The capitalist network that runs the world | Social and Behavioral Science Research The 1318 transnational corporations that form the core of the economy. Superconnected companies are red, very connected companies are yellow. The size of the dot represents revenue (Image: PLoS One) As protests against financial power sweep the world this week, science may have confirmed the protesters' worst fears. The study's assumptions have attracted some criticism, but complex systems analysts contacted by New Scientist say it is a unique effort to untangle control in the global economy. The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York's Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere (see photo). "Reality is so complex, we must move away from dogma, whether it's conspiracy theories or free-market," says James Glattfelder. The Zurich team can. The work, to be published in PloS One, revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships (see image). So, the super-entity may not result from conspiracy. 1. 2. 3.
Homepage | Fiercelight - Where Spirit Meets Action Occupy Seattle: Octogenarian activist Dorli Rainey on being pepper-sprayed by Seattle police, importance of activism - Countdown with Keith Olbermann To Our Faithful Current.com Users: Current's run has ended after eight exciting years on air and online. The Current TV staff has appreciated your interest, support, participation and unflagging loyalty over the years. Your contributions helped make Current.com a vibrant place for discussing thousands of interesting stories, and your continued viewership motivated us to keep innovating and find new ways to reflect the voice of the people. We now welcome the on-air and digital presence of Al Jazeera America, a new news network committed to reporting on and investigating real stories affecting the lives of everyday Americans in every corner of the country. Thank you for inspiring and challenging us. – The Current TV Staff
Curiosity Doesn’t Kill The Student News Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it’s good for the student. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school. Intelligence is important to academic performance, but it’s not the whole story. One of those is conscientiousness—basically, the inclination to go to class and do your homework. von Stumm and her coauthors wondered if curiosity might be another important factor. The researchers performed a meta-analysis, gathering the data from about 200 studies with a total of about 50,000 students. von Stumm wasn’t surprised that curiosity was so important.
Archetypes of Dissent Radical politics is defined by opacity, anonymity and dissimulation … and by invisibility: by the political presence of absence. The power of surprise, of secret organization, of rebelling, of demonstrating and plotting covertly, of striking invisibly, and in multiple sites at once, is the key element that the Invisible Committee, anonymous authors of The Coming Insurrection, affirm for confronting a power whose firepower is vastly superior. To be explicitly visible, to appear explicitly – in a maneuver, in organizing, even in an occupation –“is to be exposed, that is to say above all, vulnerable.” Here Guy Fawkes and black ski masks become emblems of veritable nobodies, of invisible underground men and women, of people without qualities who want to disguise their inner qualities, who shun visibility and have little desire to be the somebody the world wants them to be. These bodies are publicly expressive bodies yet are bodies weary of revealing too much of themselves.
Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters | Journal of the mental environment The Sociology of Work By Matt Vidal Kings College, London Since his recent untimely death, Apple co-founder and design guru Steve Jobs has been exalted to the level of a cult hero by an outpouring of fans on social media and many commentators in the traditional news media. Under Jobs’ direction, Apple launched a series of hi-tech products that were not only trailblazing but also retained both a coolness factor and a user-friendliness that rival companies have yet to even mimic, let alone surpass. The narrative of Jobs-the-entrepreneur helps reaffirm the dominant American narrative of individualism and meritocracy. A sociological perspective would question this story. The individualism-and-free markets narrative is seemingly supported by the discipline of economics, and the latter tends to dominate discussions about work and occupations, in part because it aligns so neatly with the dominant narrative. The sociology of work goes back to the classic sociological theorists: Marx, Durkheim and Weber.
Would You Rather Be Over-Informed or Happy? Not long ago I wrote a blog post that quickly resonated with thousands of people called “Living in a Brainwashed Culture of Urgency.” I want to take that discussion to the next level highlighting not only the habit in our culture toward urgency, but also to being overly informed. The reality is our digital machines make it so easy to get an abundance of information at the touch of a fingertip. For the most part, the need to know all the latest news whether it’s social, political, sports, health, or what-have-you actually gets in the way of our happiness. But, it seems like we need all that information. Do we? Somehow the media has us at the digital counter saying, “Super-Size me please.” Like an addiction to food, most of the time we ingest it because it’s either a habit and we don’t know what else to do, or it’s a way for us to check out from feeling bored, anxious or generally uncomfortable with the moment. Be on the lookout for moments of “checking” the media.
This Is What Revolution Looks Like Welcome to the revolution. Our elites have exposed their hand. They have nothing to offer. Our decaying corporate regime has strutted in Portland, Oakland and New York with their baton-wielding cops into a fool’s paradise. Get back into your cages, they are telling us. The rogues’ gallery of Wall Street crooks, such as Lloyd Blankfein at Goldman Sachs, Howard Milstein at New York Private Bank & Trust, the media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers and Jamie Dimon at JPMorgan Chase & Co., no doubt think it’s over. The historian Crane Brinton in his book “Anatomy of a Revolution” laid out the common route to revolution. Truthout doesn’t take corporate funding - this lets us do the brave reporting and analysis that makes us unique. Despotic regimes in the end collapse internally. The process of defection among the ruling class and security forces is slow and often imperceptible.
STUDENTSKE BORBE Al Gore: Internet is Changing Thinking The Nobel Prize winner and former vice president talks global networks, Marshall McLuhan, and how computing is changing what it means to be human. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters Technology and the "World Brain" Writers have used the human nervous system to describe electronic communication since the invention of the telegraph. In 1851, only six years after Samuel Morse received the message "What hath God wrought?" Since the nervous system connects to the human brain and the brain gives rise to the mind, it was understandable that one of the twentieth century's greatest theologians, Teilhard de Chardin, would modify Hawthorne's metaphor yet again. The supercomputers and software in use have all been designed by human beings, but as Marshall McLuhan once said, "We shape our tools, and thereafter, our tools shape us." The change being driven by the wholesale adoption of the Internet as the principal means of information exchange is simultaneously disruptive and creative.