Each time you visit this page, you’ll find a different randomized selection of brilliant Evolutionary Literature to expand your heart, mind, and soul.
♥ Enjoy & Evolve ♥
🠗 🧙🏽♂️ randomized 🧙🏽♂️ 🠗
-
❝ The Zeitgeist Movement Defined is the official representative text of the global, non-profit sustainability advocacy organization known as The Zeitgeist Movement (TZM). This tediously sourced and highly detailed work argues for a large-scale change in human culture, specifically in the context of economic practice. The dominant theme is that the current socioeconomic system governing the world at this time has severe structural flaws, born out of primitive economic and sociological assumptions originating in our early history, where the inherent severity of these flaws went largely unnoticed.
However, in the early 21st century, these problems have risen prominently, taking the consequential form of increasing social destabilization and ongoing environmental collapse. Yet, this text is not simply about explaining such problems and their root causality – It is also about posing concrete solutions, coupled with a new perspective on social/environmental sustainability and efficiency which, in concert with the tremendous possibility of modern technology and a phenomenon known as ephemeralization, reveals humanity’s current capacity to create an abundant, post-scarcity reality.
While largely misunderstood as being “utopian” or fantasy, this text walks through, step by step, the train of thought and technical industrial reordering needed to update our global society (and its values) to enable these profound new possibilities. While this text can be read strictly from a passive perspective, it was created also to be used as an awareness or activist tool. The Zeitgeist Movement, which has hundreds of chapters across dozens of countries and is perhaps the largest activist organization of its kind, hopes those interested in this direction will join the movement in global solidarity and assist in the culmination of this new social model, for the benefit of the whole of humanity. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Ben McLeish, Computers & Society, Counterculture, Culture, Cyberia, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Matt Berkowitz, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Scarcity, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement
-
❝ In their bestseller Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams showed the world how mass collaboration was changing the way businesses communicate, create value, and compete in the new global marketplace.
This sequel shows that in more than a dozen fields—from finance to health care, science to education, the media to the environment—we have reached a historic turning point. Collaborative innovation is revolutionizing not only the way we work, but how we live, learn, create, govern, and care for one another. The wiki revolutions of the Arab Spring were only one example of how rebuilding civilization was not only possible but necessary.
With vivid examples from diverse sectors, Macrowikinomics is a handbook for people everywhere seeking a transformation of industry and institutions by embracing a new set of guiding principles, including openness and interdependence. Tapscott and Williams argue that this new communications medium, like the printing press before it, is enabling nothing less than the birth of a new civilization. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Anthony Williams, Computers & Society, Connection, Counterculture, Cyber Culture, Democracy, Don Tapscott, Evolution, History, Humanity, Media, Networks, Technology, The Internet, Wiki
-
Ray Kurzweil
The Singularity Is Near:
When Humans Transcend BiologyFuturist Philosophy Book [2005]
❝ The great inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil is one of the best-known and most controversial advocates for the role of machines in the future of humanity. In his latest book, he envisions an event—the “”singularity””—in which technological change becomes so rapid and so profound that our bodies and brains will merge with our machines.
The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event— a human- machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful. In practical terms, this means that human aging and pollution will be reversed; world hunger will be solved; our bodies and environment transformed by nanotechnology to overcome the limitations of biology, including death; and virtually any physical product can be created from information alone. The Singularity Is Near also considers the social and philosophical ramifications of these changes, and is certain to be one of the most widely discussed and provocative books of 2005. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: A.I., Biology, Evolution, Futurism, Intelligence Explosion, Posthumanism, Ray Kurzweil, Singularity, Transcendence, Transhumanism
-
Dr. Timothy Leary
The Politics of Ecstasy
Psychedelic Philosophy Book [1968]
❝ (Excerpt) In addition, there were the politics that plagued our ecstatic enterprises themselves, no matter how we twisted and squirmed to escape it. Many a commune, demonstration, or love-in wrecked on the twin shoals of property and control. Then, too, there were the political fires kindled by the friction of latter-day ecstasy cults rubbing up against the stiff hide of the old iguana-brained Establishment.
