Faith Popcorn 2012: Women on Top

WHAT’S POPPING @ FAITH POPCORN’S BRAIN RESERVE 

JANUARY 2012 2012 Predictions 

www.faithpopcorn.com  212.772.7778 

The SHE-CHANGE 

A sea change is any widespread sweeping shift  that affects all elements of a system.  In the coming decade we will see a sea change  in the way feminine power is incorporated in  society. Characteristics once thought to be solely  the province of women will be adopted as best  practices. We call this pervasive revolution the  SHE-CHANGE.   

1.VERY YOUNG WOMEN ARE LEADING THE WAY 

What We Are Seeing 

Young single women purchase twice as many  homes as young single men. Two thirds of all  undergraduate degrees and 60% of Master’s  degrees are going to women. The number of  women with college degrees has more than  doubled in the last 30 years while the number of  men with degrees has stayed the same. Single  women between the ages of 22 and 30 earned  8% more than men in that age range in most  U.S. cities. In 2011 all three winners of Google’s  Science fair were women. 

What We Are Predicting 

By the end of the decade there will be more  businesses started by women than men.  Currently women own 35% of startup businesses.   

What It Means 

Women are the key to economic growth  and recovery. Their creativity and gift for  management make them natural employers.  Monetary domination will cease to be the sole  metric by which success is measured. Women  will put people before profit and won’t demand  the same exorbitant salaries and bonuses for  which their male counterparts have become  infamous.  2.THE NUCLEAR FAMILY 2.0 

What We Are Seeing 

Single motherhood is no longer perceived as an  unfortunate situation but a conscious lifestyle  decision. In Sweden 55% of births were to  unmarried women and in Iceland the share was  66%. These countries have some of the smallest  gender gaps when it comes to salaries. The US,  with unmarried women delivering 41% of the  children born is not far behind. Marriage is also  losing its status as a mandatory life goal. Almost  a third of Japanese women in their early 30s  are unmarried and over one-fifth of Taiwanese  women in their late 30s are single. Today less  American women in their early 30s are married  than at any other time since the 1950s. Conversely, stay-at-home dads have formed  a supportive and quickly expanding community/ network. A recent survey showed that 73% of  men had no problem with their spouse being  the primary breadwinner. In the UK there are  10 times as many stay-at-home dads as there  were a decade ago and more than a quarter of  all new fathers give up at least part of their work  schedule to take care of their children. 

What We Are Predicting 

Over the next decade the amount of households  containing traditional nuclear families will  decrease drastically. Right now 23% of families  would be considered nuclear, with some states  like Baltimore and Washington coming in with  under 10%. Alternative forms of birthing,  marriage, childrearing and family structuring will  become commonplace.  

What It Means 

There will be a rise in services that provide  flexibility to all different family structures.  Co-parenting sites that bring single  parents together to help raise children  outside of marriages (coparent.co.uk,  WeCanParentTogether.com) will become the new  matchmaking craze. Day and night care centers  will become one of the most important and  lucrative services available. 

3.THE NEW CHIVALRY 

What We Are Seeing 

The phrase “the weaker sex” no longer holds any  meaning. While men and women have different  strengths and weaknesses women’s strengths  are becoming more viable. Women are  experiencing an upswing in their collective power  while at the same time men are confronting  some negative side effects of changing societal  expectations. Men are 3 times more likely to  suffer from alcoholism and account for 75% of  all suicides. Internet pornography is negatively  influencing male sexuality leading to more  depression and dysfunction. Men smoke more,  eat worse and are not as good at dealing with  stress.  Women on the other hand are learning to protect  themselves, effectively removing the old notion  that they need men for the job. In recent years  the number of women purchasing guns has risen  73% with the majority of the women buying the  weapons for personal protection.  

What We Are Predicting 

It will be up to women to protect men in this new  world order. They will need to teach men how to  survive and thrive in a society that puts more and  more value on feminine characteristics.  

What It Means 

Males’ problems with aggression, depression  and performance will continue to worsen as long  as they go untreated. Educators and employers  will have to deal with the sociological problems  men are experiencing. Support systems and  counseling will be made available to help  young men deal with issues as they become  problematic. Employers interviewing for  positions will need to gauge how in touch with  their emotional side male candidates are.  Unchecked masculinity will be seen as a liability.  Corporations will lose a lot of their male populace  to the stay-at-home dad trend. 

