Transmission Project

The Transmission Project has been searching in advance of our website launch for the perfect quote that captures our vision and mission. The final quote we chose came from Lyndon Johnson’s signing remarks for the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act:

I do believe that we have important things to say to one another—and we have the wisdom to match our technical genius.

From those remarks also came:

So I think we must consider new ways to build a great network for knowledge — not just a broadcast system, but one that employs every means of sending and storing information that the individual can use.

Slightly drier, we dug through Fighting Poverty: Utilizing Community Media in a Digital Age from the World Congress on Communication for Development (WCCD) October 2006:

Access to the means of voice and communication is central to a people-centred approach to development both for its intrinsic human importance and its role in shared culture, access to knowledge and education, civic participation in decision making, ensuring good governance through accountability and providing other tools that assist the achievement of development goals.

Development institutions and organisations should provide assistance to build the capacity of community media through training, strengthening of networks and sector associations, technical assistance and investment. Support for community media should be provided on the basis of strategic long term commitment recognising that impact must be measured not only in short term results but in community media’s contribution to long term social change.

Some quotes from Marshall McLuhan:

Today we are beginning to notice that the new media are not just mechanical gimmicks for creating worlds of illusion, but new languages with new and unique powers of expression.

A new medium is never an addition to an old one, nor does it leave the old one in peace. It never ceases to oppress the older media until it finds new shapes and positions for them.

The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent. The machine easily masters the grim and the dumb.

And John Naisbitt:

The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human