Why Media Logs Are Important

"Keeping a media-use log allows you to frame your media use in your own terms, to tell your own digital story."

If a historian were to try to rediscover you in 100 years, what sources would they use to investigate you? What would be the primary source documents they would use to understand your daily life? How would they investigate your digital footprint?

Every media company from whom we buy our digital services keeps records of our use. Our utility bills, our email records, which movies we rent from Netflix: these records form an intimate portrait of who we are and what we care about. If we look at our digital records as part of history in the making, the documents pertaining to our media consumption become primary sources in constructing our present understanding (the present process of encoding memory) of ourselves. By viewing our digital documents as primary sources that tell a story about us, basic documents take on new meaning. Receipts or phone bills: they are not just hapless pieces of paper, but actually meaningful texts that can help us reconstruct a narrative of ourselves.

(Incidentally, I experienced the importance of utility bills as more than just bills while living in Japan. I realized they, like every other piece of Japanese writing I encountered, were an opportunity for language learning. To understand my phone bill, I'd have to understand the characters in which it was written. Thus, living in a foreign language environment leads me to look at my utility bills through a new lens: not just a tool for paying a company, but also a textbook for my language learning. Though I still can't read a lot of my utility bills, enlisting this process in the future might help me to become a better reader of Japanese.)

However, any historian or biographer knows that another meaningful way to construct a portrait of any individual is through a close reading of his or her diary. A diary or journal provides a window into the events, thoughts, feelings, actions and reactions of someone's life. Moreover, they're encoded in the author's original language, framing one's life on one's own terms. Presumably the symbols and language contained in one's diary reflect meaningfully about how they see the world. Future discussions could center philosophically around whether or not diaries are truthful representations of their author's lives.

In the so-called "digital-age," there is a need for both media-literacy and critical reflection on our the use of our digital media. In this process, both types of data are important: the quantitative measurements and the records produced by media companies, as well as diaries, blogs, or journals that tell the story of our media use on our own terms.

Keeping a media-use log allows you to frame your media use in your own terms, to tell your own digital story. At the same time, we should hold ourselves accountable to the raw facts about our media use: the cost of our electricity or how many hours we log in front of the computer or TV every day. And our media company's records provide us a meaningful account of all this. We should have access to use these records to think critically about our media use, and we should take advantage of the access we have if we are serious about media literacy.

Moreover, it's important for us to share our information with each other. Currently, big media companies like Comcast or Google have a wealth of information about our habits and activities. That information is a source of power. If we want to gain collective independence from the few media companies that control most of the information flow, we should de-monopolize their hold on our personal information by making the records for ourselves.

Thus, daily digital storytelling through diaries, blogs or other social media have the ability to help us raise our awareness of our own media usage, and contribute to a field of information which can be a source of power. Increasingly, it's important we understand our digital footprint.

Marshall Mcluhan

"The medium is the message."

Stumbled across the work of Marshal Mcluhan last week and quickly became immersed in his ideas. Although controversial for his time, and politically incorrect in retrospect, many of his theories about the relationship between communication and culture have stood the test of time.

I've learned most about Mcluhan from the wikipedia article about him, and recommend this as a starting point for those interested in learning more about him. He's famous for the coining the phrases "The medium is the message" and "the global village." Much of Mcluhan's work is embodied in sounds bites or catch phrases which he coined.

The wikipedia article led me to the Canadia Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) digital archives on Mcluhan. Mcluhan became an iconic "philosopher of pop culture" in Canada during the 60's and 70's, often making TV and radio appearances. As demonstrated by his employment with the advertising industry later in his career, Mcluhan did not hesitate to exploit the media he criticized.

Through a youtube video search, I came across this debate between Mcluhan and author/activist Normal Mailer.



In the videos of Mcluhan, I'm struck by his rhetoric. With a background in literature and educated at Cambridge, his tone seems emblematic of academicians of his time, embued with all the authority of modernism, decisive and unwavering. The medium (i.e. 1960's TV and radio), as well as the way Mcluhan spoke, locate him in his particular generation of intellectuals. Since so many of his ideas have remained current while his rhetoric has lapsed, I would argue his rhetorical style has become iconic, imbued with a high degree of truth value/modality . The medium is old, the message remains salient.

