This is it! Horizon Cybermedia, Inc. finally reaches its first anniversary! As you might know already, the company and website, http://www.explorationtheseries.com were launched on July 29, 2008?a modest media company with titanic ambitions! Founded on the premise that raw talent, skill and ability are the cornerstones of success on the universal platform of the internet, as opposed to political connections or the influence of self-appointed cultural gatekeepers, Horizon Cybermedia is steadily growing into a media company in its own right.It has been an exciting and eventful first year, with Horizon Cybermedia making strong and steady progress towards our stated goals:We have launched the first two episodes of the Exploration Film Series, with several more episodes still to come. The episodes, The Elephanta Caves and The Wine Country are currently online at our website http://www.explorationtheseries.com.Horizon Cybermedia has a YouTube channel featuring promotional videos for our films in HD.Horizon Cybermedia is also currently podcasting on iTunes.Horizon Cybermedia has a channel on Blip.tv.Horizon Cybermedia's promotional videos are also available on many other video-sharing sites on the web, such as Revver, DailyMotion, Yahoo, MySpace, MetaCafé, Veoh, Viddler, Vimeo, Sevenload, i2TV and others.Horizon Cybermedia has been regularly updating our blog with fresh, relevant, topical content for your reading pleasure and interest. Articles from the blog have been posted across the web at numerous article publishing and ezine sites.Horizon Cybermedia has also produced a DVD of a special version of our first film under the title Exploring Elephanta. The DVD was originally created for complimentary distribution in the film festival circuit. It will soon be available for purchase as a collector's item.However, the past is prologue. Horizon Cybermedia has only one direction it plans to move?onward and upward. Check back regularly with us at our website and blog for plenty of fresh, new media content to come. Some of the projects currently in the works include:Several more episodes in the ongoing film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar. We have already completed principal photography for films on such venues as Calcutta, India; Big Bear Lake, CA; the Buddhist Kanheri Caves near Mumbai, India; Half Moon Bay, CA, and other fascinating locations.Also in the works is a DVD release of the entire first season of the film series, Exploration with Uday Gunjikar, which will be on sale soon.We also have plans to release a print edition of selected articles from our blog. This project, however, will probably be several more years in the making. Expect the book to be released probably on our fifth anniversary (if not sooner).We are also working on several script ideas (in primary stages) and we plan, in the future, to expand our production scope to plot-driven short and feature-length film projects. We will also continue to produce high quality documentaries. Expect the rate and scope of our production efforts to grow dramatically as we continue to expand.Horizon Cybermedia's ambitious media production agenda is, ultimately, dependent on you, the viewer, for support. Our motivation has always been to produce high quality media content for your consumption?media content that respects your intelligence and appeals to your highest instincts to elevate your spirit. We aspire to produce quality art and media that holds to our mission statement:To be a positive voice in the media space;to put artistic integrity above mercenary interests;to make a truthful, meaningful artistic statement.To this end, we are dependent on you to support our operation. If our vision and ideals and the quality of our produced media content appeal to you, then please do continue to support us. You can do this in many ways:Spread the word about us amongst your friends and family. Encourage them regularly to check out the website and blog and to spread the word about us even further.If you are truly inspired by our mission statement and our efforts, perhaps you might be interested in making a direct contribution to support Horizon Cybermedia. You may do so securely and anonymously through Paypal by clicking on the Donate button to the right or on the contact form on our website.You might also be interested in investing in Horizon Cybermedia, Inc., to further contribute to our growth and expansion. For more information, feel free to contact Horizon Cybermedia either through the contact form on our website or directly via email.Here's looking forward to the coming year and the dramatic growth and expansion in our operation that it is sure to bring! Thank you for supporting us in the past year and we look forward to you joining us in many more adventures to come?exploring new horizons and journeying to ever more exciting venues.Wishing you the very best,Uday Gunjikar,Founder and CEO,Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