It is an understatement to write that Timothy Leary was privy to this stormy marriage of the mundane and the rapturous. Simultaneously observer and participant, Dr. Leary analyzed events around him even as he helped make them happen. Boundlessly energetic, keenly insightful, he was uniquely qualified to work both sides of Heisenberg Street. Imagine him studiously taking notes even as he skated on one foot along the vibrating rim of an indole ring. ❞Categories: Books, Literature
Tags: Counterculture, Democracy, Dr. Timothy Leary, Drug War, Drugs, Ecstasy, Entheogens, Evolution, History, Humanity, Life, Media, Politics, Psychedelics, Religion, Technology, The 60s
-
❝ Now includes “The Life Inc. Guide to Reclaiming the Value You Create”
In Life Inc, award-winning writer Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. The resulting ideology, corporatism, has infiltrated all aspects of civics, commerce, and culture—from the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self, from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking, from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of Facebook. Life Inc explains why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business. Most important, Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place. ❞Categories: Books, Literature, Montages, Symposia
Tags: Capitalism, Corporatism, Corporatocracy, Corruption, Decommodification, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Optimism, Technology
-
❝ The New York Times bestselling “manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical solutions addressing the world’s most pressing concerns: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care and freedom” (The Wall Street Journal).
“Since the dawn of humanity, a privileged few have lived in stark contrast to the hardscrabble majority. Conventional wisdom says this gap cannot be closed. But it is closing—fast.
In Abundance, space entrepreneur turned innovation pioneer Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler document how progress in artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing synthetic biology, and other exponentially growing technologies will enable us to make greater gains in the next two decades than we have in the previous 200 years. We will soon have the ability to meet and exceed the basic needs of every person on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp.
Breaking down human needs by category—water, food, energy, healthcare, education, freedom—Diamandis and Kotler introduce us to innovators and industry captains making tremendous strides in each area. “Not only is Abundance a riveting page-turner…but it’s a book that gives us a future worth fighting for. And even more than that, it shows us our place in that fight” (The Christian Science Monitor). ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks, TED
Tags: A.I., Abundance, Evolution, Futurism, Nanotechnology, Optimism, Peter H. Diamandis, Post-Scarcity, Singularity, Technology, Utopia
-
❝ From the author of the bestselling “Art and Physics” comes a new book with breathtaking implications. Making remarkable connections across a wide range of subjects, including neurology, anthropology, history, and religion, “Leonard Shlain” argues that the development of alphabetic literacy itself reinforced the human brain’s left hemisphere — linear, abstract, predominantly masculine — at the expense of its right — holistic, concrete, visual, feminine. “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” charts the connection between alphabetic literacy and monotheism; patriarchy and misogyny, and tracks the correlations between the rise and fall of literacy and the status of women in society, mythology, and religion. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Alphabet, Ancient History, Anthropology, Art, Culture, Evolution, Goddess, History, Leonard Shlain, Literacy, Media Theory, Neuroscience, Patriarchy, Psychology, Religion, Technology, Type, Writing
-
R. Buckminster Fuller
Critical Path
Civilizational Evolution Book [1982]
❝ R. Buckminster Fuller is regarded as one of the most important figures of the 20th century, renowned for his achievements as an inventor, designer, architect, philosopher, mathematician, and dogged individualist. Perhaps best remembered for the Geodesic Dome and the term “Spaceship Earth,” his work and his writings have had a profound impact on modern life and thought.
Critical Path is Fuller’s master work–the summing up of a lifetime’s thought and concern–as urgent and relevant as it was upon its first publication in 1981. Critical Path details how humanity found itself in its current situation–at the limits of the planet’s natural resources and facing political, economic, environmental, and ethical crises.
