26. “Corelogic Reports Negative Equity Increase in Q4 2011,” BizJournals, March 1, 2012, http://assets.bizjournals.com/orlando/pdf/CoreLogic%20underwater%20mortgage%20list.pdf. Also: “Despite Home Value Gains, Underwater Homeowners Owe $1.2 Trillion More than Homes’ Worth,” Zillow Real Estate Research, May 24, 2012, www.zillow.com/blog/research/2012/05/24/despite-home-value-gains-underwater-homeowners-owe-1-2-trillion-more-than-homes-worth.
27. For a quick explanation and confirmation of these facts, see Serena Ng and Carrick Mollenkamp, “Goldman Fueled AIG Gambles,” Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2009. For a lengthy but compelling account of the entire Goldman Sachs saga, see Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner’s Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon (New York: Times Books, 2011).
28. See gaming and Internet analyst Kevin Slavin’s terrific presentation on this history to the Lift11 Conference at www.livestream.com/liftconference/video?clipId=pla_08a3016b-47e9-4e4f-8ef7-ce71c168a5a8.
29. Kevin Slavin, “How Algorithms Shape Our World,” TedTalks, July 2011, www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html.
30. Nina Mehta, “Automatic Futures Trade Drove May Stock Crash, Report Says,” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 4, 2010. See also Graham Bowley. “Lone $4.1 Billion Sale Led to ‘Flash Crash’ in May,” New York Times, October 1, 2010.
31. Brian Bremner, “The Bats Affair: When Machines Humiliate their Masters,” Bloomberg Businessweek, March 23, 1012, www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-03-23/the-bats-affair-when-machines-humiliate-their-masters.
32. For the basics, see Alexandra Zendrian, “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark Pools,” Forbes, May 18, 2009.
33. John Henley, “Greece on the Breadline: Cashless Currency Takes Off,” Guardian, March 16, 2012.
34. Ibid.
35. Eric Westervelt, “Fiscal Localism on Rise in Germany,” NPR, All Things Considered, July 15, 2010.
36. Judson Green’s history and philosophies are taught at the Disney Institute in Orlando, Florida, which I attended as part of my research for this book. For more, see The Disney Institute and Theodore Kinni, Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service (Glendale, CA: Disney Editions, 2011).
37. Michael McCarthy, “War of Words Erupts at Walt Disney,” USA Today, December 2, 2003.
38. Dr. Ofer Merin, quoted in Catherine Porter, “Israeli Field Hospital Carries on Inspiring Work in Japan,” Toronto Star, April 4, 2011.
39. Joichi Ito, “Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants,” New York Times, December 6, 2011.
40. Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984).
CHAPTER 4: FRACTALNOIA: FINDING PATTERNS IN THE FEEDBACK
1. Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From (New York: Riverhead, 2010).
2. Kevin Dunbar, “How Scientists Build Models: InVivo Science as a Window on the Scientific Mind,” www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~dunbarlab/pubpdfs/KDMBR99.pdf.
3. Kevin Roberts, interviewed in Barak Goodman, Rachel Dretzin, and Douglas Rushkoff, The Persuaders, PBS, Frontline, 2004.
4. “Chevy Tahoe, Trump Create Open Source Fun,” Oil Drum, April 3, 2006, http://energyandourfuture.org/story/2006/4/3/164232/5126.
5. In a later riff on the same phenomenon, Shell’s website for people to create advertisements promoting drilling for oil in the Arctic—http://arcticready.com—was eventually revealed to be a fake but not before hundreds of attack ads were created which utilities people thought had been provided by Shell. See the media-activist site http://YesLab.org for more on this.
6. See the website for the company at http://valvesoftware.com.
7. http://boingboing.net/2012/04/22/valve-employee-manual-describe.html.
8. Ibid.
9. László Méro, Moral Calculations (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998).
10. See my book Life Inc. (New York: Random House, 2009).
11. Archibald MacLeish, “Bubble of Blue Air,” New York Times, December 25, 1968, p. 1.
12. Lenora Foerstal and Angela Gilliam, Confronting Margaret Mead: Scholarship, Empire, and the South Pacific (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 126–27.
