Wilber

I aggregated the timelines for the Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production Phases of The Echo Chamber Project for a paper that Dr. Cline's is working on.

Below is an overview of how the film came about and where it has been so far. It also traces the evolution of the collaborative aspects of the post-production.

More details about the pre-production phases can be found in The Origins of The Echo Chamber Project as well in the Baltimore City Paper cover story written by Charles Cohen.

More details about the actual production can be found by reading the interviews that have been transcribed.

There are links to blog entries covering the big post-production highlights in the timeline, and more details can be found by sifting through the blog archives...

I thought that I would pass along and give a brief overview of Adam Leonard's Master's Level Thesis called "Integral Communication." Leonard builds off of Ken Wilber's Integral Philosophy to provide a framework for integrating the seven major branches of communication theories.

From my perspective, Wilber's ideas are providing the theoretical glue for tying so many different concepts together and helping catalyze my learning curve.

The taxonomy of Values and Worldviews listed in Appendices A, B, C & D is an interesting perspective from Don Beck's Spiral Dynamics integral.

Rebecca MacKinnon agreed to pass along some of my ideas about a New Media Ecosystem, and commented to me that it was a bit difficult to quickly digest and convey to people. I sent her back the following e-mail that gives a little more context to the issue, and hopefully clarifies it a little bit -- But there is no easy solution for a complete paradigm shift in how we understand and comprehensively explain reality.

These ideas are dense which is exactly why they haven't been implemented yet -- We need to pool together the collective knowledge of our society in order to integrate all of the different viewpoints into one comprehensive system that takes into account all of the different ontologies. I propose that this system is Ken Wilber's Integral Philosophy, and I sent Rebecca the following e-mail trying to give a little bit more context.

I refined my vision of the new media ecosystem at the Online Social Networking Conference 2005, and the following flowchart ties together a lot of my thoughts.

I've written probably close to 8,000 words about this chart across over 40 different posts at OSN2005. I hope to synthesize and summarize these posts as soon as I receive permission from some of the other participants to include their insights and questions.

Below are some additional notes about the chart.

[UPDATE: I added more context to this post after receiving links from Rebecca MacKinnon and David Weinberger.]

I refined my vision of the new media ecosystem at the Online Social Networking Conference 2005, and the following flowchart ties together a lot of my thoughts.

I've written probably close to 8,000 words about this chart across over 40 different posts at OSN2005. I hope to synthesize and summarize these posts as soon as I receive permission from some of the other participants to include their insights and questions.

Below are some additional notes about the chart.

I had contacted Ken Wilber's Integral Institute a while ago asking if there had been any scholars who have tried to integrate Wilber's Integral Philosophy with the field of communications or journalism.

I had written a few preliminary articles on the concept of "Integral Journalism." But before I took this concept too far, I wanted to find other scholars who have already synthesized Wilber's philosophy with communications theories. I don't have the time or the resources to do this type of thing by myself -- especially if I couldn't receive any support from Wilber or his Integral Institute.

The concept of Integral Filmmaking combined with the principles of Open Source could introduce new methods for how meaning is created.

Traditionally, the Mainstream Media or documentary filmmakers had the most power in determining what meaning was created through their editing judgments.

But combining the Internet, Blogging and documentary filmmaking mediums could allow the audience to create their own meaning from information instead of relying upon the "objective" mainstream media, partisan press or closed-source documentary films.

The Open Source tactics of the The Echo Chamber documentary and website could create up to four distinct phases of meaning creation that could provide a unique economic competitive advantage.

EXISTING PROCESS OF MEANING CREATION
INFLUENCE OF CONFIRMATION BIAS
INTEGRAL PROCESS OF MEANING CREATION
FOUR PHASES OF MEANING CREATION

There are flaws with a purely "objective" press as well as a purely partisan press.

Objective mainstream journalism relies upon the government institutions and other official government sources -- but the two-party system has a virtually monopoly on the spectrum of debate.

Partisan journalists allows their political biases to disproportionately present a set of facts so that their position will win the argument every time.

Integral Journalism is a new paradigm that could potentially provide the framework to integrate objective facts with a set of possible subjective interpretations of those facts (i.e. competing partisan, non-partisan and transpartisan hypotheses).

There have been acknowledged failures of the mainstream media leading up to the war in Iraq.

My Echo Chamber Hypothesis proposes that the "He Said/She Said" objectivity constraints of journalistic production broke down after there was a consensus within the political leadership in Congress to authorize military intervention in Iraq.

After October 2002, the media served as an uncritical Echo Chamber to the Executive Branch's countdown towards war.

* How can this dichotomous objectivity constraint be overcome without resorting to a partisan press?
* Is there a new paradigm of journalistic production that can more comprehensively cover the complex issues of the day?

As I reflect on how this documentary started and where it has ended up, I notice how much it has evolved. I have been writing up synopses and talking to a number of people about the project, and I realize that there is some confusion about the motivations and intentions of The Echo Chamber.

Is the film is going to criticize the politics of the selling the war to the American people and serve as a thinly-veiled attack on President Bush? Or is this a serious academic investigation of the downfalls of objective mainstream journalism?

ORIGINAL MOTIVATIONS