Introductions

Fear sells. You hear about this everywhere, so much so we’ve taken it for granted and salesmen treat it as physical law.

And because that belief is so ingrained into our society, much of the marketing industry has turned into an existential piranha pool. And I hate that.

I hate that not only because of what it encourages us to think about our bodies and our minds, but because of all our ways to communicate, marketing and public relations have the greatest potential to inspire us to live better lives.

I find it ironic that “relationship marketing” contributes to a growing sense of alienation and a gap in our ability to relate.

My name is Jedediah Walls, and I study places where media intersects with our ideas of attachment and relationships, and how it affects our ability to form meaningful bonds.

I started off as a college journalist and editorial writer who really wanted to make a difference using these new things called “blogs”. It was only a matter of time before a charity asked me to build one for them, and I haven’t looked back since.

Since then I’ve grown into a Nonprofit Marketing Consultant, an instructor in Fine Arts and a producer in New Media. I’ve played a part in bringing over 60 million dollars to health and human services in the United States and internationally. My religion is interfaith – I’m a deep believer in the idea of all of us coming together to work on problems we share. In this regards I also work with many different church groups, atheist and skeptic societies, shamanic practitioners and other people engaged in healing alienation through faith. Faith to me is another media, one I respect regardless of individual affiliation.

I love the field of social informatics, and it has inspired my work in understanding how and why groups come together around artifacts and technologies. My Master's Degree is a Liberal Studies degree focused in Online Social Networking. That means I study Facebook, why people use Facebook, but more importantly why groups come together around change. Ultimately it is the study of trust and love.  

This work is grounded with two Bachelor's degrees in Marketing and Advertising, and a certification in small business entrepreneurship.

And now I am beginning a PhD program for Media Psychology at Fielding Undergraduate University. As I begin this chapter of my life, I am becoming more aware of media not only as a thing that humans do, but as an ontological fact. To say it simply (with apologies to Kai Erikson):  No media, no humans no universe.

So I’m deeply concerned with the broader meanings of media and how an understanding of this can help us know ourselves better.