Digital Futures: The Untested "Third Way"

This interview with Jaron Lanier, author of "You Are Not a Gadget" asks deep and controversial questions about the accepted "nature" of the Internet and how decisions made at its inception have become ingrained and continue to shape its function and potential. That is, decisions made that essentially reward the gate keepers and facilitators of the system but don't materially reward users who add "their hearts and minds" to the Internet, and how this has limited the growth of the middle class. Therefore, the job losses resulting from automation and globalism are not being sufficiently replaced by the enormous amount of work done each day on the Internet, which offers more psychological (status, creative satisfaction) than financial rewards.

"But in this case we have this idea that we put all this stuff out there and what we get back are intangible or abstract benefits of reputation, or ego-boosting. Since we're used to that bargain, we're impoverished compared to the world that could have been and should have been when the Internet was initially conceived. The world that would create a strengthened middle class through what people do, by monetizing more and more instead of less and less. It's possible that that world could have never come about, but that was never tested. If we are absolutely convinced that this third way is impossible, and that we have to choose between "The Matrix" or Marx, if those are our only two choices, it makes the future dismal, and so I hope that a third way is possible..."

The full text of this important and controversial interview here

Enough Fundamentalist Hooey -- America is a Land of Freedom -- and Joy

Rosario Dawson leading the dancers in Kevin Smith's Clerks 2 (2006): Yep,that's joyful.


"Satan has his sights" on the USA..and off goes GOP Candidate Rick Santorum providing the framework for a frightening new form of American theocracy -- now good Americans, products of the Enlightenment, after having weathered the demise of the totalitarian Soviet Union, need to not only worry about an international front of renegade Islamic religious extremists seeking to destroy secular and Enlightenment freedoms and restore some totalitarian international caliphate, but also a home front of home-grown Christian religious extremists seeking to destroy secular and Enlightenment freedoms and create some frightening vision of a totalitarian  theocratic government. The GOP casually throws around accusations of "socialist" Democratic government,so  let's label what many GOP candidates seem to be striving for -- un-American religious dictatorship right out of Margaret Atwood's A Handmade's Tale.

The NY Times' Maureen Dowd took issue with some of the latest Santorum fear-mongering:  "Why is it that Republicans don’t want government involved when it comes to the economy (opposing the auto bailouts) but do want government involved when it comes to telling people how to live their lives? In a party always misty for bygone times bristling with ugly inequities, Santorum is successful because he’s not ashamed to admit that he wants to take the country backward." More from Ms. Dowd here

Don't give up the struggle for freedom, creativity, science and enlightenment -- and never stop singing and dancing.

No Middle Ground: China's Way---or the Highway?

Author David Sirota asseses the conundrum faced by the US: "President Barack Obama admitted it when in his State of the Union address he said jobs are returning because “it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China.” Economists at the Boston Consulting Group underscored it when in August they said employment growth is happening because rising Chinese wages are “eroding China’s cost advantages” while the United States “is becoming a lower-cost country” as American wages decline. And GE Consumer & Industrial CEO James Campbell reiterated it when he recently told the New York Times that “making things in America is as viable as making things any place” because domestic labor costs are now “significantly less with the competitive wages” — read: far lower wages — now accepted by American workers...Now that this consensus is finally out in the open, the real question for America is simple: Do we accept an economic competition that asks us to emulate China?"

Six-day work weeks, no environmental or workplace regulations, extremely low wages... or if, "alternately, we reject this dystopian future, then it requires us to more seriously consider things like tariffs, industrial policy, tax incentives for domestic investment and Buy America laws for government procurement. In other words, it requires us to declare that access to the American marketplace is no longer free — that corporations who want to sell things to Americans must play by our wage, environmental and human rights rules no matter where they make their products."


As Mr. Sirota explains, at this point, there ain't no other way. Read the full Salon article "Is China Our Future?"  here

New Jean-Michel Basquiat "Ultraviolet" Work Uncovered

LONDON — Graffiti pioneer Jean-Michel Basquiat's "Orange Sports Figure", which was recently found to be signed in invisible ink, sold for over £4 million at a London auction on Wednesday.
The 1982 work, which depicts a figure emblazoned with Basquiat's iconic crown motif, eventually went under the hammer for £4,073,250 ($6.2 million, 4.8 million euros) at Sotheby's Contemporary Art Evening Auction.
Experts at the auction house on Tuesday revealed they had discovered Basquiat's signature in invisible ink after viewing the painting under ultraviolet light.
Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York City, in 1960 and began as a graffiti artist in the late 1970s before evolving into a Neo-expressionist during the next decade.Full article here http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iFodo8Xu-M2Gvn7Dqshj2Vafdgzw?docId=CNG.e6ef2ff4a08e66d1e154b9918edd385b.8a1