The crowning achievement of an extraordinary career, Critical Path offers the reader the excitement of understanding the essential dilemmas of our time and how responsible citizens can rise to meet this ultimate challenge to our future. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature
Tags: Apocalypse, Awakening, Buckminster Fuller, Counterculture, Culture, Evolution, History, Humanism, Imagination, Media Theory, Progress, Spaceship Earth, Technology
-
Ralph Nader
To the Ramparts
Politics & Prose Book Lecture [2018]
“Since the release of Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, Nader has led the charge against destructive and exploitative corporate power. The co-founder of public interest groups including Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert, and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, Nader continues to demonstrate the efficacy of grassroots activism for democratic change. His new book is a searing analysis of how Big Business, abetted by the flaws of recent presidential administrations, created the political climate that put Trump in the White House. As provocative as ever, Nader takes both Democrats and Republicans to task for their failures to curb corporate excesses and their abandonment of the poor and middle-classes.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Civics, Culture, Economics, Grassroots Activism, Hatred, Politics, politics & prose, Ralph Nader
-
❝ Does the science of evolution really prove that life, humanity, and the universe as a whole are meaningless accidents? On the contrary, as science has shown how everything in the universe is subject to evolution, including matter, life, and human culture, these very facts reveal that the process of evolution is unmistakably progressive. And, as Steve McIntosh demonstrates, when we come to see how evolution progresses, this reveals evolution’s purpose-to grow toward ever-widening realizations of beauty, truth, and goodness. McIntosh argues that the purpose of evolution is not intelligently designed or otherwise externally controlled; rather, its purpose is being creatively and originally discerned through the choices of the evolutionary creatures themselves. Without relying on spiritual authorities, the author shows how the scientific story of our origins is actually a profound and sacred teaching compatible with many forms of contemporary spirituality. Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins presents a fresh and compelling view of evolutionary science and philosophy, and shows how a deeper understanding of evolution itself can lead directly to a more evolved world. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Creativity, Evolution, History, Humanity, Integral, Life, New Age, Origins, Purpose, Science, Spirituality
-
❝ Society is broken. We can design our way to a better one.
In our interconnected world, self-interest and social-interest are rapidly becoming indistinguishable. If current negative trajectories remain, including growing climate destabilization, biodiversity loss, and economic inequality, an impending future of ecological collapse and societal destabilization will make ‘personal success’ virtually meaningless. Yet our broken social system incentivizes behavior that will only make our problems worse. If true human rights progress is to be achieved today, it is time we dig deeper―rethinking the very foundation of our social system.
In this engaging, important work, Peter Joseph, founder of the world’s largest grassroots social movement―The Zeitgeist Movement―draws from economics, history, philosophy, and modern public-health research to present a bold case for rethinking activism in the 21st century.
Arguing against the long-standing narrative of universal scarcity and other pervasive myths that defend the current state of affairs, The New Human Rights Movement illuminates the structural causes of poverty, social oppression, and the ongoing degradation of public health, and ultimately presents the case for an updated economic approach. Joseph explores the potential of this grand shift and how we can design our way to a world where the human family has become truly sustainable.
The New Human Rights Movement reveals the critical importance of a unified activism working to overcome the inherent injustice of our system. This book warns against what is in store if we continue to ignore the flaws of our socioeconomic approach, while also revealing the bright and expansive future possible if we succeed.
Will you join the movement? ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, The Zeitgeist Movement
Tags: 21st Century, Anti-Capitalism, Capitalism, Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Economics, Evolution, Futurism, History, Human Rights, Humanism, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Manifesto, Movement, Oppression, Peter Joseph, Philosophy, Post-Capitalism, Post-Scarcity, Poverty, Progress, Purpose, Revolution, Social Justice, Social Pathology, Society, Sociology, Technology, The Zeitgeist Movement, TZM
-
Neonn Felicity Curations
📚 Lectures / Books 📚
YouTube Playlist
«Prev1/14Next»
Geo-Strategy#2: Christian Zionism and the Middle East Conflict
Geo-Strategy #8: The Iran Trap
Nazis Never Left — They Just Rebranded. Here’s How They Took Over Mainstream Politics
Michael Parenti "The Struggle for History" North Hollywood, California June 1994
Michael Parenti "Democratic Government vs. The State" Long Beach, California September 1991