13. Steven Pinker, quoted in Nick Gillespie, “Hayek’s Legacy,” Reason, January 2005.
14. James Surowiecki, quoted in Gillespie, ibid.
15. See Manuel De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992).
16. Jeff Sommer, “A Market Forecast That Says ‘Take Cover,’” New York Times, July 3, 2010.
17. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
18. Walter Kirn, Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
19. Richard Nisbett, quoted in Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Age of the Unthinkable (New York: Little, Brown, 2009).
20. Ramo, Age of the Unthinkable.
21. Ibid.
22. You can find out more or download the demo at www.thebrain.com.
23. You can see Jerry’s Brain at http://jerrysbrain.com.
24. April Rinne and Jerry Michalski, “Polymaths, Bumblebees and the ‘Expert’ Myth,” Washington Post, March 28, 2011.
25. Gordon Bell, Gordon Bell home page, http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/gbell/ (accessed August 11, 2011).
CHAPTER 5: APOCALYPTO
1. Mathew Barrett Gross and Mel Gilles, The Last Myth (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2012).
2. Rocco Castoro, “Ray Kurzweil: That Singularity Guy,” Vice, April 1, 2009, www.vice.com.
3. John Brockman, “The Technium and the 7th Kingdom of Life: A Talk with Kevin Kelly,” Edge, July 19, 2007, www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly07/kelly07_index.html.
4. Kevin Kelly, What Technology Wants (New York: Viking, 2010), 187.
5. Ibid., 188.
6. Ibid., 189.
7. Ibid., 356.
8. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design (New York: W. W. Norton, 1986).
9. See my book Program or Be Programmed (New York: Or Books, 2010).
10. For a great chronicle and analysis of the apocalypse meme, see John Michael Greer, Apocalypse Not (Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, 2011).
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INDEX
The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.
Abstractions, 138–39
acting now, 159–69f
Acxiom, 158
advertising, 28, 128, 167, 210, 245.
See also commercials; marketing/market research
age/aging, 149–52
agriculture, 100–101, 185
Agriculture Department, U.S., 170
air travel, 89–90
Al Jazeera, 216
algorithms, 8, 178–79, 180, 181, 182, 183, 229, 257, 264
Alhurra (cable news channel), 216
Alpha-Omega framework, 262–64
“always-on,” 1–2, 73–74, 85, 94–95, 97–98, 186, 211
America: adolescence of, 45–46; futurism and character of, 12
American Dream, 12–13
An American Family (documentary), 35
American Idol (TV show), 37, 54, 213
American Psychiatric Association, 166
American Psychological Association, 38
animated TV shows, 23–24, 25–26
answering machines, 128
apocalypto: appropriate approach to, 264–66; bunkers for, 243–45; change and, 264–65; choices and, 256, 257–58, 260; conflation of apocalypse scenarios and, 246; definition/characteristics of, 2, 245, 261; digiphrenia and, 245; emergence of Armageddon concept and, 261–62; fear of the future and, 246; fractalnoia and, 245–46, 264; human limits and, 254–60; as manifestation of present shock, 7, 243–66; modern problems and, 246–47; narrative collapse and, 245; new “now” and, 3; overwinding and, 245, 261; transcending humanity and, 251–54; zombies and, 247–50, 264
See also specific topic
Apple Corporation, 13, 108, 111, 167–68, 182, 203, 218, 239
Arab Spring, 52, 55, 203, 216
Aristotle, 19, 23
arms race, 178–79
art works, overwinding and, 153–55
artistic visionaries, 231–32
Asia, clocks and timing in, 80
athletes. See sports
attention, competition for, 124, 265–66
attention deficit disorder, 124
audience: captive, 21, 31, 36; participation in creation of story by, 61, 63, 64, 65; sophistication of public, 45;
authenticity, 152–53; authority, 80–81, 84–85, 88, 225–26.;
See also control
Axelrod, Robert, 193
Axial Age, 77, 83
Bachmann, Michele, 53
Baker, James, 47
balance, change and, 265
Barrett, Mark, 246
basketball, 41, 131–32, 134
Bateson, Gregory, 225, 228
BATS Global Market, 181–82
Baudrillard, Jean, 113
Baum, Frank, 165–66
The Beatles, 154, 168
Beavis and Butt-head (TV show), 23–24
Becker, Ernest, 171
behavioral finance, 5–6, 174–75
Bell, Gordon, 239, 240–41
bell ringing, 80
Benedictine monks, 79
Benjamin, Walter, 153
Berlin, Isaiah, 232
Bernays, Edward, 45
Better Alternative Trading System (BATS), 181–82
Bible, 19
Big Bang, 263–64
biofeedback, 106
biological clocks, 89–93, 102
biology, apocalypto and, 255
biometric devices, 84
Birkenstock, 108
black box trading, 179, 180
blogs, 2, 52, 97–98, 114, 265
Bly, Robert, 39
Bohm, David, 103
Bonds, Barry, 41
box of chocolates analogy, 29–30
brain, 3–4, 5–6, 102–3, 204, 255
Brand, Stewart, 133–34, 135, 139, 141, 223
brands/branding, 64, 167, 209, 210, 212.
