Category Archives: Zeitgeist Movement

Wakako Yuki

TOKYO (THE JAPAN NEWS/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The International Olympic Committee (IOC), facing a critical trend of bid city withdrawal, opened the way for a double award for Paris and Los Angeles as the 2024 and 2028 summer Olympic Games hosts. Los Angeles responded on Monday that the city would accept 2028 candidacy.

The fact that the IOC resorted to such an unusual measure suggests that the Olympic Movement today faces a historic turning point.

"Our discussions and decisions today will chart the course of the Olympic Games for the foreseeable future."

With these words, IOC President Thomas Bach began his speech to open the Extraordinary IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 11.

"Today, when people see that the government, the opposition, business and the sport community - in other words, the entire establishment - is united behind one project (an Olympic Games bid), then the people immediately have mistrust and conclude that something must be terribly wrong.

"Populist movements are on the rise. There is a profound change in the decision-making process in many Western countries. For all these reasons we had and continue to have a much smaller number of potential candidate cities," he said.

By giving Paris and Los Angeles, the two remaining cities in the 2024 bid race, the right to host the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympic Games, the IOC has found a way to ensure stability for the next 11 years. Emphasising this point, Bach secured unanimous agreement to the proposal.

However, establishing stability is not the same as solving the problem. It is necessary to focus on the root of the trend.

Why are there such strong public criticisms slowing down the Olympic bid momentum?

Many cities withdrew from the 2022 and 2024 Olympic bidding after defeats in local referendums or due to political decisions citing negative public opinion. Is the Olympic Movement coming to a crossroads? I listened to the views of the IOC members at the extraordinary session.

Many IOC members endorse the view put forth by Bach that today's political and social climate, the zeitgeist, is a factor. In other words, it is a view that looks for the cause in trends outside the Olympic Movement, not internally.

Europe, the birthplace of the modern Olympics, has been shaken by economic crises, terrorism and immigration issues.

Today there is less need for city redevelopment as many European and U.S. cities have matured, changing the meaning of hosting the Games. In the age of the internet, negative impressions move freely, making it easy for critical opinion and opposition movements to spread.

The public movements that led to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump in the United States, and to the Brexit decision in Britain, contain at heart misgivings toward the existing political and economic system and long-held values. The same adverse wind faces Olympic bids.

Hence the modern Olympic Games, which for last three decades have built and expanded their reach using a capitalist model and by gaining support from political and economic systems, are now prone to face criticism, often under the banner of "concern for cost."

IOC members often point out that the only Games cost for which the IOC has any responsibility are the operation costs of the organising committees, which are not on the rise and are almost all in surplus.

There is no doubt that the Olympics are a mirror reflecting international society and are influenced by present trends. However, if one were to look back over the Olympics' history, it may seem that the shortage of bid cities can be attributed to external factors in those particular eras, as well as overlapping incidents that have occurred during the preceding Olympiads. Two factors seem to affect the decline most: costs being out of control, and the damage to Olympic values based on ethics and ideals.

When in the past the number of bidding cities decreased to two or less, it was thought to be a warning signal for the continuation of the Olympics. For the 2022 Winter Olympic bid (won by Beijing in 2015) and for the 2024 Summer Games (to be voted on in September) only two cities remained in the final selection for each.

The last decline in Olympic history took place in an era that the late Juan Antonio Samaranch, who became IOC president in 1980, called "a challenging period which was labeled by critics as the demise of the Olympic Games."

The decade featured the terrorist incident during the 1972 Munich Games, the financial overrun of the 1976 Montreal Games (after this there was only one candidate city), and the 1980 Moscow Games that were hit by boycotts. The host city selection held in 1981 featured two Asian cities, Seoul and Nagoya (won by Seoul). Though the boycotts were an external factor, they damaged the philosophy set forth by the Olympics, and lowered their perceived value. The opposition movement in Nagoya at the time serves as proof of this.

The trend was turned by the commercialisation of the Games led by then-President Samaranch, and right after the financial success of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the number of Olympic bid cities recorded a new surge. However, in the last several years, they have declined again.

Looking at the current situation in light of the past, a similar trend may emerge. There were reports that the total cost of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, which actually included massive urban development, reached 5 trillion (S$61.47 billion), an all-time high for either the summer or winter Games.

This, combined with the economic recession in Europe, scared off European candidates for the 2022 Winter Games bidding. The following year saw a damning revelation of systematic doping in Russia, together with the corruption of the former president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, then an IOC member.

