were able to distinguish both organizational departments, project teams and communities of practice automatically, with a high degree of accuracy. Further, the research showed that the natural leaders of each team, cluster or community tended to be mapped towards the "centre" of the community. This provides a natural way to detect the key members of each group. The detailed research paper is available in PDF format here.

We know that instantaneous communication as exemplified by email, instant messaging and SMS have reversed jobs into roles. The problem for corporate managers is that our companies are still organized along the industrial age model of hierarchies and organizational charts. Often, especially when multi-disciplinary teams or cross-departmental projects are formed, it is difficult to objectively ferret out the roles, or even determine the extent of the ad hoc teams. Rather than relying on explicit reporting structures, these techniques can quickly reveal both the natural dynamic of modern organizations, and those who are most valuable to collaboration and conversations that power the enterprise.
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Posted 01:43 by Mark Federman permanent link


Those who attended Cyborg Echoes DECONcert - "Music in the Key of EEG" made history. They participated in the world's first mass collective intelligence regenerative music concert. In fact, the event was far more popular than we had anticipated, with the line-up to get in going around the block. Because no one had ever attempted connecting over 50 people simultaneously in this way before, no one knew quite what to expect. We learned much about the process during the first set. For the subsequent sets, each group of eight were allowed to hear "their" sound in a manner analogous to each section of a conventional orchestra tuning. Then, since the best sound is produced when the brain is in deep relaxation - an "alpha state" - I took the group through a deep meditative relaxation exercise to begin the concert. The results were amazing! Photos from Saturday's DECONcert are posted below. We'll be posting a link to the audio soon.

Update! We now have audio clips from the DECONcert, all in MP3 format. James Fung's introduction, that describes what is about to happen, is posted here. [1.9 MB] By the way, the "rhythm section" to which James refers are people connected to EKG (heart) sensors. The beginning of the DECONcert, during which the brainwaves come into tune, is posted here. [2.8 MB] The ending of the DECONcert is here. [1.3 MB]

James Fung, the primary researcher and developer of "Music in the Key of EEG"...		...uses his own brain in his experimentation. You're a brave man, James Fung!		James Fung is joined in the development effort by Cyborg-DJ James Meier.
The DECONcert Hall. Hanging below the glass ceiling are the Flexcomp EEG concentrators, generously supplied by one of our sponsors, Thought Technologies of Montréal.		Stewart Morgan prepares to connect a live test subject just hours before the performance.		Another sell-out crowd for Cyborg Echoes. This is the first of three sets for Music in the Key of EEG.
To minimize the "noise" caused by muscle signals, the electrodes are connected to each ear...		...and the back of the head to pick up signals from the brain's occipital lobe.		It seems our publicity reached beyond the ends of the earth!
James Fung introduces the technology and describes what is about to happen...		while volunteer Jenn Marchand assists with the connections.		The cleanest signals, and thus the purest sounds....
...occur when the brain is in an "alpha state."		This means that everyone should be relaxed, in an almost meditative state.		The music is created by averaging the signals from the 8 members of a group. Each of the six groups has a unique sound.
James describes his research in depth. Note the upper right image in the screen behind James. It is the "video feed" from Steve Mann's eyetap.		James and Steve being interviewed...		...by a crew from Discovery Channel Canada. For more pictures, click here. The pictures from Cyborg Echoes were taken with a Sony Ericsson t68i with the Communicam, supplied by our sponsor, Rogers AT&T Wireless.

Posted 22:31 by Mark Federman permanent link


Cyborg Echoes was an outstanding success! Here are some photos from the event.

