Philosophical Evening at the Brooklyn Museum

Yesterday I decided to go to the Brooklyn Museum, when I went on their website I saw they were doing the first installment of a conversation series. The topic for the night was to be media philosophy and cultural understanding. Two modern and renowned thinkers would have a conversation.

I purchased my cheap ticket online and took the train over early so I could tour the museum. The speakers were Douglas Rushkoff and Steven Berlin Johnson. The topic were the internet, social networking media, TV and how culture interacts with them. Here is a list of notes I took from the conversation and subsequent thoughts I had and conversations with Doug Rushkoff afterwards:

"
Ideas are part of a network building off of each other aka 'Idea sex'

Technology is everything that was invented after you were born

The net was designed for sharing, when used in other ways (.com) it will eventually bite the user in the ass.

'Let them eat blog' -Doug R.

The access to tools does not equal the efficacy to use them in a productive way. (in response to my question about 'The Cult of the amateur')

A new form of political understanding needs to be created to describe the philosophy of sharing ideas on the internet. Communism has been used to describe net sharing, this is not fully accurate and carries a negative connotation. a new describer is needed.

'You are the fragmented generation' - Doug's response to my question about his feelings towards my generation's (and my own) obsession and need for facebook. I said 'I have used facebook for a quarter of my life, Mcluhan says we fragment our souls and give parts to mediums we use.'   He said 'you are the fragmented generation, there is no way around that.'
"

It was a wonderful evening of thinking. I think that between this experience and COTH 370 philosophy of communication, I would be happy being a social and media philosopher. Thats now my back up plan incase film doesn't work out for some crazy reason.

-Glenn