Evolutionary Media - Session Notes

“Evolutionary  Media” Session – 1:30 pm May 23, 2006
Integral Communication Strategies and Musings for the Planet

See:  http://www.evolutionarynexus.org/node/508

Core Inquiry:
 
What is the highest potential of a media system in service of the whole
that supports the acceleration and creation of the culture
and institutions we are envisioning?
 
Co-Creating Integral Second Tier Media
 
Deepening questions:
 
•    How does media and communications fit into conscious evolution and what is the relationship with the Images of the Future (see session notes)?

•    What would we like to see as a media system for a new wisdom culture?  What might it look like?  Do parts of it currently exist?  How can we support those places and build links?

•    What are the tools we’d need to create the next conscious step in the birthing of a new media infrastructure?  Who is already doing it?  How might we actively engage with making this more visible?  Mapping the current field and imagining the next steps?

•    What message is authentically compelling that can scale and what are the means to engage people with it?
 
Context:  Thomas Jefferson said 250 years ago that “Information is the currency of democracy.”  What would we say now?  Another point of reference is Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere; we see its presence now with us in the form of the Internet (see note below).
 
Current media situation:  Media and communications systems are largely controlled by multinationals with an interest in making huge profits from news and public affairs programming, as well as controlling many of the inputs to our cultural story. We swim in it and lose awareness to one degree or another.  This is a one-to-many media model.  We are seeking a vision of a media system that brings into congruence and coherence the values a new rising integral and wisdom culture are cocreating.  How does an evolutionary movement connect with the storytelling capacity of all of these integral transformation agents?
 
Developing intentionally positive images of the future:  The one causal factor which allows a civilization to reorganize in a successful form is having a coherent positive image of the future.  This image is held by a marginalized (on the edges) group growing under the radar.  Can we source a creative image which will do this?  Susan’s research clearly indicated that from the Cultural Creatives there was a restorative image which people don’t realize was there.  Is this true for us now?  Can we use media to evolve and share this media?  Of course, there are multiple competing images.  Which will prevail?
 
Next steps in developing “evolutionary media”:  The current alternative, independent, positive media (Yes! Magazine, Ode Magazine, Utne Reader, Orion, New Dimensions, Shift, Resurgence, etc.) are good, AND we need to envision and imagine together the next step toward “evolutionary media in the service of the whole”.  New technologies are supporting us in taking this work to another level.
 
The Renaissance turn-around took three generations and 1000 people.  (Joanna Macy says that future generations will look back and call our time the “Great Turning”.  It’s rare that such a thing can be named and consciously acted upon while it is actually happening (the last time was the Renaissance!).  What an opportunity we have!)
 
Now people have the technology to make this happen.  Personal video blogs are “competing” in healthy ways with commercial TV Channels (see Rocketboom for a great example http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/about.html - imagine something similar for the emergent integral culture we are cocreating).
 
Why are you here and what is an outcome you’d like to get from this session?
 
Traditional media is primarily orange and blue; Indymedia as very green (1M hits a day to www.indymedia.org); we need the media structure that honors and includes those lower levels; integral media; 2nd tier media; 22media; interested in technically what that looks like.

Working with an approach that is a positive image of the future; a way of thinking as human beings; natural form of collective intelligence; we are natural fractal generating quality; question - how to put that into the media?  If they saw that it would give them hope.  

Works as a teacher, real interested in teacher learning at all diff levels, strong relationship between how to transmit information; work in local public policy around water quality and works with media.  Curious to know what is the next evolutionary media would look like?  

Media as an important trimtab for the transformation; gets big ideas before they come into being.  We need a new national newspaper that fits the vision of what we're talking about.  

Involved with evolver magazine; we document inspirational people and inspirational things; potential to reach large audiences; there are so many different modalities; once we're all on it, there's this buzz and there's this new wave -- is TV going to be out, what are the ways that we gather info now and what will they be in the future, what are people drawn to and why?  Would love to dive into those questions.  How to create a buzz?  There's such a broad network and so many social networks that people are creating or trying to create, how do we link them all together and get the word out.  There's friendster and social networking software.  How do we reach everyone?  Get the ideas of collective intelligence into a bigger arena.

I get hung up on what people want and why?  What's news to people?  I keep going back to what's going wrong with the current situation.  I get stuck on - the media is just giving people what they are asking for.  Why can't we be talking about the good things going on.  There's this state of consciousness of where we are as a species that we can imagine a better way of doing things but how to get that established.  Why aren't more people subscribed to Yes Magazine.  Why isn't the alternative media gaining ground faster?  I get stuck on how is it ever going to get implemented and how to do that.  How do we change the mass media?  (see Duane Elgin's work on this).

As our culture evolves, people are getting dissatisfied with the news.  That system is crumbling and there's a new one emerging.  Paying for the new media like integral naked.  There are enough prototypes out there.  As people get more conscious and politically astute about bringing that forward.

How do we fund the possibilities we’re talking about here?
 
Contemplate these 2 Qs as we listen in to the center:
 
Personal:
What would a media system look like that supported your work and your network?
 
Interpersonal:
What would a media system look like that would support the whole and conscious evolution?

Discussion:
 
This is a practice of images of the future. We have to dream what we need into existence (additional note regarding role of imagination in creating change: “To see is to experience the world as it is; to remember is to experience it as it was, to imagine is to experience how it has never been, but what it could be.”  This allows us to think about the future.)
 
Indymedia network has seen exponential growth on every level.  30 million hits a month on the virtual global site (the hub in a network of over 200 websites).  This is a very green meme media prototype and is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of its potential.  When Indymedia breaks into second tier it will be huge.
 
How do the stories reach the mainstream?
 