A mannequin wearing a sousveillance wearcam welcomes guests to Deconism Gallery.		McLuhan Program Chief Strategist, Mark Federman, introduces the evening...		...to a standing-room-only crowd. Cyborg Echoes DECONversation is a sell-out event!
Mark describes Steve Mann's "unusual" behaviour, apparently talking to himself...		...when, in fact, he is giving the keynote speech to the Ad Astra Sci-Fi convention as a vicarious soliloquy via his eyetap.		McLuhan Program Director, Derrick de Kerckhove, tells of his early encounters with cyborg artists Steve Mann and Stelarc.
Stelarc maintains that the body is obsolete. "The body has been augmented, invaded, and now becomes a host...		...not only for technology, but also for remote agents. As the internet provides extensive, interactive ways...		...of displaying, linking and retrieving the body information and images, it may now allow unexpected ways...
...of accessing...		...interfacing...		...and uploading...
...the body itself."		With all the bodies in the room, uploading some to a virtual existence may not be such a bad idea at times.		During the evening, Stelarc described cyber-sex via remote stimulation over the internet. No wonder he has so many fans!
				For additional pictures from Cyborg Echoes DECONversation, click here.
Here Stelarc shares animated and live movies of his work.		Steve Mann maintains the importance of "humanistic intelligence," keeping technology under personal control, and using technology to the individual's advantage.		The pictures from Cyborg Echoes were taken with a Sony Ericsson t68i with the Communicam, supplied by our sponsor, Rogers AT&T Wireless.

Posted 09:27 by Mark Federman permanent link


We all receive emails that are supposedly from a real person, that supposedly are true expressions of personal reactions to trying circumstances. I received an email this morning that I know to be true, since I am a personal friend of the teacher involved. The email contained a prayer, written by one of the teacher's Arabic-American students, in response to our troubled, and dangerous times:

"As we all know on March 17th the President of the United States addressed the nation. One of my students 12 year old Hussain AleAziz felt compelled to put his thoughts one paper. This has been passed around to many of his friends, his family and has made it all the way to Iran where his father is taking care of Hussain's grandmother who is very ill. This prayer has moved the staff and students at my school and I wanted to share it with all of you. He's been contacted by The Seattle Times and The Northwest Progress which is the paper for Catholics in Western Washington. It would be very cool if it could get on the news though I know that is probably impossible. I hope you all are as moved as those that have already seen this have been.

Peace to all, Karen

The Prayer of A Thousand

Almighty Creator, We arise today in your arms, knowing that we are safe and can trust in you. You give us the strength and the power to overcome our fears and you give us the sympathy that we feel in our hearts for those in the deserts of Iraq. We not only bleed for our soldiers and their families, but for the innocent civilians and those whose lives will be ended during this time of destruction and hate that we are passing through. I know that we are scared and don’t know what decisions will be made. We do know that God is with us. He will stick in our hearts as he will stick in the hearts of the people of Iraq. And for those whose paths are unclear and faded , we will pray for them and we will ask God to fill their hearts. And for our soldiers, we leave the borders of our land in their hearts and souls, comforting them as they wonder what’s next. And we will comfort their families as they wave good-bye to their love ones, hoping that they come back alive. What will the outcome of the war be? Only God knows, and only God knows what will happen to us. Only God knows what will happen to our family and friends. Only God knows if we will wake up tomorrow or if we will overcome our greatest fears. Only God knows if we will live our lives in fear, or if we will realize our purpose on earth- to serve God. Our purpose is not to sin and spill the blood of countless innocent people. It is to follow God’s will and do what he wishes. We hear these terrorists say that they are doing what they do for God. But in reality, they are resisting what they are supposed to do for God. We even hear fellow citizens of the United States say that people are evil because they are Arab and people are made fun of because of this. We have to understand that those people that call God Allah are talking about the same God as us. Lord, forgive us for any criticism we may have used against others. We listen to this prayer in deep consideration. What are we fighting for? Who are we fighting for? Is the outcome of the killing really worth the cause. Let us pray for world peace and that all people of all races will come together and work to make a better environment for us and our children to come, Amen."
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Posted 09:06 by Mark Federman permanent link


Regular readers may have noticed that there hasn't been much new to read here lately. We have been working 'round the clock to prepare for tonight's Cyborg Echoes.

Here's what things looked like during preparations down at the Deconism Gallery, 330 Dundas Street West, right across from the Art Gallery of Ontario. Pictures are thanks to Rogers AT&T Wireless, one of our major sponsors for the event (many thanks Rob, Heather and Diane!), and their Sony Ericsson t68i camera-phone.

