The invention of the iCloud has been a technological breakthrough on behalf of the Apple company and the late Steve Jobs. And like any new and fascinating trend, there will be others that want to replicate it for themselves. Lately, Samsung has been toying around with the idea of having their own Cloud, but they’re going to have to get past the tight grip that Apple has on their precious product.
The feud between Samsung and...
In order to connect and extend the processes outlined in previous posts to the rise of finance capital in the United States, some of the mechanisms at work must be outlined. By tracing the processes that deepened and expanded opacity, (the transference of economic knowledge - information about where peoples’ funds invested in banks and other financial assets - from citizens to financial institutions) we may be able to understand what led to certain key events in the history of financialization . Again, the idea of “giving up” both money and the knowledge and how such money is being utilized will be an important theme throughout this blog and in illustrating our current economic...
In my next series of posts I would like to examine the role of banks and financial institutions in the United States. I hope to show that the since the beginning of proliferating finance capital (finalization) around 1980 the distinctions between the two institutions, which have always been somewhat blurry, have collapsed. I would also like to demonstrate that the merging and blurring of these two institutions is especially revealing of our current economic situation. I will begin with banks in this post and eventually situate these developments historically within the hegemonic rise of finance capital.
The intention of banks (“financial intermediaries” in economics parlance) is to channel funds from people who, if they had the knowledge required to grasp if an investment was worth risking losing...
(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for Part 1, click here.)
One of the key moments in Ronald Reagan’s push towards a neoliberal state apparatus occurred in the summer of 1981, when he officially declared war on labor with the dismantling of the Air Traffic Controller’s Union. This is also the time when the so-called “financial explosion” began. Policies intended to restore profitability by combatting inflation and restoring business investment (and, by extension, job creation), ended up only succeeding in halting inflation. The overdetermination of inflation (versus...
Well it certainly has been a while since I’ve posted anything. I have (dare I say) digging around on the Internet for recent topics. C’mon you know that was a good pun for today’s post. But I’m not the only one online that has done some digging around for new materials.
In the past few weeks, Google has bought out the once popular site Digg and it’s support site Milk. Digg was the predecessor to the social feedback site that we all know and love today, Reddit. Since the loss of Megaupload, Google has been searching for a new company to assist them in creating Google...
In conducting some recent interviews for the Big Questions, a theme that has come up often has been the impact of art on social awareness and activism. In this three part series I am presenting several different takes on what is art in the 21st century, in an atempt to discover if art in itself can produce social change.
In the interview with Daniel Heyman, a painter and print maker, we discussed different issues facing visual art in the 21st century. We started off discussing the globalization of art, and then went on to compare the realms of photography and painting, and the way they impact their audience. Heyman went on to discuss how artist can prevent their art from becoming a spectacle, and the power of art to shock. Daniel Heyman concludes by describing a project he was involved with, creating portraits of the prisoners of the Abu Ghraib...
Okay, so these videos aren't necessarily about censorship, but they do pretain to social media and the problems of the Internet. These are an accumulation of videos that I have found during my research for the past few posts and I want to share them with the readers. One of which gave me an idea for what to talk about next, but that's for a different day. So sit back, relax and enjoy. Happy Monday.
(This is the second post in a series on the rise of finance capital in the United States, for part 2, click here)
The introduction of neoliberal policy and creation of the Financial Hegemony began both as a response to the global economic crisis of 1970s, and a vehicle for the advancement of United States class and imperial interests. As I make my way to our current crisis, it should be noted that capitalism only masks its contradictions when “resolving” its crises - each crisis is a result and intensification of all those preceding it. Empowering capital and finance was the answer purported along with the rise of neoliberalism, and its massification...
I wanted to make a short post and tell you about this organization that I found in my research. The Creators Freedom Project is a Nashville, TN based group that has made it their purpose to help the starving artists in the world. Founder Alex Curtis had worked with Public Knowledge, an organization that is out to preserve copyrights and protect creativity and openness on the Internet. Curtis had the idea to create a new organization that focuses on a specific community that was affected by censorship and copyright issues. More importantly, it showed people how to make a living from creative means. Some of the values that Creators Freedom promotes are teaching artists the new innovations of technology to self publish, host community panels where showcases can be held and advertised, and...
Globalization: the center argument for most of modern day debates, proving to be beneficial to a thriving nation but inflicting dangerous inequality on other countries in the process. And to have that same conflict with the Internet is an epic on its own. With the Internet reaching all different countries, it only seemed like a matter of time before someone wanted to own the whole thing.
America has their hands firmly in most forums that are available to users. Search engines and social networking sites like Google, Facebook and YouTube are all big name leaders of the Internet. And through advertisement and other...