Michael Parenti "Reflections on the Overthrow of Communism" Santa Rosa, California March 1996
A Spectre Haunting: China Miéville on the Communist Manifesto
Manifesting the Utopian Mind 🔮 Neonn Felicity 🔮 Lightning in a Bottle 2022
When Freedom Is Oppression: White Resistance To Federal Power w/ Jefferson Cowie | MR LIVE 1/30/23«Prev1/14Next»
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Culture, Neonn Felicity Curations, Neonn YouTube Playlist, YouTube Playlists
-
❝ A provocative work by medical ethicist James Hughes, Citizen Cyborg argues that technologies pushing the boundaries of humanness can radically improve our quality of life if they are controlled democratically. Hughes challenges both the technophobia of Leon Kass and Francis Fukuyama and the unchecked enthusiasm of others for limitless human enhancement. He argues instead for a third way, “democratic transhumanism,” by asking the question destined to become a fundamental issue of the twenty-first century: How can we use new cybernetic and biomedical technologies to make life better for everyone? These technologies hold great promise, but they also pose profound challenges to our health, our culture, and our liberal democratic political system. By allowing humans to become more than human – “posthuman” or “transhuman” – the new technologies will require new answers for the enduring issues of liberty and the common good. What limits should we place on the freedom of people to control their own bodies? Who should own genes and other living things? Which technologies should be mandatory, which voluntary, and which forbidden? For answers to these challenges, Citizen Cyborg proposes a radical return to a faith in the resilience of our democratic institutions. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: A.I., Citizenship, Cyborgs, Democracy, Ethics, Evolution, Futurism, Healthcare, History, Humanity, James Hughes, Life, Medical Ethics, Medicine, Posthumanism, Science, Technology, Transhumanism, Universal Healthcare
-
Chris Anderson
Makers:
The New Industrial RevolutionTechno-Philosophy Book [2012]
❝ Wired magazine editor and bestselling author Chris Anderson takes you to the front lines of a new industrial revolution as today’s entrepreneurs, using open source design and 3-D printing, bring manufacturing to the desktop. In an age of custom-fabricated, do-it-yourself product design and creation, the collective potential of a million garage tinkerers and enthusiasts is about to be unleashed, driving a resurgence of American manufacturing. A generation of “Makers” using the Web’s innovation model will help drive the next big wave in the global economy, as the new technologies of digital design and rapid prototyping gives everyone the power to invent — creating “the long tail of things”. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: 3-D Printing, Chris Anderson, Design, Economics, History, Industrial Revolution, Makers, Open Source Design, Talks at Google, Technology
-
❝ The author of The Book of Questions claims that humankind and technology have merged into a new global entity, a living extension of humankind acting through a complex system of computers and offering a promise of ever-greater prosperity. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks, TED
Tags: Evolution, Futurism, Globalism, Gregory Stock, Humanism, Machines, Metaman, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Spirituality, Superorganism, Transhumanism
-
Ram Dass
Be Here Now
Psychedelic Philosophy Book [1971]
❝ A Lama Foundation Book. Describes one man’s transformation upon his acceptance of the principles of Yoga and gives a modern restatement of the importance of the spiritual side of man’s nature. Illustrated. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: Awakening, Be Here Now, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Energy, Enlightenment, Evolution, Humanism, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Potential, Progress, Ram Dass, Spirituality, Taoism, Wisdom
-
Douglas Rushkoff
Open Source Democracy
Social Philosophy Lecture [2008]
Computers & Society, NYU. Following is the foreword, by Douglas Alexander, to Rushkoff’s paper on the same topic:
“The internet has become an integral part of our lives because it is interactive. That means people are senders of information, rather than simply passive receivers of ‘old’ media. Most importantly of all, we can talk to each other without gatekeepers or editors. This offers exciting possibilities for new social networks, which are enabled – but not determined – by digital technology.
In the software industry, the open source movement emphasises collective cooperation over private ownership. This radical idea may provide the biggest challenge to the dominance of Microsoft. Open source enthusiasts have found a more efficient way of working by pooling their knowledge to encourage innovation.
All this is happening at a time when participation in mainstream electoral politics is declining in many Western countries, including the US and Britain. Our democracies are increasingly resembling old media, with fewer real opportunities for interaction.
What, asks Douglas Rushkoff in this original essay for Demos, would happen if the ‘source code’ of our democratic systems was opened up to the people they are meant to serve? ‘An open source model for participatory, bottom-up and emergent policy will force us to confront the issues of our time,’ he answers.