Ariel, up in the air, as usual!

Stewart, showing his best side via one of the "Building as Blogcams."

Stewart and Gianluca dressing a mannikin with an early wearcomp rig.

The two James-es, hacking the system for "Music in the Key of EEG."
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Posted 12:39 by Mark Federman permanent link


Ontario's finance minister, Janet Ecker, has announced that she will deliver the provincial budget directly to television, as opposed to "rising in the House," as parliamentary tradition dictates. Opposition members decry the move, saying that it shows a disrespect for parliament, procedure and protocol. Cynics say that it is an elaborate "photo op," the first volley of the upcoming provincial election. While both comments are fair, they ignore one important effect: Parliament is, and has been for many years, obsolete.

In our representative democracy, the populace carefully weigh the issues at election time, and vote for the candidate of the party who they believe reflects their desires and wishes for good governance. Or so goes the theory. In reality, the populace responds to carefully crafted and managed mass-media barrages, each using well-researched behavioural modification and motivation techniques. If a political party wants to campaign on a platform of more control, surveillance and stiffer penalties, they will create the illusion of a rise of crime and chaos (despite what reality may dictate.) Draconian measures in the public schools? Create an education "crisis" and focus extensively on the shortcomings in sound-bytes.Want to re-make the image of a party whose popularity is on the wane? Take the opinion temperature of the people and create televised events that feed their desires.

Televised proceedings in the House show the rough-and-tumble action of Question Period. Untelevised parliamentary debates, on the other hand, tend to be a more soporific affair: Less a debate - and certainly devoid of oratory - and more long-winded speeches falling on few deaf ears.

Television has the unique ability to make the complex appear simple, and the simple things appear complex. It has the ability to manipulate opinion and views by its very nature, and our learned response to it. Political campaigns are won and lost by television, and to a lesser extent, by other mass-media as well. Once elected, the government of the day can do pretty much what it wants, confident that by the time the next election rolls around, the cameras will record the new, kinder, genter, and eminently more popular view. Past sins that have occurred in the House will, presumably, be erased by the raster scan of the tube. Parliament is obsolesced, and moved to the living rooms; what emanates from the campaigning politicians, more often than not, fertilizes the couch potatoes.

By presenting her budget "direct to video," without a "cinematic release" (in the big-screen of the House) Minister Ecker is acknowledging that governments are given their mandate by virtue of their mass-media appeal: It is government of the tube, by the tube and for the tube.
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Posted 20:13 by Mark Federman permanent link


Stelarc is coming to Toronto to exhibit his Prosthetic Head that will open at Interaccess Gallery. As I reported earlier, Deconism Gallery and the McLuhan Program will bring Stelarc and local cyborg (actually, post-cyborg) Steve Mann together as part of our two day exploration, called Cyborg Echoes: Friday, March 21 is the DECONversation between Mann and Stelarc; Saturday, March 22 is the DECONcert: Music in the Key of EEG. Both are unique opportunities, and not to be missed! But while we're waiting for the Head to arrive, you can have a dialogue with stelarcbot that underlies the Head.

Update Now that publicity about Cyborg Echoes is hitting the major media, advance ticket sales are accelerating. Don't miss out! Tickets are available at Flavour Hall (416-839-9943) or at the McLuhan Program (416-978-7026).
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Posted 10:55 by Mark Federman permanent link


Our friend David Weinberger brings to our attention a comment made by a Dutch businessman, concerning the news treatment of the runup to war. "His example was CNN's official title for their coverage: "Showdown: Iraq." "It's as if they can't wait for it," he said. Good point. A showdown has to have an outcome in which someone wins and someone loses. America would never "backdown" from a showdown. But this is a showdown only because we have insisted that it be one. CNN calling it a "show down" ain't journalism.What does CNN think it is, a blog?"

