I just saw the email for the upcoming Maybe Logic Academy courses - there's another by Douglas Rushkoff called Corporatized - An Alternative To Corporatism & Beyond coming up in January 2009 - scheduled for 6 weeks from January 12 to February 22. his last class "Technologies of Persuasion - From Propaganda to Paranoia" was great - the class was very popular and had a lot of people in it. the first few weeks moved really quickly, by the last few weeks it was running at a slower pace so I could try and catch up. I was doing the The Crazy Wisdom of Philip K. Dick class with Erik Davis at the same time, so I was running behind on the Rushkoff class as the PKD class was so interesting! Fingers crossed there might be another PKD class with Erik Davis too - I asked and they said Maybe! (excuse the pun :)

I think Rushkoff's new class will be really interesting, especially as in the Persuasion class he mentioned his thoughts on the global economy and how we should be using a different 'money' system & alternative currencies. He's written many books, and columns with newspapers such as New York Times & Guardian of London. He now also writes for Arthur Magazine, which I think in some ways has taken over from where Mondo 2000 and previously Reality Hackers magazines started. Arthur No. 29, May 2008 has one of his articles, Riding out the Credit Crisis which I think was very timely considering the state of economic affairs around the globe now with some regions stating they are in a recession. this month's Arthur # 31 - October 2008 has another article by Rushkoff called "No Money Down" (pages 26-27) which is worth a read too - the pdf's are available to download on their site (part A has this article). he also has a forum on his site where some of the discussions can take place & continue from previous (and I'm assuming future) MLA courses, boing boing posts, Arthur articles and his books.

from Riding out the Credit Crisis :
"Whatever the case, the best thing you can do to protect yourself and your interests is to make friends. The more we are willing to do for each other on our own terms and for compensation that doesn’t necessarily involve the until-recently-almighty dollar, the less vulnerable we are to the movements of markets that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with us."

...

"Think small. Buy local. Make friends. Print money. Grow food. Teach children. Learn nutrition. And if you do have money to invest, put it into whatever lets you and your friends do those things."

---

transhumanism is a huge field encompassing many topics and arguments. concsiousness, what does it mean to be human, bio ethics, genetic modifications, nanotechnology, science, future technologies, spirituality, information technology, biopolitics, medical improvements, body enhancements, human computer interaction ... the list goes on

the World Transhumanist Association defines transhumanism as :

Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the premise that the human species in its current form does not represent the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase. We formally define it as follows:

Marcus Westbury - questions / research

Marcus is looking for some long lead articles about his upcoming tv show. I offered to post something here then have had limited net accesss (excuses!). so some research on him. he's already all over the net!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Westbury
Marcus Westbury
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Marcus Westbury

Born 1974
Australia
Residence Australia
Nationality Australian
Marcus Westbury (b. 1974) is an Australian festival director, writer and media maker. He is currently based in Melbourne, Australia where he created the three part TV series Not Quite Art for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation screened during October-November 2007.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Arts and Festivals
1.2 Media Projects
2 Other
3 Media Coverage
4 External links

[edit] Biography

I love watching the TED Talks. it's great they publish the videos as it's REALLY expensive to attend the conference. tonight I've watched a few :

Sir Ken Robinson : Creativity and Education
his talk was very entertaining - he's quite funny!, and he raised some good points and examples of how modern education system is designed towards getting people jobs, since it was formed since the introduction of industrialisation. as we don't know what will happen in the future, how can we educate children correctly to prepare for the future. and how creativity has a lesser importance in the education system of today. I liked a couple of comments he raised - listed below. the full transcript is on the TED blog page

"creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status"

...

Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective in critical and cultural theory.

Open Humanities Press journals are fully peer reviewed, scholarly publications that have been chosen by OHP's editorial advisory board for their outstanding contribution to contemporary theory.

OHP's journals are independent, published under open access licences and free of charge to readers and authors alike.

