The Media Ecosystem; Antonio Lopez

Broadcast 7/30/2012 at 10:52 PM EDT (37 Listens, 32 Downloads, 841 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

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Antonio Lopez, is the author of  The Media Ecosystem; What Ecology can teach us about responsible Media Practice.  He's a  Media Literacy educator, currently teaching undergraduate media studies in Rome Italy.

His first book--was  Mediacology

Rob: What was your goal for this book?

As a professor of media studies I work with 18-21 year olds and there are some things they don't know about".

The way you put together a vision of the media, how it works, how it could and should work is truly mystical. 

A system of manipulation that attempts to take your personal power away and colonize your attention. 

media literacy elements and ideas for people who work in the media so they will be inspired to influence

Rob: What's a cultural commons?

Cultural commons is being colonized, privatized and walled off. People are unwilling to defend something they don't know exist. 

Rob: You cite characteristics of the cultural commons that include reciprocity, mutual support, participation, intergenerational dialogue, self-sufficiency, and receptiveness. 

Rob: What about Vandana Shiva's "Earth Democracy?"

Quote: "If unchecked, corporate media's power to shape our collective imagination inhibits our ability to envision alternatives beyond a colonial model of the world, in which a handful of megacorporations privatizes the planetary commons at the expense of the public good and living systems."

Media colonization

what's going on with the food system is the same thing that's going on with the media. 

Colonial model with 1% of financial companies controlling most of the system. 

Rob: You talk about a vertically controlled media system-- the big six-- and then, a horizontally networked communications environment. 

We've transition from a One-to-many  old industrial media system to a many to many system which destabilizes the old model. 

SOPA, ACTA, put us in a dangerous moment. 

Rob: you cite Ervin Laszlo's call to consciously evolve civilization from conquest, colonization, and consumerism to connection, communication and consciousness.  IN short, through active engagement we can transition the cultural commons from "my space" to "our space."

media mindfulness

media activism-- can't assume that media systems are going to beneficial.

media train us how to do certain things, like accept messages as true and just become consumers

We have to challenge concretely messages of growth, and I'd like to contest the idea of progress-- without social justice or ethics. 

Rob: You say, "Media's collective "myth space" is shifting from the top-down, transmission-based media of the industrial Age to ritual communication." Can you talk about ritual and then about the Occupy movement, which you bring in to this discussion of ritual. 

You discuss indigenous cultures, such as Native Americans. Can you integrate this with the discussion of ritual?

Quechua word, Chakaruna-- Bridge person-- 

Rob; Reason to include indigenous knowledge as source of wisdom that will help enable the transition from top down to bottom up, which I believe is what your book advocates. 

Rob: connection to land, to nature-- essential for indigenous, but also for happiness, according to my positive psychology model. http://www.positivepsychology.net

Talk about your thoughts on campbell's Hero's Journey in your book. 

The world is turned around unless the hero is called to action re-establishes equilibrium. 

We are being called to action. 

We have to transform ourselves, 

People in occupy were transformed and empowered by those spaces. 

We have to bring it back and harness it. 

The phrase Dennis Kucinich used-- We are the people we have been waiting for. 

Rob: You say we could be gone in 50 years?

Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone" 

If oil companies extract what they plan in the next 50 years, the planetary temperature will increase 11 degrees which humans cannot survive"

What would you like readers to take away from this book in terms of what they learn, understand, how it changes their consciousness and what they do. 

Corporations are colonizing nature. 

Way media defines nature, what is possible and not possible. 

We need to de-colonize media"

How about occupy-- how is it operating, affecting things now?

Occupy prototypes are t here for us. 

Need for alternative network space. 

This is kind of like a wave-- it crested in the US, then it rose in Mexico City and Montreal...

Occupations are going to come back. It's a good metaphor to draw upon. 

themediaecosystem.com

mediacology.com

Facebook.com/themediaecosystem

Rob: Please discuss the difference between greenwashing and walking the talk greenly

compare Gasland with propaganda of the natural gas industry. 

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