The Institute for Inquiry (IFI), a non-profit organization, proposes a new generation of journalism that forefronts physical, biological, and cultural life as the realities most at stake and least understood.
IFI's first inquiry, “A Wireless Age?” opens physical, biological, and cultural life--and the changes occurring there--to new consideration.
Electromagnetic fields have been described as the 'newest, biggest, manmade environment.' What are electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and how are they created? What are the differences between EMFs that occur naturally and those generated by high voltage lines, household appliances, cellular antenna, WiFi/WiMax, or pulsed, phased-array radar? Does life have a bio-electrical basis? How sensitive are young, growing, and aging bodies to today's EMF 'soup'?
Most of us have neither thought about nor imagined the electromagnetic spectrum/airwaves as a fabric of energies in which viruses, bacteria, plants, animals, and humans function. Nor have we thought about changing the EMFs around us through broadcast radio and tv, household appliances, and radar in the 20th century; or cellular antenna, WiFi and WiMax in the 21st.
Most personalized wireless technologies explode potentials for listening to music, conversing, researching and sharing information, finding entertainment, getting work done, or buying and selling online. What does it mean to live in a hybridized reality, where the real and virtual take place simultaneously, each seamlessly shaping the other? How is the inner and outer life of a child or young adult changing? How are relationships within the living world changing? How does the repertoire of knowledge in place-based cultures stand out? Is life on earth becoming more or less diverse; more or less alive ? What new explorations, considerations, and choices are before us?
Most of us look to news media to enter the momentousness of the times in which we live. Through the news, each of us finds out what is happening in the world and how it concerns us.
But what happens when news journalism fails to identify, prioritize, or accurately diagnose events and developments of urgent, evolutionary importance--and to advance questioning for them?
Today, scant attention is being given to the fact that introductions of novel nanoscale materials, transgenic plants and animals, human therapies and enhancements, or electronic interfaces with the human brain radically change the physical fabric of a world that already exsists. Instead magical technological fixes are weighed against apocalyptic futures and boosts to economic and world competitiveness are weighed against losses. Deleted from public view are gases, chemicals, genes, and electronics placed within the physical fabric of the world that, running fast and deep, are quickly taking over from biological evolution. Such radical changes force public inquiry into the concrete, living world in ways that are vastly new.
Suddenly, previously unseen or taken-for-granted dimensions of life are urgently at stake. What does the global public understand--and need to understand--about physical, biological, and, indeed, human cultural life? What exists and what are we changing? What are we creating?
IFI uses an innovative inquiry model that invites rigorous questioning with lead and network contributors. IFI's vision is to create a participatory, global network that challenges us to learn how physical, biological, and cultural life flourishes; and to use such reasoning to inform economic and political aspirations.
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