McLuhan's Wake

A minute or so in (this back in the early 60s, before The Sixties really got going) listen to McLoon describe Internet. We need visionaries - check out Douglas Rushkoff in the previous post...



And yeah, for you Maybe folk, he references Finnegans Wake, too...

LIFE INC. By Douglas Rushkoff

I very greatly recommend Douglas Rushkoff's new book LIFE INC. How the world became a corporation and how to take it back. I would love it if very many people read this book, and then worked out a way to collectively act on it. Not to say Life, Inc. has all the answers, but it certainly raises great questions which could go a long way towards deconstructing the apparently intractable global financial "crisis," amongst other deficiencies of the corporatist landscape.

Rushkoff has been releasing an attention span friendly series of dispatch videos elucidating the main topics of the book. I very much hope that these ideas begin to inform the general socio-economic discourse. I don't at all mean to suggest that these are ideas everyone needs to believe, but rather that these are the topics we need to discus.





Beyond just the book and it's multimedia accoutrements, Rushkoff has also taken to the airwaves in the service of bottom up, locally organized, open source, participatory culture.

Archives of Previous Shows
Here's a recent episode where Douglas interviews Paul Krassner!

And hey, why not! Here's a great talk Douglas gave to the Institute of General Semantic,
"Don't Change Yourself, Change the World"


I've gotten to know Douglas over the last few years via the Maybe Logic Academy and consider him very much the real McCoy.

Here's a guy who can appear on stage at a Disinfo con w/ RAW & Grant Morrison, proclaiming victory for the "counter culture", while also winning awards for his PBS Frontline documentaries.

Rushkoff can write a cyberpunk, psychedelic comic book series like Testament for Vertigo, while also writing level headed media theory for the New York Times.

He can play keyboard in Genis P Orridge's Psychic TV & talk politics on NBC Nightly News w/ Brian Williams.

Douglas Rushkoff is a viral media explosion waiting to happen, hell he coined the phrase after all! His bright ideas are welcome on boingboing.com, time magazine, comic book resources, NPR, ONLY MAYBE, CBS Sunday Morning, etc, ad infinitum AND! on july 15th, the Colbert Report.

I don't think there are very many people about whom I could honestly say this, but if Rushkoff does well, I think we all do well, so I say he gets the big push. Good luck, Doug!

Growing Edges

Inside the Evolver Academy: A Chat with Lance Bauscher
Propaganda Anonymous (click on title to read interview)

Propaganda Anonymous, one of our regulars, has recently interviewed Lance Bauscher (who helped set up the Maybe Logic Academy so Bob could carry on working) for Reality Sandwich.

In the interview, it becomes clear that MLA now forms just one node in the Growing Edge Network, which also includes the Evolver Academy (with a starry set of course tutors lined up) and the Growing Edge Institute.





On, and Prop himself is setting up his own new website here, and/or you can find him on MySpace.

RAW Auction update

Some new items have appeared on eBay, which you might want to check out - everything from unusual Zippo-type lighters to an assortment of Bob's Tarot packs, from his favourite shirts, to art he enjoyed.

RAW auction at eBay

For context, see post on 31 May 09.

BUDAI LUOHAN