ourmedia, creative commons and democracy

Recently I have been spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out ways to upload media files for free to be hosted and linked to fro this blog, and my other web-based documentation projects. Creating rich and varied multi media documents is on of the most powerful things about the internet. It allows us to transmit massive amounts of information at a grassroos level, circumnavigating (at least for the time being) the monopolized corporate media. Indymedia.org Continues to be one of the most vibrant and thoughtfully structured media outlets on the planet. But for hosting creative media, and collaborative editing and other more creative projects it does not quite fit the bill. After a bit of searching, I found Ourmedia.org. Ourmedia links to the internet archives, a free online archive of media, allowing hosting of unlimited media. It also utilizes the creative commons license for the media appearing, that allows for sharing and collaboration with all the media in the archive as long as the original creator is recognized. An amazing opportunity to create collaborative autonomous groups creating and sharing media.
On the otherhand, as with many open source projects, the vision and dream are so large and beautiful, that the usability of the interface sems to suffer. For simple hosting of Podcasts and Vlogs other more specialized websites have ourmedia beat.
I am goign to continue playing with ourmedia and learning the ropes in the hopes that I can magic together a well functioning multimedia chennel providing information on permaculture, the ecovillage movement, and other positive, regenerative solutions to the issues facing the planet. for now though, I am going with Twango, a free podcast and media hosting service that has a significantly steeper learning curve, enabling me to get on with the other parts of my work.

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Calling out the elders

I sit breathing into the feelings swelling up through my body. By the time they start to pulse out my crown chakra I realize fully their source and implications.
I am feeling a mix of frustration, anger and sadness. I feel let down.
I'm tired of olders getting in the way of evolution, progress magic and light.
I'm tired of submitting myself to someone else's half-assed vision of change. Tired of not being supported to bring forth a new way of thinking and being. Ideas--vast thoguhtscapes--flow through my mid with ease...relaying these ideas, vision, dreams comes with ease....
but implementing is another matter...
constantly confronted with the cold, hard reality that the center of gravity--the energetic center--of our culture rests far from me.
Confronted with a choice....do i struggle inward to the center, in the hopes that my impulse for change will be intact when i complete the quest?
do i make a stand, rebeling agains the status quo?
its the prisoners dilemma...no way out...out of the frying pan and into the fire.

a dichotomy to transcend.
Fully, deeply completely I know this is not a journey I can make on my own. Nor would I want to. This is a collective dream.
But what I do ask for...what I demand, is that our olders get their shit together and start acting like elders.
I am tired of looks of surprise and senility when I talk about ideas for the future. I am tired of the same old story..."well, once I was a hippy...ad we tried to save the world..."
fuck that
fucking bullshit.
the real issue seems that these senile old fools cant see that they DID change the world...
and they continue to change it....and the times...they are a changin'...again...faster and faster the world spins.
no stoppign it now.
so jump on board...lets work together, lets eave a new story out of the night, tell a tale to bring us to through the dark watch and into the bright dawn.
COME ON!
COME ON!

I hunger for an elder
i want someone who will SUPPORT ME...MENTOR ME
support us
mentor us

i don't need stories and advice from the bygon days...
i have life time upon life times of stories to tell myself...when we sit around the fire tomorrow night, after the change, we can all laugh and share stories.

BUT NOW I EMPLORE YOU...drop the bullshit...we are all beings of light...
i am tired of agism.
I demand integrity to match my own.
In our countless lifetimes together we have all been father and son, mother and daughter...
but we are all one...
so drop the pretensions.
drop the pretending...that you know so much.
I demand integrity to match my own
I will only listen to you until it becomes clear that you are lost in your story, unable to cope with the quickly approaching change. It doesn't intrest me if you are 10 or 80...I WANT AN ELDER, I WANT A MENTOR
I want to be heard and seen for the elder in me.

I am tired
I am fresh.....vibrant as a spring dawn...
I demand integrity to match my own

that is my whiny expression for the day.

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"green" information

Vaulting from flashy website to flashy web site in search of substantial news and intelligent views on emerging technology (physical and social), my head is spinning from all the glitz. Shinny gold green wash is quickly scrapped away. After the buzzwords stop ringing in my ears, and the excitement over the next big thing fades, we are still caught up in the same whirlwind of consumerism, and "Lets just engineer our way out" mentality that got us here...

Here we sit, stand, walk, run or dance on this spinning globe of glory, beauty, and insanity. We are on the cusp of monumental changes...equipped with technology enabling instantaneously communication across the globe, earth changing technology, and a massive bank of information, painstakingly gathered over generations. We have been gifted infinite potential. Our ancestors, have toiled and pushed through slavery and war, death and destruction, ignorance and blight pushing onward to give us this brief window where we can realize we have a choice. We can choose to use our abundance of knowledge and energy to empower each other.
With simple technology from decades, even centuries ago, we can empower every human on the planet to take care of themselves. Simple, basic changes in consumption habits and behavior in economy one nations, and thoughtful, well designed technology, embedded with intelligent land-use practices and an equal footing in the global information economy for Economy two and three nations the state of the world could transform over night.

And it drives me crazy to see something I am so passionate about, and have put so much of my time and energy into, being turned into just another fad...another commodity to be consumed.
Who knows?...maybe you CAN buy and sell sustainability.
who knows?

All i know is I feel called to create a simpler more just relationship with the people around me, and the earth I walk on.