That’s a profound thought at a time when governments are recognising the limits of centralised political institutions. The open source community recognises that solutions to problems emerge from the interaction and participation of lots of people, not by central planning.
Rushkoff challenges us all to participate in the redesign of political institutions in a way which enables new solutions to social problems to emerge as the result of millions interactions. In this way, online communication may indeed be able to change offline politics.”
Categories: Essays, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Civilization, Computers & Society, Culture, Democracy, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Futurism, Humanity, NYU, Open Source, Technology
-
❝ The term Cosmism was introduced by Tsiolokovsky and other Russian Cosmists around 1900. Goertzel’s “Cosmist Manifesto” gives it new life and a new twist for the 21st century. Cosmism, as Goertzel presents it, is a practical philosophy for the posthuman era. Rooted in Western and Eastern philosophy as well as modern technology and science, it is a way of understanding ourselves and our universe that makes sense now, and will keep on making sense as advanced technology exerts its transformative impact as the future unfolds. Among the many topics considered are AI, nanotechnology, uploading, immortality, psychedelics, meditation, future social structures, psi phenomena, alien and cetacean intelligence and the Singularity. The Cosmist perspective is shown to make plain old common sense of even the wildest future possibilities. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: A.I., Apocalypse, Ben Goertzel, Computers & Society, Cosmism, Counterculture, Culture, Evolution, Futurism, Humanism, Manifesto, Nanotechnology, Philosophy, Posthuman Age, Posthumanism, Practical Philosophy, Psychedelics, Singularity, Technology, Uploading
-
“Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama — the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood radical movements in American history.
The Alabama Communist Party was built from scratch by working people who had no Euro-American radical political tradition. It was composed largely of poor blacks, most of whom were semiliterate and devoutly religious, but it also attracted a handful of whites, including unemployed industrial workers, iconoclastic youth, and renegade liberals. Kelley shows that the cultural identities of these people from Alabama’s farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the development of the Party. The result was a remarkably resilient movement forged in a racist world that had little tolerance for radicals.
In the South race pervaded virtually every aspect of Communist activity. And because the Party’s call for voting rights, racial equality, equal wages for women, and land for landless farmers represented a fundamental challenge to the society and economy of the South, it is not surprising that Party organizers faced a constant wave of violence.
Kelley’s analysis ranges broadly, examining such topics as the Party’s challenge to black middle-class leadership; the social, ideological, and cultural roots of black working-class radicalism; Communist efforts to build alliances with Southern liberals; and the emergence of a left-wing, interracial youth movement. He closes with a discussion of the Alabama Communist Party’s demise and its legacy for future civil rights activism.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: 1930s, Activism, Alabama, America, Bashkar Sunkara, Communism, Culture, Economics, Fascism, History, Jacobin, Nostalgia, Organizing, Racial Justice, Racism, Robin D.G. Kelley, Slavery, Socialism, The Great Depression
-
❝ Blending cutting-edge ideas with incisive spiritual insights, Evolutionaries is the first popular presentation of an emerging school of thought called “evolutionary spirituality.” Carter Phipps, the former executive editor of EnlightenNext magazine, asserts that evolution is not only a scientific but also a spiritual idea in a book whose message has the power to bring new meaning and purpose to life as we know it. Readers will be fascinated and enlightened by Evolutionaries, a book which Deepak Chopra, the world-renowned author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Superheroes, Jesus, and Buddha, says “is going to help create a worldview that will influence our vision of the future direction of evolution and also our role in consciously participating in it. ❞
Categories: Books, Literature, Symposia, Vlogs
Tags: Carter Phipps, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Enlightenment, Evolution, Evolutionaries, Globalism, Humanism, Mythology, Optimism, Philosophy, Potential, Progress, Science, Spirituality, Superorganism
-
David Graeber
DEBT:
The First 5,000 YearsAnthropological Economic History Book [2012]
❝ Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom: he shows that before there was money, there was debt. For more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.
Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it. ❞
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Anarchism, Anthropology, Anti-Capitalism, Culture, David Graeber, Debt, Economics, Evolution, History, Inequality, Literacy, Money, Talks at Google, Technology, Writing
-
Steven Pearlstein
Can American Capitalism Survive?