4.WOMEN ARE CLOSING THE  GAP IN THE ECONOMY 

What We Are Seeing 

Women have earned the reputation of being  more secure and patient investors. This proved  invaluable in 2008 during the economic collapse.  Female investors were more likely to hold  onto assets longer and sell when the time was  optimum reducing their losses. The past few years have shown women to be a  major economic force. They control $12 trillion  of the overall $18.4 trillion in global consumer  spending. Women are making better investments  than men. A recent book titled “Warren Buffet  Invests like a Girl” elicited this response from the  legendary investor: “Guilty as Charged”. Female  stock brokers experience higher returns, earning  on average 9% while their male counterparts only  see returns of 5.82%. Companies with Boards containing two or more  women are more profitable. If a company does  not have a strong female representation in its  board of directors or upper management it will  be a red flag for many investors. John Hagel  co-founder of the Deloitte Center for the Edge,  a risk management group, has said “The future  belongs to those of us, female or male, who can  adopt and embrace the feminine archetype.” 

What We Are Predicting 

Traditionally female behavior will become  preferred in business situations. Companies  will value employees of both genders who  demonstrate conscientiousness over extraversion  and testosterone fueled decision making. 

What It Means  

Employers will administer personality tests to  determine the degree of a prospective employees’  EI (emotional intelligence). Positions like Chief  Consciousness Officer will become a crucial role  in all major companies in order to make sure the  female focus is maintained.  

5.WOMEN FROM THE EAST ARE SETTING THE EXAMPLE 

What We Are Seeing 

Asian women are finding their natural skills  as transformative leaders crucial to the  development of their respective countries. Almost  a third of all CEOs in Thailand are women, the  highest ratio of female to male CEOs in the  world and in China women hold 34% of all senior  management positions.  Companies in Asia are doing everything to retain  their female talent. In Japan, Google provides  

its female employees with taxis to get them  home safely after dark. In India, pharmaceutical  company Boehringer Ingelheim allows young  female employees to bring their mothers along  on business trips to avoid the cultural disapproval  women sometimes face when traveling alone. 

What We Are Predicting 

Asian women will stand out as an example of  the benefits of incorporating women into the  business climate of a nation. Other countries  will try to capitalize off the same model once  it is demonstrated how profitable it is. 

What It Means 

Over the next 40 years around a billion people will  move from the rural regions of India and China  into 59 megacities, each with populations averaging 5 million people. The influx of  qualified female managers is and will be one of  the most important changes going on in global  business for the next decade. Companies who  leverage this to their advantage will see massive  rewards. IN CONCLUSION The SHE-CHANGE is exactly what society  needs right now. We need to rely on  compassion more than competition and  innovation more than invasion. The  introduction of this new feminine power  into all aspects of our lives will bring about a new era of productivity and peace. 

Please let me know what you’re seeing and thinking,  

Faith@faithpopcorn.com Best Future, Faith 

Source:http://faithpopcorn.com/ContentFiles/PDF/FPBR%20Predictions%202012.pdf

Futurist:Jason Silva

The Immoralist

Transcendent Man

The Immoralist

How Drugs Helped Invent the Internet & the Singularity

The Undivided Mind

Unbounded Imagination

Jason Silva: Transcendant Man

Author:Brian Hoffstein on February 8, 2012, 12:00 AM

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Jason Silva is a transcendent man. As a filmmaker, philosopher, and futurist, Silva is always thinking big. Currently in the process of creating a feature length documentary, Silva has released a series of short clips that are attracting attention. The videos are sometimes under 2 minutes long, and show Jason during an ecstatic meditation covering some specific idea related to the future. Silva says he is trying to share his techno-optimistic views in ways that inspire people with awe and wonder, and spark conversation within the greater “marketplace of ideas”. His most recent video centered around Abundance: The Future is Better Thank You Think.

Watch the video here:

Big Think interviewed Silva to find out about his inspiration for the video, and what we can expect from him in the future.

Big Think: You seem so optimistic about the future, why are you so convinced?

