Media ecology is an emerging and progressive field of study that elegantly yet practically weds a desire to optimize the power of ever-evolving communicative tools with a deep and profound humanism. A favorite definition of media ecology comes from a group of young filmmakers visiting Ann Arbor, Michigan during the City’s annual film festival. They…
“By virtue of the world’s fundamental unity, once a phenomenon has been clearly observed, even only at a single point, its value and roots are simultaneously present everywhere.” —Teilhard de Chardin, The Human Phenomenon “I am a pilgrim from the future,” Teilhard told his young friend Jean Houston, as they talked and walked around New York City’s Central…
On August 12, 2004, the Northeast power grid collapsed. After the lights came back on, the first question everyone asked was “why did this happen?” Hindsight now provides a reasonable answer: the decision, or more accurately, the indecision of an Ohio power plant operator to stay connected to the grid after his plant failed instead…
We long for connection, a hunger for awareness of the other. We are evolving through our connections with each other, which are becoming more complex, powerful and sophisticated. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin defined this as the noosphere, the glue that binds us together in a cosmic sense. It is an integral consciousness—the understanding that the human is the “axis and arrow of evolution.” This web of connections is a source of often untapped energy. It is how we grow and change both individually and collectively. Technology helps us grow this global network of complex connections in dynamic and powerful ways.…
By Christine M. Tracy I interviewed Tom Hayden in March of 2015 when he returned to his home state of Michigan and his alma mater, The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the First Teach-In To End The Vietnam War. Hayden died Sunday at the age of 76. “In the ‘60s, there was a common reaction to local abuses,” says Tom Hayden, a founder of the SDS and principal author of their political manifesto, the Port Huron Statement. “There was an outbreak of sit-ins at lunch counters that escalated from one town to multiple…
The 2106 election will be the most fact-checked in history, but will people believe the truth even when it’s verified? Much like an army of truth-telling Geppettos, fact-checking journalists are battling the global pandemic of false and misleading claims so easily spread by the ubiquitous use of smart phones and sophisticated social media apps. While…
Let’s blow up the story and create new forms Politifact Founder and Journalism Professor Bill Adair urged his 2012 Ted talk audience. And that’s exactly what he’s done. Together with with David Caswell, former product manager of Yahoo, Adair is “atmoizing” the news and writing stories for computers to read. They’ve designed a new platform,…
“Our individual minds, though distinct and uniquely ours, may also join with others in a kind of mental symphony that now and then becomes audible against a prevailing background of static,” says Richard Samson, director of the EraNova Institute, whose mission is empowering human development. Using random number generators, scientists from Princeton’s Global Consciousness Project…
Michael Wolff’s PBS interview motivated me to buy his “Television is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media In the Digital Age.” I am very interested in online economic models, and I was intrigued by his ideas about the money behind old and new media. As the title implies, the book is mostly…
The Times must be willing to experiment more in terms of how it presents its content.” That is one of the many findings in this summary of the leaked 2014 New York Times Innovation report published by Harvard’s Neiman Journalism Lab. When one looks closely at the news outlets that are aggressively mastering new digital tools,…
The Writings of Christine M. Tracy 