by Paul Klemperer

There's a lot to be said for the old political slogan found on aging Volvos across America: Think Globally, Act Locally. It can be interpreted on several levels. Internationalism political activism, which is directed toward sweeping global issues like colonialism and environmental reclamation,creates a wide angle lens through which to see our lives. This helps us overcome the kinds of self-interest that create barriers between us, like class, sex, race.

What does this have to do with new media? There is a contradictory trajectory in America, directly linked to media and education. Numerous studies have shown for decades now that Americans are getting smarter, more worldly, less naive, and yet also dumber, less informed and emotionally more immature. How is this possible?

Due to our incredible wealth as a nation, and certain safeguards built into the Constitution, we have more access to information than perhaps any other nation. Technological breakthroughs have created an information explosion so that the populace as a whole is more informed than ever before. It is now easy to "think globally," just log onto the Internet. We tend to not think globally, however, but rather excessively locally, which explains why porn is by far the largest sector in cyberspace.

Even for those whose local thinking isn't restricted to sex, the information glut combined with the increasing specialization of vocational education make it hard to think globally. We tend to be selectively smart, and generally uninformed.

This is especially true of technocratic and scientific fields, but it is becoming more common as the human database continues to expand. Take music, for example. How many of us are very familiar with one genre but totally ignorant of so many others. The cliche for me is the hundreds and thousands of people whose only awareness of jazz is Kenny G.

One obvious solution to the information overload is networking. We are all becoming specialists, but we can help each other stay abreast of important issues, events and changes in our various fields by networking. We can connect to sites on the world-wide web, or we can create links in real space by organizing eventsm workshgops and newsletters.

There are also national periodicals devoted to consolidating and summarizing information. The Utne Reader and the World Press Review are two journals which help us think globally, even if it's just for five minutes in the bathroom before returning to local drudgery. Increasingly, we need to take this approach to keep abreast of all that is going on. Part of the task for progressive media is not just to provide information, but to break through the local barriers by making it clear why we need this information. To wax philosophical for a moment, the problem is not unlike the Zen quest for enlightenment. This type of understanding goes beyond merely accumulating informational data, to a perception of the inter-linking nature of reality. Whatever your area of expertise, if you pursue enlightenment, dig deeper into your specialized knowledge, you begin to see patterns which connect your area to others. Progressive media has a number of templates handed down from previous generations of struggle, such as the trade union movement of the 1930s, the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s, and the alternative press of the 1970s. But we are at a point where previous cultural activism must be synthesized into a new model of activism, in which new media like the Internet can simultaneously reach a widely varied demographic. It is all too easy to preach to the choir, but this will mostly just restate our local differences. The challenge is to break through the information overload and find ways to build a real global consciousness.