These led to a loss of confidence in the fairness of competitions and damaged ethical values. For the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, Brazil's political and economic turmoil obviously played the key part, but the delayed preparations and financial challenges left a negative impression.

"There may be some of that reaction (rooted in current political and social trends), but I suspect much of it is the result of growing concerns about corruption and moral leadership," was the observation of Dick Pound, who led an investigation into the Russian doping scandal. "Sport has, to a considerable degree, allowed those values to become tarnished. If it can re-instate them, I believe that much of the current doubt or cynicism could be dissipated."

Using the 11 years of "golden stability" that will be secured by choosing hosts for both the 2024 and 2028 Games, how can the IOC restructure the Olympic Games and the bidding system? Bach responded that he intends to "increase the value of the Olympic Games."

By reducing costs, and making reforms that will attract more bidding cities, Bach hopes to establish historical proof in the examples of successful Games organisation, including Tokyo 2020.

He often says: "If you react to a challenge, your options are limited. We want to be the leaders of change, not the object of change."

So he did, at the end of 2014, when the IOC approved the "Olympic Agenda 2020" for reform, which already highlighted the need for cost reduction and changes to the bidding process.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be the first summer Games under the reformed policy, expected to be the cornerstone of efforts to change the tide.

Paving the way for two cities to hold the 2024 and 2028 Olympics is another strategic cornerstone.

While putting on a strong face, the IOC can break the negative trend of cities withdrawing bids.

Furthermore, the two cities are expected to present "golden opportunities" for raising the value of the Olympic Games; Paris, where the modern Olympic Games saw their creation by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, and Los Angeles, promising another private-funded Olympic organisation.

What then?

"The rest is up to my successor," said Bach, with a big smile hiding the meticulous calculations behind it.

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Olympic Games face crucial turning point: The Japan News columnist - The Straits Times

Females Are Strong As Hell

If youve been on Instagram at all since November, then youve probably noticed a resurgence in politically-charged tees. Tees have always been loud statement-makers, especially in a political context. How clothing is made, what it means in relation to the zeitgeist, and what it represents are all inherently political, even though it may not always be obvious. And in case youre looking to wear your woke-ness on your sleeve with a shirt, then you may want to grab this Equal Rights Now tee featuring iconic feministsDorothy Pitman HughesandGloria Steinem.

The photo on this shirt, which first appeared in a 1971 issue of Esquire magazine, features Gloria and Dorothy with their fists up. Its a stern and timeless testament to everything the womens empowerment movement stands for: Intersectional equality on every front. Now, the famed photo is getting a DIY makeover on this shirt and furthering the demand for equal rights for all.

Thanks to everyone who supported our represent.com/equalrights campaign so far! Help raise money and awareness for the Equal Rights Coalition to finally pass the Equal Rights Amendment! #EqualRightNow

Giving some background on the amendment, Represent states,

The ERA still hasnt been passed, and the goal of this shirt is to help promote awareness so that it can finally be adopted. And for $24.99, you know your money is going to a good cause while also helping you spread the word about the importance of this amendment.

The shirts start shipping on August 25th, so prepare your bodies. Youll be able to wear these sooner than you think.

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Here's where you can buy the "Equal Rights Now" tee you've seen almost every celebrity wearing - HelloGiggles

Should the leading online tech companies be regulated as public utilities? Maybe so, according to White House advisor Steve Bannon. His basic argument, according to The Intercept, is that Facebook and Google have become effectively a necessity in contemporary life. Thus far, the tech sector and Washington think-tank crowd have not grappled with that possibility in much depth, if at all. This post will provide a look at some reasons that leading tech companies today resemble sectors traditionally subjected to public utility regulation, and then consider some strong critiques of such a regulatory approach.

Historically, utility regulation has been more prominent where we see: (1) high market share; (2) a service that is vital for consumers; (3) a natural monopoly; and (4) barriers to exit by consumers. For the first factor, one can debate which market measurements to use, but Facebook and Google are unquestionably large. Both have billions of users globally. Google has about an 88 percent market share globally for search, and Facebook now reaches about 89 percent of U.S. Internet users. As to the second, online services are perhaps not quite as vital to daily life as electricity, but Bannon is likely correct to say that services such as search, navigation, and social networks are effectively a necessity of modern life.

