Life in the Foam

Episode 013 – Tobey Senderovich

Clinton Ignatov — Thu, 02 Apr 2020 02:38:58 +0000

Join York University graduate Tobey Senderovich and I for a sprawling conversation about thought, cognition, psychology, behaviorism, wisdom, Heidegger, James J. Gibson’s ecological psychology, John Vervaeke’s machinery of knowing, Friedrich Kittler, social lock-down, media effects, and anything else we can throw in! Tobey’s degrees in Neuroscience and Psychology make him the perfect friend to paint a big picture of the world’s new common ground.

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Episode 012 – Howard Rheingold

Clinton Ignatov — Wed, 09 Oct 2019 01:30:59 +0000

Beneath the well-popularized myths of giants like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, computing has fast-moving, highly-technical story involving very many people and places. And in 1984, Howard Rheingold—who had been the embedded writer documenting and communicating the work of the Xerox PARC team as they developed the GUI, Ethernet, and Object Oriented Programming paradigms—saw the very-real possibility of that story going unrecorded, and lost to history. His book Tools for Thought became the definitive work documenting the history of computer development, and was a key resource of mine for creative Silicon and Charybdis. His later books, like The Virtual Community and Virtual Reality, further cemented Howard Rheingold status as the key writer and test-subject for the largest technological shift in history. He was editor of The Whole Earth Catalogue, testified for the ACLU against the 1996 Communications Decency Act, …

Episode 011 – Thom Stark

Clinton Ignatov — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 02:22:59 +0000

The internet exploded in the 90s from an obscure academic network into a world-changing total-environment, the ramifications of which we are still trying to understand. In that time, Thom Stark was living in the San Francisco Bay Area, reporting from the ground on the developing network technologies which undergird all of our modern communications. His website, StarkRealities.com, contains his nearly 100 columns from these formative years covering everything from technologies like Bluetooth, Wifi, IPv4 vs. IPv6, to social concerns regarding “netiquette”, privacy, spam, misleading marketing practices, and government regulation. They make up, for all intents and purposes, a comprehensive history text which never underestimates the reader. His work is a clear demonstration of how everything old is new again, for want of larger cultural absorption of what was, for early adopters, common knowledge.

Read the SCOTUS decision regarding corporate goals …

Episode 010 – Richard Altman

Clinton Ignatov — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 19:35:31 +0000

From the middle of Canada came Marshall McLuhan: a Winnipigeon. So too hails film editor Richard Altman, whose recently released McLuhan Unclaimed series of videos ought to give you something to think about for the next ten years as you think to play it in the background of your down-time. Altman deftly distills hundreds of hours of audio and video footage into a tight, psychedelic montage of meaning which can be jumped into at any point, for any duration, to give your brain something meaty to chew on. If you want to take a deep-plunge into what media ecology is all about, Altman’s McLuhan Unclaimed series is the best crash-course going; think of it as the acoustic, surreal complement to my more linear, visual, prosaic work. It’s nice to have company in the anti-environment, and in this episode we …

Episode 009 – Kimberley Noble

Clinton Ignatov — Wed, 03 Jul 2019 01:47:42 +0000

Kimberley Noble is a multiple-award-winning journalist for investigative and feature stories that explored the how things really work in corporate Canada’s corridors of power. She was former long-time staff writer for The Globe and Mail and Maclean’s Magazine, and won the National Newspaper Awards for Business Reporting for her coverage of both the Edper Group (the forerunner of the conglomerate now known as Brookfield) and of the big money behind the Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute. She was also nominated for two additional NNAs for series about executive compensation and white-collar crime; among other awards were a business writing prize for an investigative profile of Frank Stronach and a Professional Writers Association of Canada feature writing award for an analytical story about sentencing of Garth Drabinsky.

At present she is teaching Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber and was …

Episode 008 – Andrew McLuhan

Clinton Ignatov — Sat, 06 Apr 2019 22:00:41 +0000

In the cozy town of Picton, Ontario lays a treasure trove of books. The accrual of two life-times of annotations makes this personal library one of the world’s most important resources for insight on media and our modern environment. Inheritor Andrew McLuhan has started The McLuhan Institute to carry on the work of diligently cataloguing and analyzing this vast store of wisdom. Go to http://themcluhaninstitute.com to see all the ways you can follow along, help support, and be a part of this great human endeavour!

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Episode 007 – Down the Rabbit Hole with Fredrik Knudsen

Clinton Ignatov — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 02:03:50 +0000

With over 300,000 YouTube subscribers, Fredrik Knudsen has well-earned his success as a documentary film maker. His carefully researched, thoughtfully produced series Down the Rabbit Hole sets a high bar for interesting, respectful, and honest explorations of some of the strangest psychologies and stories that have emerged in our modern world. From early 20th century history straight through to contemporary internet scenes and dramatics, Fredrik’s videos aren’t just entertaining as hell, but are important case studies ripe with teachable moments and cautions for staying sane in a hyper-connected world.

Down the Rabbit Hole

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Episode 006 – The Trivium with Rachel Fulton Brown

Clinton Ignatov — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 01:50:22 +0000

A conversation with Medievalist Professor Rachel Fulton Brown on the relationship between the Classic Trivium and its relation to digital media today.

Professor Fulton Brown’s
Fencing Bear at Prayer Blog
Academic website including course syllabi

An overview of McLuhan’s interest in the Trivium

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Episode 005 – Many McLuhans Symposium

Clinton Ignatov — Fri, 19 Oct 2018 05:02:24 +0000

On September 21, 2018 I attended the Many McLuhans Symposium at the Thomas Fisher Rare Books Library in Toronto! Here is a journey through my takeaway from the event, told through excerpts and interviews, featuring many wonderful academics, McLuhan family members, and enthusiasts in the scene.

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