A grassroots response to the crisis in scholarly publishing in the humanities, Open Humanities Press is an international open access publishing collective whose mission is to make leading works of contemporary critical thought freely available worldwide.

visit http://openhumanitiespress.org for more details and to see their included publications

Agit - (pron. aught ??) Kurdish women wailing in music. traditional in Eastern Turkey

book (Andrew bought) - "Journey of a Sufi musician"

other music styles : Fasil, Arabesque music

music of Turkey wikipedia entry

Taksim - improvisation : A specific sequence of classical Turkish musical forms become a fasil, a suite an instrumental prelude, an instrumental postlude (saz semaisi), and in between, the main section of vocal compositions which begins with and is punctuated by instrumental improvisations taksim

makams - musical scales in Turkish music

instrument - Oud, Saz

TechGnosis maillist website
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
-Philip K. Dick-
VISIT TECHGNOSIS AT: http://techgnosis.info
SUBSCRIBE to TechGnosis List: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TechGnosis/join

http://www.maybelogic.org
http://www.maybelogic.net

http://edge.org/

http://www.techgnosis.com - Erik Davis' site

http://www.undergrowth.org

http://www.barrelfullofmonkeys.org

http://www.entheo.net/ - entheogenesis Australia 2007 conference

http://www.docquan.com/lib_dead.html - an online collection / library of interesting books

The program MediaArtHistories starts this November for the second time and is currently accepting applications. MAH conveys the most important developments of contemporary art through a network of renowned international theorists, artists and curators like: Steve DIETZ, Erkki HUHTAMO, Lev MANOVICH, Christiane PAUL, Paul SERMON, Edward SHANKEN, Jens HAUSER, Christa SOMMERER; Gerfried STOCKER, Knowbotic Research, Charlie GERE, Oliver GRAU and many others. Using online databases and other modern aids, knowledge of computer animation, net art, interactive, telematic and genetic art as well as the most recent reflections on nano art, CAVE installations, augmented reality and wearables are introduced. Historical derivations that go far back into art and media history are tied in intriguing ways to digital art. Important approaches and methods from Image Science, Media Archaeology and the History of Science & Technology will be discussed. visit the MediaArtHistories website for more information and to apply

H-Asia - a member of H-Net Humanities & Social Sciences OnLine. The primary purpose of H-ASIA is to enable historians and other Asia scholars to easily communicate current research and teaching interests; to discuss new articles, books, papers, approaches, methods and tools of analysis; to test new ideas and share comments and tips on teaching.

seminar attempts a departure from the usual journal. Problems, national and international, are posed and discussed. Each issue deals with a single problem. Those who hold different and at times opposing viewpoints express their thoughts.

The organizers and speakers at EGA believe that information about psychoactive plants and chemicals should be readily available. Also that only through creating such a space, where we can talk freely on such matters, can methods for harm reduction and the true benefits of such substance be explored. Entheogenesis Australis is a collection of thinkers from all walks of life, we come together to share knowledge about sacred plants, chemical alchemy and states of consciousness. We are coming to tune in to the Mother Earth and take her fight back out into the world. We want to share and explore experiences, trance and dance. it is about growth, for the mind and the land.

This experimental workshop is an invitation to those individuals who are interested in the trance dance experience as providing an opportunity for mind/body/spirit/soul development. EGA 2006 will be a unique opportunity for people who are experienced in the dance floor and consciousness development approach to try something new, different, fun and well focused, that is totally aimed at extending the boundaries of each participants current experiential and knowledge paradigms.