The third factor appears more complicated; at first glance, tech companies are not a great fit with the traditional concept of natural monopoly, which economist William Baumol defined as an industry in which multi-firm production is more costly than production by a monopoly." Traditional utility regulation focused on sectors such as electricity, telephone, and cable: high capital costs to entering those markets meant it usually made no economic sense to build a duplicative set of power, phone, or cable lines to the home. For online services, by contrast, the cost of creating a new web site is trivially small, so new social networks can easily begin with an innovative approach and instantly get to the users home or mobile device. However, a network becomes more valuable as more people joina concept called a network effect. Network effects can readily exist for social networks, with sites like Twitter and Facebook increasing in value to each member as more users join. Strong network effects can create costly if not impossible conditions for new entrants seeking to compete with the market leader.

Lastly, as for barriers to exit for consumers, the government applied traditional utility regulation when consumers had no easy way to cut themselves off from a service, such as electricity or phone service. This condition may well apply to Facebook, Google, or other major tech firms. For Facebook, ending use would risk losing touch with friends, accessing news and emergency alerts, and quite a bit more. For Google services, logged-in users could lose access to some of the most advanced email, navigation, video, search, and other personalized services.

There are also compelling arguments against the view that online services today deserve regulation as public utilities. For online services, a competing service really is just a click away if the current service does not serve customer needs. In addition, antitrust experts emphasize the importance of leapfrog competition, in which a different company or business model does not compete head-on with the current market leader, but instead jumps to the next generation and displaces the incumbent there. This phenomenon has many examples in information technology. MySpace lost out to Facebook. Windows and Microsoft Office dominated the PC market for many years, but have no similar hold on todays pervasive mobile devices, while Google Docs and other cloud software services have successfully challenged Microsofts software license model.

More broadly, public utility regulation as a cure may be worse than the disease. A major deregulatory backlash followed the public utility regulation applied to numerous U.S. industries in the 1960s. Under President Carter, a progressive alliance of economist Alfred Kahn, then-Senate staffer Stephen Breyer, and Ralph Nader succeeded in eliminating the Civil Aeronautics Board and price setting for airline tickets, opening the way for discount airlines. Under President Reagan and afterwards, deregulation spread to many previously-regulated utilities, including energy, telecommunications, and other sectors.

Observers vary greatly in which of these deregulatory changes they favor, and my intention here is not to pronounce judgment on which of the changes was desirable. Instead, I suggest that the deregulatory movement had at least three insights that corrected for some of the earlier preference for public utility regulation. First, as airline deregulation exemplifies, the traditional public utility approach does not work well for markets characterized by innovation and rapid change. Second, the debate over proper designation of public utility status should cite more than a study of market failures to justify public utility or other regulation; instead, as Neil Komesar has ably argued, policymakers should look empirically at both government failures and market failures to assess whether regulation is likely to be worthwhile in a given setting. Third, even Democratic Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama have issued Executive Orders supporting use of cost-benefit analysis to proposed regulations (while recognizing the difficulty of quantifying important variables). Applying these three insights to tech firms, innovation and rapid change are common to the tech industry, government imperfections in regulation can be high when applied to cutting-edge technology, and the costs of regulation can be especially steep in industries that otherwise would continue to innovate.

In short, there are some reasonably strong arguments that the biggest online services today are similar to traditional public utilities due to their high market share, network effects, and difficulty for consumers to live without the service. On the other hand, the old public utility approach to regulation had numerous flaws, and does not adapt readily to high-innovation markets where competition is typically based on factors other than price.

Rather than fitting public utility models for electricity or airline pricing, the emerging calls for regulation bear a closer resemblance to some of the Federal Communications Commissions past efforts to use its public utility authority to regulate television content. The growing calls for online services to take down ISIS and other terrorist communications can be seen as an update to the FCCs prohibitions on profanity (George Carlins seven dirty words) and broader historical efforts to prohibit indecent content. The calls for limits on fake news can similarly start to resemble a modern-day Fairness Doctrine, where fake news is unfair and blocked, while real news is fair and goes out to viewers.

The efforts to regulate online services as utilities, moreover, are likely to advance more quickly in countries other than the United States. The United States is more laissez faire than the rest of the world and proud of and reluctant to interfere with American-grown tech success stories. By contrast, the European Union has been willing to take high-visibility actions against Google, in the right to be forgotten limits on what can be shown in search results, and in the recent EU antitrust order that Google must avoid prioritizing search results of Google-affiliated services.

In conclusion, those who thought public utility regulation was a thing of the past might want to reconsider what is likely to happen with respect to the largest online tech companies. Steven Bannon, in calling for public utility treatment, may be expressing something in the American zeitgeist, and other countries are likely even more willing to regulate in this area than the United States. For those who are familiar with the many problems of public utility regulation, the time has likely come to make more considered and persuasive explanations for the flaws of that approach.