Well, in some ways it is a blog - video links to a bunch of different items, with lots of commentary and polarized opinion. But more telling is the probe of CNN's retrieval of the wild, wild, west in their use of the word "showdown," that, for the benefit of our non-North-American readers, refers to the stereotypical gunfight that occurred in many cinematic Westerns. To the Prez from Texas, the world is clearly filled with either black hats - the bad guys - or white hats - Sheriff Bush and his deputies. They is aimin' ta clean up this here town (the Middle East), and CNN turns what will likely be tragic news into the show (as in entertainment) of the newfangled Western, a new cinematic genre called the MidEastern.

Now that's entertainment!
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Posted 21:07 by Mark Federman permanent link


I was in conversation with Kevin Brooks, a professor in Fargo, North Dakota (brrrrr!) about a previous post on literacy, orality and teaching. I mentioned to Kevin that "if here is one primary objective of university training, it is to shake entering students' preconceived notions to the core, and disrupt the comfort they have taken in their assumed command of all they know. Only then can true learning occur." Kevin concurred, lamenting, "If only the assessment folks agreed with us that shaking students to the core was both valuable and measurable."

If only, indeed! Unfortunately shaking is only quantifiable by indirect means, such as observing how well mixed the paint is in the can once it is opened. But students are not paint, the aim of education should not be homogeneity and shaking alone is sometimes insufficient. James Bond may like his martini "shaken, not stirred," but we should strive to make our students both shaken AND stirred. But, in most cases throughout our education system, banality and mediocrity rules the day, driven by an obsession with finding answers, and producing experts - the person with all the right answers and few, if any, of the right questions.
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Posted 16:43 by Mark Federman permanent link


Doc Searls and David Weinberger have penned a little essay called, World of Ends. It attempts to explain to those who have thought little about "so what is this Internet thang anyway and how can we make money from it" that such a view is simply missing the point. As I've described many times, the Internet is akin to McLuhan's "acoustic space, in which the centre is everywhere and the boundaries are nowhere ... a space of simultaneous relationships." Searls and Weinberger say it somewhat differently, but sketch the same essential argument: Value is added onto the Internet, not into the Internet. (Not a bad meme if I do say so myself!) S & W state it this way: "Adding value to the Internet lowers its value." By this they mean that value is added to the ends of the Internet, by... well... by just about anyone. And that is the simple beauty and strength of the Internet. The understanding of that simple reality is key to the Internet's continued ability to create the requisite infrastructure for us all to benefit - including real businesses that have increased their ability to do business and make money. (Are you listening, RIAA, MPAA and Congress?)

But all that (and much else!) is part of the theme of the keynote I'm doing at the Information Highways Conference on March 25 in Toronto.

Searls's and Weinberger's piece is a nice start, but only that. But, heck, most of our legislators and business leaders aren't even there. They could do a lot worse than begin at The World of Ends.
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Posted 15:29 by Mark Federman permanent link


Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harpers magazine, gave the annual Keith Davey lecture at University of Toronto's Victoria University Thursday. The title of his lecture, a topic not unfamiliar to regular readers of this blog, was "The American Rome." Lapham described the United States today as "the constituency of the frightened rich," an oligarchy that is eager to preserve its affluent lifestyle at any cost. The ruling class is, in Lapham's words, "disinclined to trust a new hair dresser or a new idea," representative of those who own the news media, staff the White House, and pay for elections. The fear that pervades America today results in more laws limiting the freedom of individuals, and fewer laws that restrict the rights of property. Lapham points to the recent Bush tax proposals as being exemplary of this legislative trend. Additionally, he referenced the easing of environmental laws, and legislation that reinforces media companies' control over "their" property, (whether or not it was theirs to begin with.)

The Justice Department, under hymn-writing John Ashcroft (apparently Ashcroft leads a daily prayer service that features bible readings and the singing of hymns of his own creation) is the most explicit and egregious manifestation of this fear: Legislation like the anti-democratic USA PATRIOT Act (that rammed through Congress without even the facade of review) the latest move to strengthen that act, and the creation of the Orwellian Homeland Security Department all indicate one simple, but frightening truth: "Government that is unable to erect a secure perimeter around the life of a free society sees to it that the society becomes less free." Police actions increasingly violate the U.S. Constitution, with the restrictions on unlawful search and seizure and arbitrary arrest being ignored. As for oversight via the Freedom of Information Act, Attorney General Ashcroft says, "FOIA requests should be denied out of hand. Let 'em sue!"