Read more for details or visit http://www.entheo.net

I've been thinking about different publishing & distribution methods and as it often happens the conversation appears on a site or mail list around the same time. early in feb, the node-l (node-London) promo emails starting making the rounds of the net lists. it sounds like a great collective of grassroots, funded & professional new media organisations based in London. (read through the list of projects on their site!) initially I was thinking this would be great to have internationally or at least in Australia / New Zealand as well - node-b (brisbane), node-s (sydney), node-m (melbourne), node-a (auckland) or node-au (australia) & node-nz (new zealand). another section of their promo which caught my eye was the POD - print on demand. I followed the links and discovered the mute site is based on CiviCRM which is an offshoot of Drupal (basically it's Drupal with a nice installer and some extra custom themes). Drupal's my favourite CMS as anyone who knows me would know - this site is done in drupal. (finally upgraded to latest version, but haven't had time to add more features yet). anyway, the POD concept is quite cool. people could make their own custom pdfs. researchers could pdf their reference articles for research. endless possibilities. I might try out the 'save to pdf' feature. on the Stealth message board I frequent, Mark was talking about new concepts & suggestions for Stealth mag, so I posted the below message. there's heaps of other options but not sure if he's wanting to go the online publishing method. I think it would work well in conjunction with the print mag and he seems quite busy these days & it sounds like he has to do most of the work which would be quite a lot of work.

CACHe is a major research project into the origins and history of British computer arts.

We are based at the School of History of Art, Film and Visual Media at Birkbeck, University of London and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. The substantial government funding for our project indicates the level of interest in creating an historical framework for this period. CACHe began its work in 2002.

AUT is New Zealand's most contemporary university, with a unique profile reflecting our history and innovative approaches to teaching, learning and research.

AUT enables opportunities in the modern professions and disciplines of today's economy, offering a wide range of postgraduate and undergraduate degrees, as well as diplomas and certificates.

I've been looking at the Linkubator script from Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen which is used to create a SMIL script that can be saved as a quicktime movie, and can combine videos, text, audio images etc hosted on the net into a 'remuxed' video.

All about CiteULike

Read all about it

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software.

B-Girl Be History of Women in Hip Hop 3/2005

This resource list was compiled by Rachel Raimist, Miranda Jane, Monalisa Murray, and Desdamona. One of our goals for B-Girl Be is to unite women of all ages from all walks of life --- academics, activists, aficionados, and beginners --- to experience the elements of Hip Hop.

To bring everyone up to speed, we've compiled this comprehensive list of links, broken down by subject.

The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) is a college-level center at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the College of Arts and Sciences. Working with faculty in the Virginia Tech Cyberschool, the CDDC provides one of the world's first university based digital points-of-publication for new forms of scholarly communication, academic research, and cultural analysis. At the same time, it supports the continuation of traditional research practices, including scholarly peer review, academic freedom, network formation, and intellectual experimentation.

The Australia Institute is an independent public policy research centre funded by grants from philanthropic trusts, memberships and commissioned research. Those involved in the Institute have each, from different viewpoints, been concerned about the impact on Australian society of the priority given to a narrow definition of economic efficiency over community, environmental and ethical considerations in public and private decision making. A better balance is urgently needed. Visit their site @ http://www.tai.org.au/ for more information

The WomenSpeak Network is currently working on a research project called 'Young Women's Recruitment, Retention and Leadership: lessons learned from the women's movement.' The overall aim of the policy research is to establish broadly young women's involvement and perceptions of their involvement in women's organisations; to find out whether organisations are actively involved in the recruitment, retention and promotion of young women's into leadership positions; in line with the goals of the WomenSpeak Network reflect on how effective young women's participation, networking and diversity is within the organisations. The surveys are available on-line at: http://www.ywca.org.au/survey_2.htm (young women's survey) and http://www.ywca.org.au/survey_1.htm (women's & community organisations survey). read more for further details

The Hiphop Archive was officially established in 2002 under the direction of Marcyliena Morgan. Since the early 1970s, Hiphop has become the most influential artistic, educational and social movement for youth and young adults. From The Hiphop Archive

new media, hypertext, course notes

http://www.dmc.mq.edu.au/mwark/home/

The Journal of Society and Information is an independent, online and refereed journal.

The journal acknowledges as a founding principle that both society and information are indefinite and amphorous concepts variably defined and infinitely interpreted.

Questia is an online library of books and journals

Screen & Media studies at University of Waikato, New Zealand research interests include: New Zealand in the global media economy, media education and media democracy, media and religion, digital gaming, and audience studies, including the investigation of the international reception of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.