Jason Silva: When I came across Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, I began to understand the unlimited creative potential of the human species, to not just transcend our biological limitations by upgrading our biological software, but also to impregnate the universe with intelligence. The exponential growth curves of information technology spilling over into the domestication of biotechnology and nanotechnology coupled with the possibilities of artificial intelligence were dazzlingly seductive.
I couldn’t get enough, and often felt that these ideas were bigger than their usual dry, academic packaging.  Where did aesthetic presentation fall into this? And so I decided to launch my own answer to this question. The Beginning of Infinity video, shown recently at The Economist World in 2012 Conference and The Singularity Summit, is part of a series of short form “ecstatic meditations” exploring this co-evolution of humans and technology that simultaneously epiphanizes and inspires. The goal was to animate and reverse engineer rapturous awe.  Think of them as shots of philosophical espresso. My latest, ABUNDANCE, was inspired by Peter Diamandis' book of the same name. 

Big Think: What about Abundance inspired you and why is it such an important book for people to read?
Jason Silva: What's exciting about Abundance is that it does a marvelous job of articulating precisely how the exponential growth curves of technology can be leveraged to solve humanity's grand challenges. In a world of "doom and gloom", Its nice to have an alternate vision, and one based on data-drive facts and extrapolations. 

Big Think: How did you get the idea to create these videos? What was your creative inspiration?
Jason Silva: My short videos are an attempt at communicating genuine inspiration: they seek to transmute epiphanies in real time. In an age saturated in media, how do we infect people with optimism and excitement? My videos aim to do that--- they are capsules of passion and curiosity. 

Big Think: How has technology enabled you to become one of these “do-it-yourself innovators” as mentioned in the book?
Jason Silva: The fact that I can shoot, edit, and produce these videos independently is a testament to the exponential growth curves of technology.  20 years ago the camera alone would have been 25 thousand dollars.  For under 1000 dollars today you can shoot, edit, and post your vision in the world. 

Big Think: Where does this video fit into the larger context of your work, and what can we expect from you in the future?

Jason Silva: I'm working on multiple levels of content so that people have multiple points of entry to these ideas.  The short films of philosophical espresso will live online and hopefully continue to spread. I'm also raising financing for a feature length documentary-- (working with a talented Oscar Winning producer on that)... I'm in talks on some TV projects as well... and will be speaking at several places over the next few months including Google, The Economist Ideas Fest, Next Berlin, UPenn, and MIT.

More videos and information on Jason can be found on his website at www.thisisJasonSilva.comand make sure you follow him on Twitter @Jason_Silv