Fagen on Friday: Counter Moon & Teahouse on the Tracks

Donald Fagen performs "Counter Moon" and "Teahouse on the Tracks" from his solo album Kamakyriad, 1993 Steely Dan Tour, Nashville, TN

On The Road Again

Ofer is a traveling man. He describes himself as “a Nomadic Entrepreneur who was born and raised in Germany, lived in the US for over a decade, moved to Israel four years ago, and who succumbed yet again to his overriding urge to experience new places, people and adventures.” Currently in Penang, an island in Malaysia, he was in George Town, the capital the other day, when he was walking down the street and he happened to see a fellow traveler, from New York as it so happens, who was cruising along in a local form of transport, a rickshaw. 
Although his camera battery was nearly empty, “running on fumes” as we say, and his subject was in motion, Ofer managed to snap this great photo of his fellow traveler doing what he does best, being Anthony Bourdain. Although DITHOB's efforts to photoshop it into greater clarity were not successful, you can see Mr. Bourdain doing his thing, like Ofer, on the road again.

Photo by Ofer Mog (c) 2012

Thanks for sharing the photo, Ofer.

You can visit Ofer’s site, “Marco Polo East My Dust” here

 --Anthony Napoli for Deep in the Heart of Brooklyn

Poetry as Survival: Gregory Orr at the New School

Poet Gregory Orr will be discussing "Poetry as Survival" in a conversation presented by Arts in Mind at the New School on Wednesday, February 8, at 8 PM.

“Poetry is a way of surviving the emotional chaos, spiritual confusions and traumatic events that come with being alive." - Gregory Orr

Gregory Orr is the author of 10 collections of poetry, a Guggenheim and NEA fellow and a longtime professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia. Arts in Mind at the New School is hosting this presentation and conversation with Dr. Donald Rosen, medical director/CEO of the Austen Riggs Center.


Informed by tragedies of his own childhood, Mr. Orr came to battle his way from meaningless to meaning through creative work. He is the author of 10 collections of poetry, a Guggenheim and NEA fellow, and a longtime professor of creative writing at the University of Virginia. “I wrote a poem one day,” he writes in his book Poetry as Survival, ”and it changed my life. I had a sudden sense that the language in poetry was ‘magical’ … it could create or transform reality rather than simply describe it.”

This event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at The New School, Arnold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor.

More information on Arts in Mind and future presentations in this series on the arts and mental health here 

A Poem by Mr. Orr here and another here; lyrical and mysterious.

Always in Vogue: Madonna at the Super Bowl

Great Half Time photos of Madonna, Niki Minaj, MIA, Cee-Lo-Green, and LMFAO, plus dancers, acrobats, and endless pomp and glitz. And, oh yeah, the New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots, 21-17.

Photo - (c) NBC

Article and Photos here

"Super" Alternatives: FusonArts

Art by Shalom Neuman

For anyone not lured by the prospects of hot wings and taco chips in front of the HD, as the New York Giants and New Engand Patriots battle it out on the gridiron under the generalship of QB's Eli Manning and Tom Brady, and entertained by Madonna and those multi-million dollar TV commercials, there are more creative, countercultural alternatives:
FusionArts will be presenting a Super Bowl Be-In - "An afternoon of action art for the sports-culture challenged!" on "Super Bowl" Sunday, February 5, 2012, 3- 6 PM,  Hosted by  Lambert Fine Arts, at FusionArts, 57 Stanton Street,
NYC 10002.  Back with another fun-filled afternoon of action art, FusionArts and Lambert Fine Arts invites you to "Rebel against the sports culture establishment and join us for a good old fashioned Super Bowl Be-In."



Featured are FusionFriends: The Unbearables, Carrie Beehan, Peter Grzybowski, Brett Zweiman, Kika von Klück and Shawn Butler.

Gallery Artwork by SHALOM NEUMAN (with soundtracks by musician/composer Brett Zweiman) and TERRENCEO
Exhibition dates January 20 - February 12, 2012

For more information contact:  212-353-2787 or http://www.lambertfinearts.com/

Dreamers, Hackers and the Securities and Exchange Commission

The Facebook S.E.C. Filing (from S-1 Registration Statement Under the Securities Act of 1933) here

David Choe, the Skeptical Grafitti Artist Who Gambled on Facebook and Stands to Win Big here

The Official Mark Zuckerberg Facebook biography indicates that he considers himself an atheist and a computer hacker here  :

Excerpt here: "In 2010, Stephen Levy, who authored the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, wrote that Zuckerberg "clearly thinks of himself as a hacker."[16] Zuckerberg said that "it's OK to break things" "to make them better."[16][17] Facebook instituted "hackathons" held every six to eight weeks where participants would have one night to conceive of and complete a project.[16] The company provided music, food, and beer at the hackathons, and many Facebook staff members, including Zuckerberg, regularly attended.[17] "The idea is that you can build something really good in a night,” Zuckerberg told Levy. "And that’s part of the personality of Facebook now ... It’s definitely very core to my personality."[16]


Again, all mindful of the visionary book by Sol Yurick, Behold Metatron: The Recording Angel, who wrote "...the old philosopher's stone could convert base metals into gold. now humans, real estate, social relations are converted into electronic signs carried in an electronic plasma. the dream of magical controll has never been exorcised. perhaps, after all, modern capitalism is a great factory for the production of angels."