Politics & Prose Book Lecture [2018]
Epic lecture on the false tenets of neoliberalism, summerized well by the book’s subtitle: “Why Greed is Not Good, Opportunity is Not Equal, & Fairness won’t Make Us Poor.” An absolutely brilliant dismantling of capitalist ideology, a must-see.. ♥ Neonn
“Pearlstein’s chronicle of the last few decades of democratic capitalism documents that the “greed is good” era has left out major tenets of Adam Smith’s vision. Instead of fostering the social capital ensuring that benefits reach all socio-economic strata, the system has suffered increasing income disparity, causing many to lose faith in the free market economy. Pearlstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and the Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, gives a succinct and clear diagnosis of capitalism’s malaise and offers practical steps for healing it, including a guaranteed minimum income paired with universal national service, tax incentives for companies to share profits with workers, ending class segregation in public education, and restoring competition to markets.”
Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Capitalism, Culture, Economics, Ideology, Neoliberalism, politics & prose, Socialism, Society, Steven Pearlstein
-
❝ In the early 1960s, computers haunted the American popular imagination. Bleak tools of the cold war, they embodied the rigid organization and mechanical conformity that made the military-industrial complex possible. But by the 1990s—and the dawn of the Internet—computers started to represent a very different kind of world: a collaborative and digital utopia modeled on the communal ideals of the hippies who so vehemently rebelled against the cold war establishment in the first place.
From Counterculture to Cyberculture is the first book to explore this extraordinary and ironic transformation. Fred Turner here traces the previously untold story of a highly influential group of San Francisco Bay–area entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the National Book Award–winning Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of the wildly successful Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley. Thanks to their vision, counterculturalists and technologists alike joined together to reimagine computers as tools for personal liberation, the building of virtual and decidedly alternative communities, and the exploration of bold new social frontiers.
Shedding new light on how our networked culture came to be, this fascinating book reminds us that the distance between the Grateful Dead and Google, between Ken Kesey and the computer itself, is not as great as we might think. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia, Talks
Tags: Awakening, Bay Area, Counterculture, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Cyberculture, Cybernetics, Evolution, Fred Turner, History, Humanism, Optimism, Progress, Silicon Valley, Stuart Brand, The 60s, Utopia, Utopianism, Whole Earth Network
-
❝ It is a well-established fact that in rich societies the poor have shorter lives and suffer more from almost every social problem. The Spirit Level, based on thirty years of research, takes this truth a step further. One common factor links the healthiest and happiest societies: the degree of equality among their members. Further, more unequal societies are bad for everyone within them-the rich and middle class as well as the poor.
The remarkable data assembled in The Spirit Level exposes stark differences, not only among the nations of the first world but even within America’s fifty states. Almost every modern social problem-poor health, violence, lack of community life, teen pregnancy, mental illness-is more likely to occur in a less-equal society.
Renowned researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett lay bare the contradictions between material success and social failure in the developed world. But they do not merely tell us what’s wrong. They offer a way toward a new political outlook, shifting from self-interested consumerism to a friendlier, more sustainable society. ❞Categories: Books, Lectures, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Capitalism, Decommodification, Equality, Evolution, Humanism, Inequality, Kate Pickett, Optimism, Public Health, Richard Wilkinson, Society, Spirituality, The Zeitgeist Movement
-
Douglas Rushkoff
Media Virus:
Hidden Agendas in Popular CultureMedia Theory Book [1998]
❝ The most virulent viruses today are composed of information. In this information-driven age, the easiest way to manipulate the culture is through the media. A hip and caustically humorous McLuhan for the ’90s, culture watcher Douglas Rushkoff now offers a fascinating expose of media manipulation in today’s age of instant information. ❞
Categories: Books, Interviews, Literature, Symposia
Tags: Conspiracy, Cultural Evolution, Culture, Douglas Rushkoff, Evolution, Evolutionaries, Hidden Agendas, Humanism, Media Theory, Mythology, Optimism, Popular Culture, Potential, Progress, Propaganda, Viral Media