The Future of Book Design (Circa 1909): Or (Back to the) Future of Book Design

Futurism (1909-1944) was perhaps the first movement in the history of art to be engineered and managed like a business. Since its beginning, Futurism was very close to the world of advertising and, like a business, promoted its product to a wide audience. For this reason, Futurism introduced the use of the manifesto as a public means to advertise its artistic philosophy, and also as a polemic weapon against the academic and conservative world. The poet F.T. Marinetti, founder of the movement, wrote in his first manifesto of February 1909, "Up to now, literature has exalted a pensive immobility, ecstasy, and sleep. We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racer's stride, the mortal leap, the punch and the slap. We affirm that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. . . We will destroy the museums, libraries, academies of every kind, will fight moralism, feminism, every opportunistic or utilitarian cowardice." Futurism, as opposed to Cubism, an essentially visual movement, found its roots in poetry and in a whole renovation of language, and featured the concept of the New Typography. Since 1905, Marinetti had promoted from the pages of his magazine Poesia (Poetry) the idea of verso libero(free-verse), which was intended to break the uniformity of syntax of the literature of the past. Then, just after the launch of the Futurist movement, verso libero evolved into the parole in libertà (words-in-freedom), the purpose and methodology of which were outlined in a manifesto dated 1913 and bearing the long title Destruction of Syntax/Imagination without Strings/Words-in-Freedom. In this manifesto Marinetti stated: "Futurism is grounded in the complete renewal of human sensibility that has generated our pictorial dynamism, our antigraceful music in its free, irregular rhythms, our noise-art and our words-in-freedom . . . . By the imagination without strings I mean the absolute freedom of images or analogies, expressed with unhampered words and with no connecting strings of syntax and with no punctuation." These last lines of the quotation were already included in a previous manifesto of May 1912,Technical Manifesto of Futurist Literature, where Marinetti proposed that writers "banish punctuation, as well as adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions." Actually, an elimination of punctuation had already been practiced by Mallarmé in his poems "Un coup des Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard," published in Paris in 1897 in the magazine Cosmopolis. However, this magazine had very little impact, even within literary circles. It was published as a book only in 1914, and until that year it was almost unknown. Marinetti's theories, on the other hand, thanks to the wide circulation of his manifestos, were widely circulated since 1912 and influenced the work of hundreds of writers and poets throughout Europe, including Guillaume Apollinare (in his early calligrammes, like Lettre-Ocean), Blaise Cendrars, Reverdy, etc. In The Destruction of Syntax manifesto, Marinetti wrote: "I initiate a typographical revolution aimed at the bestial, nauseating idea of the book of passéist and D'Annunzian verse, on seventeenth Century handmade paper bordered with helmets, Minervas, Apollos, elaborate red initials, vegetables, mythological missal ribbons, epigraphs, and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our Futurist thought. My revolution is aimed at the so-called typographical harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and reflux, the leaps and bursts of style that run through the page. On the same page, therefore, we will use three or four colors of ink, or even twenty different typefaces if necessary. For example: italics for a series of similar or swift sensations, boldface for violent onomatopoeias, and so on. With this typographical revolution and this multicolored variety in the letters I mean to redouble the expressive force of words." Marinetti's theory of "words-in-freedom" was central for the renewal of typography in this century, and his book Zang Tumb Tumb (1914), with its explosive layout, is undoubtedly a masterpiece in this field. Even El Lissitzky, in his writings on new typography, quoted Marinetti's theories as a starting point for everyone involved in experimental and modernist book-making. For the Futurists, book-making was in fact the result of a precise theory to adhere to when conceiving their books. Futurist books led to the future (hence the name of the movement), functioning as emblems of technical and cultural progress, and using all possible media of serial production in the mechanic age. Thus, mass production and distribution was vital to the spread of their works, as well as to the Futurist philosophy itself. "We stand," proclaimed Marinetti, "on the last promontory of the centuries! Why should we look back to the past?" During the same years Italian Futurism was flourishing, the Russian Futurists were also devoted to a wide experimental movement in book-making that was inspired by a very different ideology. The Russians' philosophy considered books to be works of art, and often featured original illustrations or unique, hand-made covers, and were printed in very limited editions. This approach was not the result of a specific philosophy of typography (as was Marinetti's) but rather the consequence of the philosophy from which the Russian avant-garde was born. This ideology was characterized by the revival of Russian cultural heritage (for example, the re-evaluation of the lubok (devotional folk painting) as a mystical image linking them to their roots), and a state of closure toward the West, which was seen as potentially threatening to their old traditions. Marinetti's theories were widely influential and resulted in the production of hundreds of books by many Futurists. The books were often characterized by nearly anonymous covers with explosive inner pages where often traditional typefaces were eschewed in favor of newly designed typefaces that spread over the pages without any respect to the rules of layout. These new "alphabets" were designed in order to express different stati d'animo(states of mind), and often were put together to form various and odd shapes; suddenly, word became image. A perfect example of this movement is Francesco Cangiullo's book Caffè-Concerto - Alfabeto a sorpresa (Café-Chantant - Surprising Alphabet), completed in 1916, but printed after the war in 1919). Cangiullo uses words in different typefaces to form images of scenery, landscapes, and even human bodies. During the 1910s, Futurist book-making was devoted mainly to such typographic experiments in "words-in-freedom" which were finally summarized in the book Les mots en liberté futuristes (The Futurist Words-In-Freedom) by Marinetti in 1919. In the 1920s, Futurism's new direction of emphasizing the "mechanic age" gave new energy to the movement. The masterpiece of this decade is surely the famous bolted book, created by Fortunato Depero in 1927. But if the binding itself was a real mechanic manifesto, the layout was a revolution in book-making. The multicolored text is printed on different kinds of paper, in typefaces of varying shapes and sizes that give life to vibrant geometric shapes. The book has neither up nor down, right nor left; not one but many virtual layouts, so that in order to read the text, the book has to be turned round and round again.Finally, in the early 1930s, Marinetti published another famous book, Parole in Libertà Futuriste, olfattive, tattili, termiche (The Words-in-freedom, Futurist, Olfactive, Tactilist, Thermal) that was printed by a lithographic process in many colors on metal sheets, and with a metal binding. With this metal book (followed in 1934 by another one with illustrations by Bruno Munari, L'anguria lirica(Lyric Cucumber), the Futurist experiments on bookmaking reached their highest point and ideally closed the circle of over 25 years of literary, poetic and typographic innovations. A Bibliography of Italian FuturismReturn to Gallery Return to Colophon Page Table of Contents

Fortunato Depero, Depero futurista 1913-1927 (Depero the Futurist 1913-1927), 1927.
Book bound with two bolts. 