I believe the average American would like to see a different kind of news, information and programming.  It’s a matter of putting it forth and reaching them.  Tom Paine: “Such is the nature of truth, is that all it wants is the liberty of appearing.”
 
I’d like to see a well-researched conspiracy channel.
 
One purpose of media is to critique and show what is wrong.  Another purpose is to show clearly where the new models are emerging.  These are two hands of social change.  “It is not enough to slow the rate of destruction; we must increase the rate of creation.”
 
Internet broadcasting will become cheaper and easier.  How do we put self-organizing coherence into place so what we want comes up.
 
We could develop a map of our combined social networks and filtering topics to those interested. We could create our own media.
 
What images are we already holding in our current networks which we haven’t made visible to ourselves? I’d like to broadcast our story more effectively to ourselves and create internal coherence and continue a sustained dialog. Maybe that’s a media channel. Evolutionary Nexus hasn’t done it.
 
The growth of core question-based systems correlates with the amount and quality of shared information. I’d like to see a system that facilitated this communication around a question focused on the well-being of humans and nature at the same time.

I want to hear what's really going on.  Hurricane Katrina.  

Such is the nature of truth, that all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

Fractal generating process; one of the things that accelerates it is communication.  If you track the rise of science, it has to do with communication.  Science is not a solitary event it's a social event.  The more people you get involved, the more CI you get.  They put in bits of information.  Most scientists put in data and tests.  They collect all this.  And make a theory.  Build and build and it's based on communication.  If you had this fractal generating system that I'm talking about:  2 factor:  well being of humanity and well being of nature.  If our cultural brain were different it would be the same thing.  If you are asking for that, people can apply that at their local level.  People ask how does nature work….in my village, how could I change my garden to be restorative.  Sharing best practices, sharing results of experiments, people finding each other.  But focused around this question.  It would facilitate this process of building infrastructure.  The core question does not go away.  The question provides a coherent core.  Core question approach.  I'm working on a book.  Fractal generating.  

I remember the day when the big problem was finding something.  You have to go to the library, which book contains it.  Today the big problem for me today, it's to find the information in the vast pile of information….the ultimate barrier to learning is not access, it's my effort it's my attention.  (attention economy).  Culturally that a creates a bias toward information who are disseminating, trying to get information to you.  Further acceleration of the trend toward receiving information from the same mainstream sources.  One coping approach is to just take in all that information and another is to create some filters with your current belief systems (a bit fragmented) - responses to information overload.

Waiting for the next level of google….have some faith that that will happen.
 
Coping with Information Overload - Developing evolutionary capacities:
 
How can we cope with info overload? Either be noncritical or set up super strict criteria. Neither is sufficient for our times.
 
•    I've had to become extremely intuitive.  Dial into that and allow that flow to come.  That's an evolutionary capacity             

•    I’ve become extremely intuitive.  I’ve had to resort to that “inner technology”.

•    I’d agree (speaking as a major geek). I got swamped with info overload a few years ago, pulled back and tuned and had to go into training my intuitive resources, being more accepting of what comes.

•    I also don’t know what I’d do without that capacity, and observing more the emergent synchronicities.  We could train ourselves in this as a social technology.  So while this is the inner technology resource, the outer technology is the ongoing development of RSS feeds – evolving personal filters.

As we create our own blogs with rich media of all kinds, we’ll be able to tap into what our leading edge is doing: a way toward sustained dialogue.
 
I want smart people who look over the universe of political things and pick out the megatrends and signs of the times. I haven’t found the right blog.  Indymedia comes close but is basically a news medium but I’m interested in ideas as well.
 
Some of our favorite sources of news, information, inspiration and ideas:
 
With our remaining 5 minutes we sensed into what would be a good outcome/artifact for the whole, and decided to quickly popcorn some of our favorite websites.  This is very incomplete, but is a starting point for mapping our collective intelligence as seen through the internet.
 
Arts and Letters Daily - journal of higher education http://aldaily.com/
 
Climate Action Network http://www.climatenetwork.org/
 
Common dreams http://www.commondreams.org/
 
Cooperation Commons http://www.cooperationcommons.org/
 
Daily Grist – environmental news and commentary http://www.grist.org/
 
EarthTrends Environmental Information http://earthtrends.wri.org/index.php
 
Evolver Project (beta site) http://www.evolver.net/
 
Futures survey - Review of the month’s publications http://www.wfs.org/fsrvapr06.htm
 
Imaginify Community Network – imagine if I read the good news http://www.imaginify.org/index.php
 
Integral Naked http://in.integralinstitute.org/
 
Integral Reflections http://www.integralreflections.com/
 
John Hawks – anthropologist http://johnhawks.net/weblog/
 
Media Giraffe project http://www.mediagiraffe.org/
 
New Heaven New Earth http://www.nhne.com/
 
Ode Magazine http://www.odemagazine.com/
 
Omidyar.net - What are the good things happening – sharing, discussing, new projects http://www.omidyar.net/home/
 
Salon http://www.salon.com/
 
The Transitioner http://www.thetransitioner.org/wen/tiki-index.php
 
Utne Reader http://www.utne.com/
 
Worldchanging – Another World is Here http://www.worldchanging.com/
 
World Pulse http://www.worldpulsemagazine.com/
 
Yes Magazine http://www.yesmagazine.org/
 
Zaadzs.com – beta social networking site for 2nd tier http://www.zaadz.com/
 
 
Additional Resources/Links
 
The Spirit of the Internet: Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness
The Noosphere & the Internet
http://www.matrixmasters.com/spirit/html/2a/2a.html
 
In Chardin's view, the noosphere is nothing less than a collective human organism.  It may take a giant leap of faith for some readers to "consider inter-thinking humanity as a new type of organism whose destiny it is to realize new possibilities for evolving life on this planet," as Huxley suggests in his introduction to The Phenomenon of Man.