"Ideas germinate in culture."
- Rian Hughes

Shannon/Weaver Communication Model (1948)

How often have you been confronted with technology which was difficult to use?

How often have you been forced to communicate with technology on its own terms, and been frustrated with it’s lack of understanding?

Witness the flashing VCR clock in your home – technology is definitely lacking humanity.

A whole “Atari” generation has been born, lived, grown up and got jobs. Generation X now controls the media they consumed as children, but exactly what have they added to the cultural lexicon?

Just as ecologists view the life on this planet to be part of a single biological organism, media activists see the datasphere as the circulatory system for today’s information, ideas, and images. An extension of the planetary ecosystem, the datasphere serves as a breeding ground for new ideas in our culture. Minds are exposed to the datasphere whenever they come into contact with communications technology such as television, computer networks, magazines, video games, fax machines, radio shows, CD’s, or videocassettes. Media viruses spread through the datasphere the same way biological viruses spread through the human body, or a community. But instead of traveling along an organic circulatory system, a media virus travels through the networks of the mediasphere.

Cyberpunks think of the mediasphere as an ecological system.

Homer’s Odyssey – two words, referring to a cultural icon that represents a myriad of concepts. Homer Simpson – same quantity, different subculture. In addition, this latter icon represents a collated weekly modern philosophy, not just inspiring it once. These constantly changing icons “speak” this flexible iconography, and thereby transcend it.

The potential for imagery using a TV matrix (PAL = 576 x 768 pixels x 25 frames or 50 fields per second) is very large, but finite (roughly equivalent to 8400 TV’s for 8 billion years). Imagine a box that could (re)present any of these at a moment’s notice – it would be a helpful communication tool, as relevant perhaps as the drum or stylus.

We have the right to reproduce anything we see – if only for increased communication value – for with this one idea, peace is possible.