This book is a first-hand account of the Futurist Fortunato Depero's (1892-1960) approach to Futurism until 1927. It featured for the first time a mechanical binding consisting of two bolts holding the pages together, as conceived by Fedele Azari, the publisher. Influenced by the focus on the machine that characterized Futurism in the early 1920s, this book should be considered a manifesto of the Machine Age. However, Depero's innovation was not confined to the cover; the inside text features a wealth of typographic inventions including the use of different typefaces, the text formed into various shapes, the use of different papers and colours, and several other devices.

After seeing this book, Kurt Schwitters wanted to meet Depero and enthusiastically showed his copy to every visitor to his personal library. This book was published in an edition of 1000 copies, most of which bear a stamp of the number of the copy. The edition, showed at least three different front pages with different color prints. There are four or five copies with a metal binding -- books of great rarity but of minor visual impact. Finally, there were even four to five copies provided with a box case expressly designed by the author. This book is surely the first object-book in the history of printing, a work-of-art in itself, and also as a masterpiece of avant-garde book-making. 

F.T. Marinetti, Parole in libertà: olfattive, tattili, termiche (Words-in-freedom: olfactory, tactile, thermal), 1932.
Cover by the author. 

Just five years after Depero's sensational "mechanical" book that featured a two bolt binding, Marinetti introduced his definitive model of the mechanical book. While Depero's was printed on conventional material (paper), Marinetti's new book was entirely printed on metal sheets. In this way, the book came even closer to the signs of the Machine Age, and aimed to be an imperishable book. The book's content was no less interesting, as Marinetti introduced new references between words and physical interaction with olfactory, tactile, and thermal sensations.

Tullio d'Albisola, L'anguria lirica (Lyric cucumber), 1934.
Printed and bound on metal sheets, cover and illustrations by Bruno Munari. 

This is the second, and actually the last, book printed on metal sheets by the Futurists. The author himself (Tullio d'Albisola) was also the publisher under the name of "Litolatta," a firm especially founded to produce such metal-books. Unlike the other famous metal book (by F.T. Marinetti), this one features illustration by Bruno Munari, now a world-renowned designer but at the time only a young, though talented, Futurist painter. While illustrations for Marinetti's book were essentially a kind of "visual poetry," Munari's are in a pictorial style, and, in particular, feature a cosmic allure typical of the time. Futurist painting followed the new theories of Aeropittura (Flight Painting) as well as reflected the influence of Enrico Prampolini, at the time the undisputed leading personality of the Futurist movement.

SOURCE:http://colophon.com/gallery/futurism/index.html

The Future of Lust Circa 1909: (Back To) The Future of Lust

The Futurist Manifesto of Lust
Valentine de Saint-Point

A reply to those dishonest journalists who twist phrases to make the Idea seem ridiculous;
to those women who only think what I have dared to say;
to those for whom Lust is still nothing but a sin;
to all those who in Lust can only see Vice, just as in Pride they see only vanity.

Lust, when viewed without moral preconceptions and as an essential part of life’s dynamism, is a force.

Lust is not, any more than pride, a mortal sin for the race that is strong. Lust, like pride, is a virtue that urges one on, a powerful source of energy.

Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself. It is the painful joy of wounded flesh, the joyous pain of a flowering. And whatever secrets unite these beings, it is a union of flesh. It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of spirit. It is the communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.

Lust is the quest of the flesh for the unknown, just as Celebration is the spirit’s quest for the unknown. Lust is the act of creating, it is Creation.

Flesh creates in the way that the spirit creates. In the eyes of the Universe their creation is equal. One is not superior to the other and creation of the spirit depends on that of the flesh.

We possess body and spirit. To curb one and develop the other shows weakness and is wrong. A strong man must realize his full carnal and spiritual potentiality. The satisfaction of their lust is the conquerors’ due. After a battle in which men have died, it is normal for the victors, proven in war, to turn to rape in the conquered land, so that life may be re-created.

When they have fought their battles, soldiers seek sensual pleasures, in which their constantly battling energies can be unwound and renewed. The modern hero, the hero in any field, experiences the same desire and the same pleasure. The artist, that great universal medium, has the same need. And the exaltation of the initiates of those religions still sufficiently new to contain a tempting element of the unknown, is no more than sensuality diverted spiritually towards a sacred female image.

Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower. A people exclusively spiritual or a people exclusively carnal would be condemned to the same decadence—sterility.

Lust excites energy and releases strength. Pitilessly it drove primitive man to victory, for the pride of bearing back a woman the spoils of the defeated. Today it drives the great men of business who run the banks, the press and international trade to increase their wealth by creating centers, harnessing energies and exalting the crowds, to worship and glorify with it the object of their lust. These men, tired but strong, find time for lust, the principal motive force of their action and of the reactions caused by their actions affecting multitudes and worlds.

Even among the new peoples where sensuality has not yet been released or acknowledged, and who are neither primitive brutes nor the sophisticated representatives of the old civilizations, woman is equally the great galvanizing principle to which all is offered. The secret cult that man has for her is only the unconscious drive of a lust as yet barely woken. Amongst these peoples as amongst the peoples of the north, but for different reasons, lust is almost exclusively concerned with procreation. But lust, under whatever aspects it shows itself, whether they are considered normal or abnormal, is always the supreme spur.

The animal life, the life of energy, the life of the spirit, sometimes demand a respite. And effort for effort’s sake calls inevitably for effort for pleasure’s sake. These efforts are not mutually harmful but complementary, and realize fully the total being.

For heroes, for those who create with the spirit, for dominators of all fields, lust is the magnificent exaltation of their strength. For every being it is a motive to surpass oneself with the simple aim of self-selection, of being noticed, chosen, picked out.

Christian morality alone, following on from pagan morality, was fatally drawn to consider lust as a weakness. Out of the healthy joy which is the flowering of the flesh in all its power it has made something shameful and to be hidden, a vice to be denied. It has covered it with hypocrisy, and this has made a sin of it.

We must stop despising Desire, this attraction at once delicate and brutal between two bodies, of whatever sex, two bodies that want each other, striving for unity. We must stop despising Desire, disguising it in the pitiful clothes of old and sterile sentimentality.

It is not lust that disunites, dissolves and annihilates. It is rather the mesmerizing complications of sentimentality, artificial jealousies, words that inebriate and deceive, the rhetoric of parting and eternal fidelities, literary nostalgia—all the histrionics of love.

We must get rid of all the ill-omened debris of romanticism, counting daisy petals, moonlight duets, heavy endearments, false hypocritical modesty. When beings are drawn together by a physical attraction, let them—instead of talking only of the fragility of their hearts—dare to express their desires, the inclinations of their bodies, and to anticipate the possibilities of joy and disappointment in their future carnal union.

Physical modesty, which varies according to time and place, has only the ephemeral value of a social virtue.

We must face up to lust in full conciousness. We must make of it what a sophisticated and intelligent being makes of himself and of his life; we must make lust into a work of art. To allege unwariness or bewilderment in order to explain an act of love is hypocrisy, weakness and stupidity.

We should desire a body consciously, like any other thing.

Love at first sight, passion or failure to think, must not prompt us to be constantly giving ourselves, nor to take beings, as we are usually inclined to do so due to our inability to see into the future. We must choose intelligently. Directed by our intuition and will, we should compare the feelings and desires of the two partners and avoid uniting and satisfying any that are unable to complement and exalt each other.

Equally conciously and with the same guiding will, the joys of this coupling should lead to the climax, should develop its full potential, and should permit to flower all the seeds sown by the merging of two bodies. Lust should be made into a work of art, formed like every work of art, both instinctively and consciously.

We must strip lust of all the sentimental veils that disfigure it. These veils were thrown over it out of mere cowardice, because smug sentimentality is so satisfying. Sentimentality is comfortable and therefore demeaning.

In one who is young and healthy, when lust clashes with sentimentality, lust is victorious. Sentiment is a creature of fashion, lust is eternal. Lust triumphs, because it is the joyous exaltation that drives one beyond oneself, the delight in posession and domination, the perpetual victory from which the perpetual battle is born anew, the headiest and surest intoxication of conquest. And as this certain conquest is temporary, it must be constantly won anew.

Lust is a force, in that it refines the spirit by bringing to white heat the excitement of the flesh. The spirit burns bright and clear from a healthy, strong flesh, purified in the embrace. Only the weak and sick sink into the mire and are diminished. And lust is a force in that it kills the weak and exalts the strong, aiding natural selection.