Even scientific journals in the United States - presumably the last bastion of reason - are caught up in the current wave of terror perpetrated by the White House: A consortium of five respected journals, including Nature and the New England Journal of Medicine, have apparently agreed to "censor any scientific articles that may compromise national security."

Lapham points to a Pentagon document from 1991, authored by then Defense Secretary Dick Chaney and former Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell (are those names familiar to anyone?) that describes the American "Imperial Doctrine." The major elements of that Doctrine, first articulated in 1991, remember, are:

Posted 23:33 by Mark Federman permanent link


MoveOn.org is preparing an emergency petition for the United Nations Security Council that will be presented on Thursday, March 6. The petition is meant to tell the delegates to the Security Council that those who have signed are not in favour of a pre-emptive war to effect disarmament in Iraq. If you agree with this position, sign the petition.
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Posted 18:40 by Mark Federman permanent link


Cyborg Echoes: Collective Consciousness Beyond the Post-Cyborg Era is coming in March at the Deconism Gallery. Be part of cyborg history as the Deconism Gallery in Toronto hosts the world's first collective brainwave musical concert. Following the opening of Stelarc's "The Prosthetic Head" at Interaccess Gallery, Stelarc and Steve Mann join in a dialogue on Friday, March 21, 2003 at 8 p.m. "Robotic Body vs Cyborg Mind: A Live Probe Into the Continuum of Existentiality" will probe the future of awareness, the nature of consciousness reacting to technological extensions and why two otherwise normal human beings would so the weird and wonderful things these two do!

Then, on Saturday, March 22, 2003 at 8 p.m. "DECONcert: Music in the Key of EEG," and "DECONcert Hertz: Wearable Brainwaves" DECONcert presents the world's first regenerative soundscapes in which audience members actively (and unconsciously) choreograph a collective cyborg consciousness by contributing their own brainwave patterns. The resulting atmosphere is an open-ended and participatory experience incorporating leading-edge EEG (brainwave) technology. And since you've been to the concert, you have to get the T-shirt. In DECONcert, the audience is the band so the concertgoer walks away with a print of his or her own band width, in Hertz, on an EEG shirt.

Space is limited so get your tickets early! Full information is available here.
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Posted 14:27 by Mark Federman permanent link


Orality vs. Literacy is a capital-B Biggie for those of the Toronto School of Communications persuasion. This contribution from the Scottish Sunday Herald describes the current issue: Students using SMS-style shorthand (what my kids sometimes call "l33t sp33k") for their school essays.

Judith Gillespie, development manager at the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said "There must be rigorous efforts from all quarters of the education system to stamp out the use of texting as a form of written language so far as English study is concerned."

However, teachers, literate to a fault, fail to recognize that it is not only the direct use of "texting" on SMS-enabled cellphones that is causing a change. McLuhan tells us that the message of instantaneous, multiway communications is the reversal of our literate culture back to an oral culture. This means that our thinking - collectively and individually - is being restructured. The effects of this will touch not only essay writing, but also science, philosophy, politics and pedagogy in general.

Teachers who simply vote for a ban on this sort of expression are missing an opportunity to explore the total effects of orality, and to point out to students the difference between the spoken and written words: Spoken language doesn't necessarily come from our mouths and written language doesn't necessarily come from our fingers. But, of course, once a teacher understands that there are profound effects of this reversal, they will also realize that the nature of teaching itself must also change; that their profession, as they have known it, is in obsolescence.

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Posted 00:41 by Mark Federman permanent link


Some reversals are best left unreversed. The Philippine Star reports that Catholics will not be allowed to confess via SMS texting. Apparently in the Phillipines, many Catholic youth are sending their confessions via electronic technology. A recent ruling by Catholic Biships Conference of the Philippines secretary general Hernando Coronel, "confessions sent via text messaging or other means of modern communication, like e-mail and fax machines, are "unacceptable." I suppose that the "next best thing to being there," isn't.

Unlike the Catholics, Jews seem to be more in tune with modern technologies.

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