And I laugh at the apparent hipocracy as I continue to type away, and surf across the net looking for signs of hope...

in the end there is laughter, and another day

hope

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sustainable ag RSS

RSSfeeds.com directory : top > science > agriculture > sustainable agriculture

There is NO SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE RSS FEED!

not one...

pretty amazing when you think about the growth of organiz produce and agricultural practices over the last several years...
makes my mind wander into a state of semi-shock.
for all the hoopla about sustainability, perhaps this lends more evidence to a greenwashing bubbble theory for the current state of the "green movement"

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Bioregional listserve

The Bioregional List serve is one of the most cutting edge places for information about world changing issues available on or off the web. For up to date discussion on the state of the Lakota Souix succession movement, or the plight of one of the largest seedbanks in the world, the Bioregional list serve provides a forum to presence information from the edge.
What I am wondering, is if there is anyway to turn the list serve into a more accessible and elastic format. Perhaps expanding it into a blog with RSS potential, providing space for content, discussion, and news.
This has the potential to create significantly more content and accessibility, thus enhancing the potential change quotient.
I think my next step is to research setting up an RSS feed, and stacking this function with the updating and overhaul of the bioregional-congress page itself as an auxiliary function of the organizing of the 09 Bioregional Congress.

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Alternatives to google

ironically enough....
Blogspot is a google app...one of the many functional and popular free services of google.
Always a modal agnostic (see Robert Anton Wilson), I wanted to explore a bit to see if I could find viable alternatives to google for the online functions of blogging, e calender support, and simple content management... This blog on Lifehack was a simple one stop source for many alternatives...
very useful.

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IT for world change

The internet continues to transform the way we communicate, act, and even think. Allowing activists, NGOs and Businesses to collaborate seamlessly. OR does it?

Many new technologies actually seem to hinder quick effective actualization of collaborative projects. Giving groups just enough possibility to create plans and strategies far outreaching the actual capacity of technology.
At the moment it seems that IT has a little ways to go to catch up with our needs...

I am currently an associate f Gaia University. A global university that relies heavily on IT for co-laboratory learning and information sharing.
At the moment we use moodle, and open source learning platform, and while its potential seems nearly limitless, its usability is not so hot. At the moment I am finding a combination of out of the box Macintosh functions and google's wide array of free services to be the most intuitive and functional technology available.
And, that said, moodle has the potential to integrate much of the functionality I find so appealing to the hodge podge of google, firefox and mac apps i am finding so useful.

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Anarchy, activism and actionism

This morning I ate breakfast while reading a rollingstone article about Brad Will, an anarchist activist and journalist who was killed in October of 200 in Oaxaca during the teachers strike and general uprising against the corrupt Oaxaca state government.

THe article was a moving tale of a romantic idealist...
I am sympathetic to the causes of anarchism, sharing many of the beliefs and views of ontological anarchism.
The uprisings taking place around the world without any coverage on mainstream 1st economy media outlets beg the questions embedded in revolution. Can violence be justified to create social change? Or, does violence just serve to perpetuate the same systematic oppression that it seeks to overthrow.

These questions lead nicely to my own take on revolution. I tend to take a social evolution point of view, seeing revolution and rebellion in a similar light to changes in personal behavior and habit. When it becomes clear that a certain way of being in no longer sufficient to cope with the ecosocial circumstances we find ourselves in...change is required. My view is that many activists fall into the trap of reaction. Rage and fear are the primary emotions associated with this reaction to the contradictions and violence inherent in our current social structure. And our emotions are linked directly to our brains...mind and body as one. So while a reactionary may well have beautiful visions of a future state of being, backed by countless hours of study and massive intellectual knowing, s/he will still be sucked back into perpetuating the energy of the old system through actions colored by fear, rage and desperation.

In order to transcend this trap, it seems a decidedly taoist approach is often appropriate.

As Ghandi, one of the greatest agents of social change in recent times is often quoted as saying: Be the change you wish to see" This requires some hard introspection...if we truly want a world of peace and justice...that is what we must be...however, perhaps some of us want romantic fights of good against evil, chasing dreams and charging around the world like Don Quixote...perhaps....

So, to me using the relanguaged Actionist to describe myself and other individuals and organizations enacting proactive solution oriented actions tailored for strategy supporting social change movements. It may seem semantic, but creating a discerning category, nicely labeled and defined, for people who are less interested in drama and more interested in change is the first step in creating an accepted niche in our social ecology.

To finish off todays entry I would like to state my solidarity with and my admiration for activist of all ilk who are fighting for change around the world. And I think the time has come for a new category to start the process of de-polarizing the process of social transformation. I would love to see tree spikers, monkey wrenchers, and squatters strategizing with eco-entrepreneurs, board room activists, ecovillagers, indegenious councils and NGOs...even the random mavrick CEO.

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scribefire integration

integrating scribefire with blogger...trial 3.
so far I have been unable to upload to my blogspot account with scribefire, and I actualy lost a substantial piece of work on bioreactors and bioremediation technology...

one more try...
OK so third time is the charm...we are up and running using scribe fire for blog creation as i surf the web and uploading it to blogspot.
check out scribefire

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Frustration

I am at the verge of quiting...
The lack of ability (mine...or the current state of the art?) is really quite taxing. Trying to post up a blog has been a bit of an ordeal. I am not he ordinary blogger (or perhaps I am). I have been trying to integrate an existing body of work, and technology into the blogosphere to enable increase information sharing. So far I am trying to use Journler and Scribefire to enable quick and seamless blogging on current affairs in the "green revolution". However, I have been unable to integrate the various technologies, and am still struggling to get an adequate software suit to support my needs (on my budget...nil)...and on and on it goes...
for now at least I can be happy posting my first blog to blogspot...onward and upward.