Lust is a force, finally, in that it never leads to the insipidity of the definite and the secure, doled out by soothing sentimentality. Lust is the eternal battle, never finally won. After the fleeting triumph, even during the ephemeral triumph itself, reawakening dissatisfaction spurs a human being, driven by an orgiastic will, to expand and surpass himself.

Lust is for the body what an ideal is for the spirit—the magnificent Chimaera, that one ever clutches at but never captures, and which the young and the avid, intoxicated with the vision, pursue without rest.

Lust is a force.

The Future Circa 1909: Or, (Back To) The Futurist Manifesto:

The Futurist Manifesto

F. T. Marinetti, 

Published:1909

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.
MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM
We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.
Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.
We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.
The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.
Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.
We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.
We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.
We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.



It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

(Text of translation taken from James Joll, Three Intellectuals in Politics)

Futurist predicts 50% of all jobs will disappear by 2030

Two billion lost jobs equates to approximately 50% of all jobs that currently exist. Some new jobs will likely be created at the same time, but they'll be substantially different from existing jobs, and it won't necessarily be easy for workers to make the jump. We should reiterate that this is simply a prediction by one futurist, but given the trends that have established themselves over the last decade, we tend to agree that this is the direction that things are hopefully heading, even if the magnitude ends up not being quite so extreme.

Technology is a pretty great thing, but every time we invent something that works faster or better or more efficiently, we get a little bit closer to making human labor redundant. Futurist Thomas Frey is predicting that in under two decades, two billion people will lose their jobs to technological progress. It's happened to me, and it can happen to you.

We're not saying "hopefully" because we hate people having jobs, we're saying it because a lot of these improvements will lead to a better society as a whole. So, let's see what's going to happen, as outlined by Thomas Frey:
Power Industry

As it stands, power generation is expensive, inefficient and (usually) terrible for the environment in one way or another. By 2030, power will have become decentralized into a micro grid, where if your house isn't generating most of its own power from solar or wind or natural gas conversion, your neighborhood or city will have its own small, local system to get you what you need. The coal industry will vanish, the transportation industry will shrink significantly, and utility companies will have to radically restructure themselves.
Automotive Industry

Driving is a ridiculous waste of time, energy, and money. Most of us have cars that sit unused 90% of the time. A highway at rush-hour capacity is still over 80% empty space. A one hour commute every day will cost you over three weeks per year of time behind the wheel. And car accidents kill or injure more than 50 million people every year. Autonomous, decentralized cars are definitely the way to go, and since they already exist, we should have no problem adopting them within 20 years. When we do, there will be no more buses, no more taxis, no more people needed to deliver anything, far fewer gas stations and auto repair shops, and with everyone sharing cars, the overall amount of vehicles will plummet as well.
Education

Our education system is based on a teacher giving the same class over and over every single year. This seems like a waste of time, when the teacher could just record the lecture once and then go work on something more interesting. Also, recording lectures allows for students to learn remotely and on their own time, and drastically increases the number of people who can benefit from a course, since you don't have to try to stuff them all into the same room at once. With top-notch schools like Stanford and MIT already offering their courses online and for free, it's making less and less sense to spend a huge amount of time and money getting a diploma when you could potentially learn the exact same things at home without paying anything.
Manufacturing

3D printers are evolving rapidly, to the point where they may completely take over small and medium-sized manufacturing tasks in the near future. This isn't just making useful household objects: it's also possible to 3D print everything from clothes to food. With technology like this available, it doesn't make sense to buy things in stores anymore: just browse online for what you want, push a button, and it'll magically appear in your printer. While designers are probably safe (as are people who manufacture and support 3D printers and their components), brick and mortar retailers are going to have a hard time of it, and even larger construction projects, like houses, could transition completely to automatic 3D printing.
Robotics

Well, you probably saw this coming, right? Take any task that's dull, dirty, or dangerous, and just get a robot to do it instead. Such transitions are already happening in fields like fishing, mining, large-scale agriculture, security, the military, and as robots get smarter, cheaper, and more versatile, they'll spread into domestic household tasks, too.







Now, we're not saying that you should freak out if you have a job in a field on this list. Most technological progress takes a lot longer than we think it will, giving you ample time to start training for your new career in micro-power generator installation or 3D printer maintenance. But seriously, part of the idea here is that making our lives more efficient will give us more time to do what we wantto do (fun) instead of what we need to do (work), and it may simply turn out that everybody gets to work less even as our overall quality of life improves. Imagine if you never had to do domestic chores again. Imagine if you never had to go shopping again. Imagine if every time you got in a car, you could use that time to do some work, watch a movie, or take a nap.