I was delighted to find that a record had been produced in the late '60's of Mcluhan's quotes affected mixed with avante garde music concrete. Listen to one side of the record here:

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/oOoD88jKCJA/

Quotes from this era often appear remixed into drum and bass, a music which is itself both futuristic and familiar. I find it fascinating that Mcluhan's quotes had already gained such popular currency during the peak of his career.

Despite my affinity for Mcluhan, some of his language poses deep academic problems. For example, his use of the term "tribal man" may have been acceptable in the 1960's, but would probably be objectionable to anthropologists today. Furthermore, his dichotomy between the Orient and the West is blatant reductionism, and he can be identified clearly as an orientalist in this sense.

I'm particularly interested in his designation of the terms "hot" and "cool" media, cool media referring to media which fully engrosses one fully in a state of detached concentration. He says he takes the term from jazz and popular music, and relates it to the Hindu concept of non-attachment. Mcluhan's use of the term "cool" connects his ideas about African American music and culture, Oriental religion, and new media in ways that are both troubling and insightful. Note that in his interviews, the word "hip" is used to designate another meaning of cool, i.e. popular and progressive.

However, his theory and speculation about the future of media and technology have been proven correct. He anticipated an information culture facilitated by a global system of circuits, essentially the internet, as early as 1965. And his consultation with the advertising industry resulted in decades of effected communications strategies. Thus, Mcluhan has been dubbed a "soothsayer" and "founding father" by contemporary media and communications theorists. To honor his legacy is to acknowledge both his significant contributions to the study of media, communication, culture and technology; as well as his brilliant yet problematic rhetoric.

Mindfulness Update

So far this week I've adhered to 4/5 sitting sessions. Missed this morning due to sleeping/skyping instead. Will try to let this go and return to the regimen tonight and tomorrow morning. Then I'll be on a plane to the US for ten hours with all the time in the world to sit mindfully!

Bon Odori

Went to this Bon Odori festival near my house last weekend. Obon (お盆) is a summer holiday in mid-August dedicated to the remembrance of one's ancestors. It seems festivals are scattered throughout August, but the actual holiday is August 15.

Anyone can dance, even me! (Although everyone cannot dance well.) You watch the performers in the middle and rotate around them in a circle, picking up the dance as you go along. Some people seem to know the dances well, while others are picking it up for the first time and improvising a bit.

I was struck by the age groups represented here. By enlarge, it was a family event. Thus, there tended to be small children, parents, and grandparents. Very few twenty-somethings (kind of like church in America?) Maybe this was more reflective of the demographic of this neighborhood, not so much Obon at large. I found it interesting to see how the old is mixed with the relatively new, i.e. glow toys and shave ice.

In the video, you can see the young kids picking up the dances with a bit of pushing and prodding. Clearly, there it's a nudge to get them to pick up tradition, to absorb some culture. The drummers are also kids, composed of five year-olds to middles schoolers. Check out their performances here:

Recovering Mindfulness

In order to stay true to the title of the blog, I realized I need to refocus on mindfulness. Thus far, posts have focused on media. Ideally, I'd like to integrate the two. Thus, for the next three and a half days before I head back to the States, I'm going to commit myself to two sessions of breathing awareness per day, 44 minutes a piece. (A teacher once told me it's not so important how long you sit, just that you sit. So I'm going with 44, my favorite number, of minutes.) I'll post my progress on the blog in an effort to maintain adherence to the regimen. Can making your successes and failures in mindfulness practice public to the blogosphere be a motivator for discipline? Second, I aim to create three posts during the next three days: 1) 盆踊り｜Bon Odori 2) Marshall McLuhan 3) A Survey of Mindful Media on the web.

I'm trying to imagine an appropriate image that conveys mindful breathing for this post. What does a breath look like? Here's one I like from a quick google images search:



Please comment with you image suggestions! :)