In early 2014 activist Amanda Ream and members of Eviction Free San Francisco disrupted the fifth annual Wisdom 2.0 conference, at which Silicon Valley leaders discuss the benefits of ‘mindfulness’ practices. It was another confrontation between working-class residents of San Francisco and the technology employees who have gentrified their neighborhoods. A member of the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, Ream’s actions garnered support from other ‘socially engaged’ Buddhists from Berkeley and elsewhere. Secular critics have likewise questioned the appropriation of Buddhist practices by corporations whose business practices and products arguably undermine the cultivation of mindfulness. This article intervenes in these debates by outlining an approach called Contemplative Media Studies, which integrates critical media studies with the emerging field of Contemplative Studies. I argue that market imperatives have favored a corporate-friendly understanding of mindfulness that perpetuates structural injustice, and conclude that an expanded notion of civic mindfulness must include the revitalization of journalism and the development of non-commercial media systems.
Looking beyond celebrants and sceptics of social media, Kevin Healey taps the potential that exists to develop social media platforms, ethical codes and regulatory policies that support democratic values and institutions. This requires rejecting the capitalist ideology that drives debates about consumer privacy, industry regulation, and national security. He puts forward a commons-based approach to argue that democratic media must have elements independent from both state and corporate institutions. This framework views media in terms of public goods. Today, governments may have to subsidize networks that have become necessary. Expanding ‘the digital commons’ also requires universal principles that enable corporations, governments, activists, journalists and the public to assess changes in digital media. Pursuing the metaphor of social media as a coffeehouse requires a collective struggle. Social media ethics cannot be reduced to personal conduct, but must question the technologies, legal frameworks and organizational structures that constitute the networked environment within which citizens pursue their personal, social and political goals in order to achieve a mature social media environment that is both ethically responsive and economically sustainable.
The 2008 election crystallized a growing tension between different understandings of the "prophetic" element of religious faith. The contrast between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama's "pastor problems" reflects a struggle between those who would consolidate established power and those who seek to expand democratic ideals by demanding greater integrity from the social institutions that claim to represent them. Competing discourses of the prophetic unfold in the context of a critical juncture in media and religion, as demographic and technological shifts promise to alter the course of religious politics. The current moment is an opportunity for critical scholars to intervene on behalf of a new, more progressive religious politics. This article contributes to such intervention in two ways: first, by analyzing how competing discourses of the prophetic unfolded during the election and second, by explaining how the "prophetic" can serve as a key organizing concept in contemporary critical scholarship.
The techno-utopianism of Silicon Valley constitutes a quasi-religious ideology with economic and moral dimensions. While the ‘catechism’ of free market ideology has long historical roots, digital culture adds a moral dimension that equates the development of networked information systems with the achievement of human virtue. This article calls such assumptions into question by positing three guiding ‘proverbs’: Information is not wisdom; Convergence is not integrity; Transparency is not authenticity. Exposition of these proverbs highlights inequities of power and class privilege obscured by techno-utopian rhetoric, and calls for an approach to technological development grounded in the psychology of mature human spirituality.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.