If you look back a hundred years or so, everyone but the very rich spent the vast majority of their time just doing things that needed to be done. With technology, we've managed to make it so most people only have to work eight hours a day, get weekends off, and even get to take vacations every year. Looking forward, it's certainly plausible that this trend will continue, and disappearing jobs won't mean that more humans will be unemployed, but rather it will mean that humanity as a whole has become a more efficient species, with more of our work begin done for us resulting in more time available to do what we want with our lives.

Futurist Speaker, via Singularity Hub

Source:http://dvice.com

Saint Marshall Mcluhan: NPR's "Social Media Acts As Catalyst For Policy Change"

Social Media Acts As Catalyst For Policy Change

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February 6, 2012

Websites like Facebook and Twitter played an integral role in last year's Arab Spring uprisings. But they've also brought about change right here at home. Audie Cornish talks to Clay Shirky, a professor of New Media at New York University, about how social media has fueled policy changes from Bank of America to Verizon, and the most recent backlash with the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

I'm Audie Cornish. And it's time now for All Tech Considered.

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CORNISH: We've heard plenty about the role that Facebook in particular has played in the Arab Spring uprising. But over the past few months, social media have also led to a very different kind of revolution here at home. Late last year, a social media-fueled backlash forced Bank of America and Verizon both to drop proposed fees.

Last month, Congress found itself similarly flooded with complaints and reversed course on a pair of anti-piracy bills. Then, just last week, it was the breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen for the Cure backing off plans to cut funding to Planned Parenthood.

For more on what this all means, we're joined by Clay Shirky. He's a professor of New Media at New York University. Welcome, Clay.

CLAY SHIRKY: Thanks so much, Audie. Thank you for having me.

CORNISH: So, has social networking really made a difference or is it just ramping up the speed of things?

SHIRKY: Well, I think that's those questions can't be asked in that way because faster is different. If you look back at, say, what Kate Hanni did with the Flyers Bill of Rights starting in 2006. She was the woman who was stuck on the tarmac for eight hours. Got enraged, started a political movement using, in the day, blogs and email to pressure Congress to alter their policy. That took her years to do that.

And you look at the Susan Komen thing and that took something like 48 hours to get them to reverse course on a fairly major decision. So, faster protests are different kinds of protests, in part because our emotions work much faster than our intellect. So, when you get people angry quickly, things can spread like wildfire, in a way that they can't on slower media.

CORNISH: Looking at the issues that we brought up - the Komen issue, Verizon, Bank of America...

SHIRKY: BofA.

CORNISH: Yeah, even the SOPA protest about anti-piracy bills. These issues are so different, but what is the common denominator in how those protests caught on?

SHIRKY: The common denominator is that the public has a medium in which they can synchronize real action on an issue, without requiring everybody to be activists in some kind of general ongoing way.

CORNISH: Which can be huge. I mean, if you think about standing on the street and trying to gather signatures for a petition. That's a lot less fun than just asking someone to post such and such a thing on their Facebook.

SHIRKY: Yes. And so not meaning everyone to be a committed activist, to get them to decide to take action is a big change. On the other hand, people can get on to issues much quicker but they can get off of those issues much quicker, as well. So it's actually very different dynamic.

CORNISH: Yeah, and what's the danger of that? Because, you know, after Komen for the Cure, Super Bowl was the trending topic. It seems as though, you know, these waves can shift pretty rapidly.

SHIRKY: Right. No, absolutely. The danger is that the inconsistent attention that comes from a mass of people has some salutary effects for democracy, but also carry some risks. And the risks are that we get ourselves out of policies that are entirely subject to the whims of peoples' readily-activated emotions.

But the overall change has been that the people's potential oversight and involvement is simply at a higher level now, because everyone can see the outrage. And so, there's no way for the target of the outrage to sort of, say, well, some people are calling this against us but other people are calling us pro - it is almost not even. Right? When the Susan Komen thing happened there was no way for Komen to stage manage the issue.

CORNISH: That's Clay Shirkey. He's a professor of new media at New York University. Clay, thanks so much.

SHIRKY: Thank you, Audie. Thanks for having me.

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SOURCE:http://www.npr.org/2012/02/06/146482653/social-media-acts-as-catalyst-for-policy-change