I sowed together the three parts from YouTube on Omnisio so you can see the whole thing seamlessly:

http://omnisio.com/mediacology/publishing-open-content

I remember reading a while back that though it is true that spider plants remove formaldehyde from the air, they actually caused materials to outgass more.

Don't forget punk.

One of my favorite books is The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: (From A to B and Back Again). I think he was a zen master, despite his snarky personae (all show, realy). Some of the best quotes are:

"The camera turns [people] on and off." (p. 80)

"Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there. I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television— you don’t feel anything." (p.91)

"At the end of my time, when I die, I don't want to leave any leftovers. And I don't want to be a leftover. I was watching TV this week and I saw a lady go into a ray machine and disappear. That was wonderful, because matter is energy and she just disappeared. That could be a really American invention, the best American Invention— to be able to disappear. I mean, that way they couldn't say you died, they couldn’t say you were murdered, they couldn’t say you committed suicide over somebody." (P.113)

"Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thought into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think of about one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium." (p.143)

"Before media there used to be a physical limit of how much space one person could take up by themselves. People, I think, are the only things that know how to take up more space than the space they're actually in, because with media you can sit back and still let yourself fill up space on records, in the movies, most exclusively on the telephone and the least exclusively on television." (p.146)

"You should have contact with your closest friends through the most intimate of and exclusive of all media— the telephone." (p.147)

"I always bring everything back to chemicals, because I really think everything starts and finishes with chemicals." (p.?)

Ideas are messy and replicate badly. Just look at the Ten Commandments. This should be history's most prominent meme, yet few know, understand or agree with any of them. Language and ideas do not exist outside of a context (such as education, mental health, family, conditioning, etc.) or environment. I think the meme of memes is intriguing, but wrong. A teme also sounds interesting, but I think we as humans are still the servomechanism. We have choice.

Isn't "Anglo" European, as in British?

I was going to say, "try to guess the age of the most common p2p downloader." Now I'm not sure.

My main objection to the segment is the recycled and uncritical use of the term "developing world." African critics have long contended that this term is Eurecentric because it implies that they (non-Europeanized societies) are primitive versions of the central model of civilization. Are Nigerians supposed to develop into clones of us? Should Lagos become the "London of the future?" It's an absurd proposition because London is a wealthy city predicated on the poverty that is distributed locally and across the globe. When Nigerians in the documentary hope that Lagos will become the next London or New York, they have internalized this Eurocentric view. But it's not surprising given the role that global media corporations play in defining the ideals of the world. Who can fault them for not wanting the privileges afforded the global elites?

I think it's better to think of places like Lagos and Mexico City as interconnected nodes. The reality may be that Lagos is really a microcosm of the world as a result of capitalist "evolution." I qualify the term "evolution" because we often think that to evolve means to build better and more efficient solutions, but that is not always the case. For example, we may think of Western civilization as "evolved," but it is in fact contrived. It is the result of many deliberate and planned decisions mixed with a bit of accident and synchronicity. Throughout history human agents have made conscious decisions about how to shape or respond to their environment. Some are more successful than others. The thing about "our" civilization, that is, the one that primarily inhabits the technological bubble, is that in the end we may not be so wise. That all depends on us, of course. This is why it is better not to think of Lagos as "their" reality. We are all interconnected.

I believe the documentarians intentions were good; they wanted to showcase a situation outside many of our normal reality, but that's the problem of creating something as difference, i.e. they are different because they are not us. Frankly, I wish Current had actually asked local filmmakers to document their own city. Why do we need a white guide to interpret the place when a local one would be a lot more insightful and also supportive of the local economy? I doubt a local filmmaker would think of their environment as "fantastic" (in the fantasy sense) or bizarre. Black magic is not bizarre, and is probably mislabeled in this segment since the magic they speak of is designed to actually pacify bad people through nonviolent means. Maybe a Nigerian should come to London or San Francisco and make a report of the "black magic" that is seen every 10 minutes on television, something we call advertising.

Don't take my word on this as gospel, but I live in Rome (my Italian is not so good) and I asked my Italian wife about this and she told me that the proposal failed and that it was very unpopular. It has been returned to be re-written, but she says don't worry because the current government is about to "fall down," meaning that it will fail (as in the collapse of the ruling coalition) very soon in Italian fashion. So don't expect a vote for now.

Damn, doesn't work in Europe!

I agree that this is a beautiful thing, but I'd like to play devil's advocate for a second, only because I'm trying to process these new concepts. Isn't it the initial strength of the record industry's marketing that elevated Radiohead to the position that enables them to do this? Would "Creep" ever have ended up on MTV if they wre just an obscure Internet band? It's clear that unless you sell 750,000 units, your band is a loss to a major label record company (and to you because you pay them back for all the money they fronted for your coke expenditures), so major labels have to do the one thing that indies cannot: exposure. And for a band like Radiohead, it has been on a global scale.

I know, I know the long tail changes this dynamic and bands will organically become famous, but bands do benefit from the marketing muscle the labels have. Personally the trade off isn't worth it (that is selling your soul to corporate record companies), but I just wanted to state the situation is not black and white. I don't know if the swarm will find the next Radiohead.

It looks like the newspaper ads from when I was a kid in LA. I used to cut them out and tape them to cardboard for my GI Joe's record collection (I'm not kidding!).

Ciao! I'm the guy who made the grammatical error and well, you know, I think language needs to breath. The point is to communicate and understand each other. Going from alternative hippie school to journalism, I'm used to being criticized by well-meaning copy editors. Like the adage, the guy who holds a hammer only see nails. I feel badly, really, for those who have to live in a world full of badly educated, bad spelling idiots like myself. Really. I'm not being snarky. I'm sure I made many more errors in this post, but I think I made my point.

I was happy when CBGBs closed because I was really tired of old punks (my peers) holding on to the past. But I am genuinely sad about this news. Hilly was about to cash in big time, so now he doesn't get to enjoy it. I hope the money can get passed on to all the people who never got paid while making CBGBs a corporate brand.