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If you ask people, ?What is the number one threat to democracy today?? some might answer ?the Taliban? or ?Al Quaeda? or ?Osama bin Laden? while others might suggest it's the Ahmadinejad regime in Iran or the Kim Jong-Il regime in North Korea. But while all of these are profoundly evil and threats to democracy in their own right, I have a slightly different opinion.Personally, I think that the biggest threat faced by all democratically elected governments the world over is the pervasive culture of dumbing down and simplifying political discourse to a level that is readily understood by the simplest of minds. Namely, reducing complex political ideas into slogans, buzzwords and labels just so that they can appeal to the average electorate, the majority of which may well be untutored in the niceties of social and political issues.By dumbing down complex ideas, one creates the illusion of being comfortable and secure in one's political choices without having to perform the difficult tasks of questioning the political rhetoric or digging deeper into the political agendas and ideas of our elected officials?which are vital and critical elements of any functioning democracy. Instead, we are encouraged not to think for ourselves and to let politicians do the thinking for us while they feed us a steady stream of meaningless Orwellian doublespeak that numbs the brain into a catatonic stupor, while they do pretty much whatever they like, unburdened by such trifles as public accountability.The media is probably the biggest purveyor of this culture of simplified political rhetoric. While force-feeding their invariably skewed and simplified version of current events down our throats on a daily basis, they have no qualms about marginalizing any genuine political discourse when they fail to comprehend the issues and ideas that they are confronted with. And because the media holds the biggest megaphone in our culture, their dumbed-down version of reality usually ends up being the most influential.If this principle applies to the media, then it applies even more so to political advertising, which thrives on this very process of dumbing down and simplifying ideas to make them palatable and comprehensible to the public. Take the case of the 2004 Presidential elections, the results of which were the direct result of the culture of simplified and dumbed-down political discourse. The most obvious example of this principle is the ?swiftboating? of John Kerry by the Bush Presidential campaign?in which a decorated Vietnam War veteran was systematically publicly defamed by a dishonest ad campaign, while the public, apparently, lacked the necessary sophistication to see through this shameful display of political chicanery.Anyone who takes a look at the history of democratic institutions worldwide has to come to the conclusion that democracy has everything to do with highly sophisticated, complex ideas and modes of thinking. The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are themselves the products of the ?Western Enlightenment? and are inspired by the works of such Enlightenment thinkers as John Locke and Thomas Paine. And going even further back in history to the origins of Western democratic thought?it is no coincidence that democratic ideas were conceived in Athens, Greece, which was, at the time, the foremost center of Classical learning, producing such minds as Socrates, Plato (though he expressed profound disillusionment with Athenian democracy in his works) and Aristotle.The foundation of any functional democracy is the exchange of complex ideas. Communication at a sophisticated level is directly at odds with tyranny or dictatorship, which is rooted in state-enforced dogma or dictates that go unquestioned and unreasoned. Without a functional political discourse in society, involving the sophisticated exchange of ideas, what inevitably follows is a scenario where you have political power concentrated in the hands of a few, namely, oligarchy or totalitarianism, while the media tells you how and what to think because you are discouraged from thinking for yourself. This leads directly to a scenario where advertising wins elections?the campaign with the most advertising dollars inevitably wins through sheer brute force, as opposed to intelligent political debate or discourse. What that means is that political offices are for sale to the highest bidder.If one cannot think for oneself, then one cannot ask the difficult questions?which is the core of the democratic process. One unquestioningly accepts the status quo and the undisclosed agendas of political appointees and elected officials.For example, if one cannot think for oneself, one cannot ask such tough questions as:Who really funded the Obama Presidential campaign?Why does President Obama go out of his way to pander to the Islamic world?Is there a connection?When President Bush was captured on camera holding hands with and kissing King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the media had a field day. After all, Saudi Arabia boasts one of the worst human rights records in the world, besides the fact that Osama bin Laden as well as the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were of Saudi origin.But when President Obama goes out of his way to bow to the Saudi King, one has to wonder, has any US Head-of-State ever bent over so low to appease a foreign dignitary?But that is a tough question that one can only truly consider in a genuinely democratic society, in which one has the freedom to express oneself without the threat of political reprisals.Horizon Cybermedia is about trying to raise the level of public awareness through art and cinema. We are unapologetic in our attempts to try to encourage people to think for themselves and to ask tough questions. Check out our website at http://www.explorationtheseries.com for continually updating content with fresh, new and interesting ideas.Wishing you the very best,Uday Gunjikar,Founder and CEO,Horizon Cybermedia, Inc.

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