Weekends

How do you use your weekend? Saturdays and Sundays are days of rest, the Sabbath or Shabat in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Updating and extending that tradition, I would like to be part of a community that makes Saturdays or Sundays a day to engage "the whole person." That is, I would like to organize activities that stimulate and cultivate all aspects of life. If these were to be (falsely) partitioned as mind, body and spirit, activities could include a lecture and discussion; exercise/sports; and breathing awareness/meditation/prayer. For me, fun is also an important aspect of life, so I'd want to finish the day with music/dance/a movie, some sort of entertainment. And service or social justice would also add balance to this mix, so it would be nice to do something that enriches the community at large.

It's weird to me that this appeals to me. I guess it's my take on church, which is also weird to me. Why is church weird?

I also wonder why I'm so interested in integration. Perhaps it's an unattainable ideal that can never be reached. But is it even warranted in the first place? Why do I want all the aspects of my life to coalesce and interact? Is that healthy? What's the need for limits? Should we have barriers between our personal/profession, private/public life? New media technologies are shifting the balance between these spheres of life.

In keeping with the theme of this blog, a good weekend that cultivates the whole person would include mindful media usage. For example, it would be nice to focus the party by doing a guided listening of the music, or making it interactive, or having a lecture about where the music comes from. Or, if we accept that our body is our most basic medium for interaction with the world, yoga would be a great way to bring awareness to the way we use our bodies, and exercise becomes like system maintenance.

This weekend I'm not doing anything like this, but maybe next weekend?

DJs Fundraise Through Art

FUNK AID FOR AFRICA - Dj OBaHさんのMyspaceブログ| www.djobah.com

Deckshark's Artists 4 Haiti


DJs For DRC

A few examples of DJs using their talent to raise money for social justice. Can you find others?

Hoping to expand this model in DC.

TheOneMinutesJR

http://www.theoneminutesjr.org/

TheOneMinutesJR is an international youth network collecting one-minute videos from around the world. It seems to embody the ideals of media literacy and digital story-telling. Check out the website for some videos and more information about the network.

I was struck by this one from Japan:
http://www.theoneminutesjr.org/index.php?thissection_id=10&movie_id=200900015&country_id=141

It questions whether technologies, such as cell phones, iPods and the Nintendo DS are really necessary. Would we be better off without these things?

I find it interesting how these technologies are represented within the video, contrasted with an idealized "old-timey" life before the intrusion of mobile digital devices. The music and video quality are used to create this binary between old and new, slow and fast, connected and disconnected. Undoubtedly, books, baseball, and even friendly conversation were at one time regarded as cutting edge technology. However, their age and implicitness in contemporary life in Japan/throughout the globalized human world make them ordinary and quaint from this perspective.

I question the binary between the fast-paced technological present vs. the leisurely technological past. Yet I'm deeply appreciative of the question posed here. Do we really need these technologies? How do they help and how do they hurt? The video takes its place in an ever-burgeoning discourse dedicated to finding the proper role for technology in life today. Especially in Japan and America, I wish it were a question to which we could start finding some meaningful answers.

Reading Breeds Thought

"...he teaches communications 101, 'communications Skills' and Communications 201, 'Advanced Communications Skills'. Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song lie in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul."
-from J.M Coetzee Disgrace

NPR also breeds thought about reading about media about reading, which breeds thought. Gotta remember to buy the books featured in my two favorite podcasts, On the Media and To the Best of OUr Knowledge. Something like "The Mindsnatchers," a history of TV, and Hamlet's Blackberry, a historical look at technological transitions. Adding them to the Books to Get List.

Will edit this, add hyperlinks and write more another time when I'm not reading disheartening literature while trying to go to sleep.

Lessons to be Learned from Gap Logo Debacle

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11517129

Gap retreats from it's new logo campaign after loyal consumers complain. The BBC article traces several brand that have received harsh criticism after revamping their logos.

Important point for media literacy: "In fact that is a good analogy to logos and brands - if we think of a brand being someone's personality and the logo being someone's face it makes it easier to see why as humans we like familiarity and how breaking that connection can cause confusion and puzzlement."

brand=personality
logo=face

When a brand changes its logo too rapidly, it's like Michael Jackson (R.I.P.) getting one too many nosejobs.

The interesting thing about this story is the power of consumers to cause a change in brand policy. That is, consumers demonstrated that they liked the old GAP face, and saw no need for something new. The feedback was provided in part through social media (i.e. Facebook).

Admittedly, consumer backlash against less positive logo decisions can easily be ignored. In the case of BP's logo shift, environmentalists sent the message "we didn't like the BP brand before, and we hate the new logo." Thus, companies like feedback that's going to make them look good because it helps them assess the value of their brand's image.

I hope consumers will start sending the same messages not only about brand logos, but also about unnecessary innovations. For example, the new version of Microsoft Office I have to use at work just confuses the hell out of me, and I saw nothing inadequate with the old one. Practically every digital video editor I know agrees that the older versions of iMovie were much better and easier to use than the newer ones. When are we going to start saying that we don't need every product to get a "new, fresh look," when it's the same old stuff? Issues with software innovation or brand revamping or relabeling might be subtler than logo changes, but the GAP case shows that consumers have the power to say "No thanks" to the ad-makers.