...which this site discussed previously here . Published by Autonomedia (Foreign Agents Press) here

Don Cornelius: Creator of 'Soul Train' Dead at 75

The Soul Train Line dances to September by Earth, Wind and Fire

Don Cornelius, creator of Soul Train, the show that revitalized music on TV beginning in the 1970s is dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot would in Los Angeles at age 75. More here

Don Cornelius

David Bowie on Soul Train performing Golden Years

On Reading Paradise Lost

Gustav Dore's Depiction of the Main Character

of John Milton's epic Paradise Lost



In the early early morning, every work day, after a cup of coffee at home and a scan of the NY Times, before I walk to the subway and another day at the office, I have been reading -- or attempting to read, or reading very slowly, or perusing -- a couple of pages of John Milton's Paradise Lost. It's one of those texts that I have skimmed over the years with a goal of actually reading in full.

And,although I am reading it slowly, it is marvelous, fantastic, provocative, so much so that after reading a few lines, it is such a dense text, filled with historical and biblical references and allusions and images, that my mind soars, with a blissed out distraction, both a desire to read more and to stop everything and hop into my own writing, that I see it may take a Miltonian aeon to make itthrough this work. Not at all a slog, it is a delight to read, but so stimulating that my little patches of time each morning simply are not enough time and space to achieve this goal. But still I will remain in pursuit. Every day, every morning, a couple of pages, and then another reference or allusion and I see it is once again time to say goodbye - to my family, to Milton and the dreams of the unfettered creative life --and make my way to work. Once again, Paradise Lost...

--Anthony Napoli

See for yourself here

CODA: Doing the Italian-Jewish Thang: From Louis Prima to the Flatbush Waltz

Flatbush Waltz: Andy Statman (mandolin) Jim Whitney (bass) and Larry Eagle (drums and percussion) celebrating David Grisman's birthday with a performance of Andy's "Flatbush Waltz" at Yoshi's in San Francisco, 23 March 2009.

As a follow up to last week's Louis Prima post-- It was our younger daughters' 17th birthday(s) this weekend and we celebrated,. as always, with a family dinner at home, including my mom (87) and our older daughter's fiance and our son who will be 21 in a few short weeks. At the request of the celebrees, and in view of various bouts with colds, etc., we decided to Go Easy by picking up some luscious take out pizza and pastas from L & B Spumoni Gardens, followed by a humungous cake shaped like a Cheeseburger from Rimini Pastry on Bay Parkway.

Photo by Tony Napoli

Dinner, and a glass or two of a very nice Nero d'Avola, was accompanied by our ritual listening of MOB HITs (lol), among other Italian-American classics, followed, as a definitive statement of who we are as an Italian-Jewish family, by In the Fiddler's House by Itzhak Perlman and various Klezmer artists. All in all, a lovely birthday celebration and another warm get together.  I loved hearing Flatbush Waltz again and now can't quite get it all out of my head. Ahh, Brooklyn. Ahh, Flatbush, right here in the Brave Old/Brave New World.
-Anthony Napoli

Youtube uploading info here

CODA: Wednesday Morning: Waitin' on the Robert E. Lee by Louis Prima

A clip from the 1999 documentary, Louis Prima: The Wildest. Director Don McGlynn was the creator of the 2011 documentary on African-American and Gospel Music, "Rejoice and Shout"

Interestingly, the song was written by L. Wolfe Gilbert, born in Odessa Russia, and who moved to the United States as a young man and eventually established himself as one of the leading songwriters on Tin Pan Alley.


Gilbert began his career touring with John L. Sullivan and singing in a quartet at small Coney Island café, originally known as "Whiting's Cabaret" on Surf Avenue, later changed to "College Inn", where he was discovered by English producer Albert Decourville. Decourville brought him to London as part of The Ragtime Octet. Gilbert's first songwriting success came in 1912 when F. A. Mills Music Publishers published his song Waiting For the Robert E. Lee (melody by composer Lewis F. Muir). More here

Singer Etta James Dies, Age 73

Etta James, whose assertive, earthy voice lit up such hits as "The Wallflower," "Something's Got a Hold on Me" and the wedding favorite "At Last," has died, according to her longtime friend and manager, Lupe De Leon. She was 73.


She died from complications from leukemia with her husband, Artis Mills, and her sons by her side, De Leon said.

She was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010, and also suffered from dementia and hepatitis C. James died at a hospital in Riverside, California. She would have turned 74 Wednesday


Obit at CNN here