See also specific brand
bunkers, apocalypse, 243–45
Burnett, Erin, 55
burnout, 99, 121
Bush, George W., 48, 54
Bush, Vannevar, 4, 239
business/corporations: big data, 158–59; Black Friday and, 159–61; communication campaigns of, 51; digiphrenia and, 85–86, 99, 107–8, 128; fractalnoia and, 202, 205–17, 220, 222–23; futurism and, 16–17; Great Exhibition and, 164–65; hiring by, 156; in Industrial Age, 87, 161–65; money as time and, 172, 173; narrative collapse and, 66; new “now” and, 4; overwinding and, 7, 134, 159–66, 169, 170–80, 184, 191, 192, 245; stages in human development and, 82; time as money and, 170–80.
See also specific business/corporation
calendars,
78–79, 81, 83, 262, 264
call waiting, 115
caller ID, 115–16
Campbell, Joseph, 13, 20, 39
Canseco, José, 41
capitalism, 226, 258
captive audiences, 21, 31, 36
car accident, Rushkoff’s, 65–66
Carse, James, 59
Case, Amber, 69
cashless societies, 183–84
catallaxy, 226, 227, 228
cell phones, 95, 116
Chainmail (game), 60n
change: apocalypto and, 264–65; as changing, 86–87; chronobiology and, 88–89; consumers and, 167; digiphrenia and, 73, 86–87, 88–89; fractalnoia and, 224, 235–37; management of, 86, 87, 235–36; narrative collapse and, 9–10, 14–16; new “now” and, 4; overwinding and, 141, 167; stages in human evolution and, 76; as steady state of existence, 87.
See also growth; progress
chaos, 200, 202, 209, 219–30, 251, 261, 262–63
Chardin, Pierre Teilhard de, 254
chemtrails, 197–98, 201
children: digiphrenia and, 125; intelligence of, 125; kleptomania of, 166; TV shows for, 23–24
China, clocks and timing in, 80
choices: apocalypto and, 256, 257–58, 260; digiphrenia and, 110–12, 115–16, 119–20, 124; fractalnoia and, 202, 215, 227; new “now” and, 5; overwinding and, 145
chronobiology, 87–93, 101, 103–7, 133
chronos time, 112–20, 235–36, 259
circadian rhythms, 89–93, 95, 106–7
Civilization (game), 62
Clinton, Hillary, 212–13
clocks: analog, 83, 113, 128–29; apocalypto and, 262; Benedictine, 79–80; biological, 89–93, 102; characteristics of universe associated with, 81–82; circadian rhythms and, 89–93, 95; clock towers and, 80–81, 82, 85; connectivity and, 112; digiphrenia and, 80–82, 85, 89–93, 95, 102, 112; kinds of time and, 112; of the “long now,” 134; as metaphor for human beings, 81, 82; stages in human development and, 79–82, 83, 84, 85, 95; as time, 259
CNN, 46–50, 54, 55, 250
codes, 84–85, 263
cognitive science, 3–4, 5–6, 102–3, 143, 204, 255
Colber, Jean-Baptiste, 173
Cold War, 89, 220–21, 223, 224, 226
collaboration. See cooperation/collaboration
colonialism, 162–64, 172, 173, 261
commercials, 20–21, 22, 36, 167, 213–14, 223.