Antonio Lopez, an alumni who earned his MA in Media Studies (’05) has published a new book Mediacology. The book proposes a design-for-pattern approach called "media permaculture," which restructures media literacy to be in sync with new media practices connected with sustainability and the perceptual functions of the right brain hemisphere. In the same way that permaculture approaches gardening by establishing the natural parameters of its ecological niche, media permaculture explores the individual's "mediacological niche" in the context of knowledge communities. By applying bioregional thinking to the symbolic order, media permaculture redresses the standard one-size-fits-all literacy model by taking into account diverse cognitive strategies and emerging convergence media practices. Antonio López applies a practical knowledge of alternative media, cross-cultural communication, and ecology to build a meaningful theory of media education.
 
Antonio López has cultivated a career in grassroots community media activism, citizen journalism, media education, and blogging. His essays about media and culture are featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, and book anthologies, most recently in the MacArthur Foundation's series Digital Learning in the Twenty-first Century.