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Should the Leading Online Tech Companies Be Regulated as Public Utilities? - Lawfare (blog)

What's in the cards for San Francisco? Author Michelle Tea gives a reading for the city and discovers some surprising advice. (Photo: Jenn Rosenstein / Illustration: Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Gabe Meline/KQED)

When writer Michelle Tea first came to San Francisco, she had yet to win awards or develop a diehard following. Instead, she supported herself on Haight Street by giving Tarot readings as she describes it, an ancient story system, a pack of cards that tell a multitude of tales depending on the ways in which theyre placed alongside one another. In other words, a writers dream.

Teas new book, Modern Tarot (Harper Collins; $22.99), is a prismatically down-to-earth guide, and Tea is a sagacious tour guide. Hip and discerning, Tea shares personal anecdotes, shares some of her personal rituals to take each cards meaning into her life, and, perhaps my favorite, decodes the symbolism of each card. (Tea describing the snow on which stands the Hermit, a sage old woman supporting herself on a staff: If water is the emotions and air is the intellect, then snow is the emotions made tangible, by the cold air of logic.)

Modern Tarot offers the most straightforward interpretationIve found about how Tarot cards work, and how the mythic journeys each card portrays can be used to harness a personal moment. So naturally, Ive asked Michelle Tea to give the city of San Francisco a reading.

Below, Tea trains her eye on the City and finds, among other things, that the tech bubble is not a bubble that will burst just yet; that the city needs to work on its partying; that it must get in touch with the emotional impact of its existence; and, she says, If San Francisco cant get itself together to honor the feminine, the feminine will just storm the castle.

Youve been warned, San Francisco.

A Tarot reading by Michelle Tea

A reading I like to do, for myself and for others, is a general Celtic Cross. The Celtic Cross spread is a popular one for a reason its simple, its thorough, it provides a good overview of whats happened, whats going on, and whats on the rise. I shuffle the deck and ask in a broad sense what the outcoming and incoming energies are right now, and this afternoon, I asked on behalf of the city of San Francisco.

Hmmmm, I was afraid of this. Right now, San Francisco is all about work. The card Im using the Rider-Waite deck, with art by the wonderful Pamela Coleman Smith depicts an architect getting the thumbs up from a couple of moneybags. Hooray, theyre going to pay him to design their castle! The Bay Area has gotten the thumbs up from moneybags everywhere from the continued development of all things tech. An old story, but whats interesting is, this card is a three were still at the start of this current work cycle. We know this bubble isnt a bubble at all. Its got stability, staying power, and its only going to grow from here. Good news for many, Im sure, but all work and no play makes Jack a dull town.

Verrrrry interesting. This card represents what crosses the present, what influences it, either helping it along or slowing it down. The Queen of Cups is a heavy-duty feminine energy card. It represents the realm of emotions. A Queen, it is a mature card, it thinks before it acts and considers the way a behavior could wound or heal. It is a poet and a dreamer.

This to me looks a lot like the battle between good and evil enacted in San Francisco for decades now the masculine-fueled work drive opposing and being opposed by a feminine-fueled emotion drive. My read on this is that industry in San Francisco will not be able to fully, truly grow until it begins to mature out of its little-kid, I-want-it-all phase and responds to the emotional impact of its existence. By integrating not just poetry but poets, not just dreams but dreamers into the scope of its vision, San Franciscos work life will begin to achieve some balance. Until this happens, the pressure that these more artistic realms place on the corporate will not let up.

Also, though it is true that in the Tarot, masculine and feminine energies are embodied by all genders, so for this particular reading I would say that San Franciscos industry needs to take a look at how it treats women and female-identified people need to continue putting pressure on growing powers to make sure they are included in the bigger picture of city life.

San Francisco has always dreamed big. The Star is about taking your wildest inspirations and somehow bringing them down to terra firma and making them real. Ive long felt that San Francisco is a place where people come to see if their theory can be put into practice, whether on an intensely personal level, a community level or within larger cultural movements.

The city sees itself as deeply innovating, whether what is being disrupted are algorithms or the gender binary. There is special energy here that can make things happen, and it favors movements with high ideals, inclusiveness and accessibility. The Star is connected to Aquarius, which is the sign of the future. The future starts in San Francisco (or at least the citys ego believes this). I see this card as evidence that collectively, San Francisco knows it needs to dream bigger and work harder to make idealistic situations exist for more of the city.

In San Franciscos heart, its always been the Summer of Love. Its not a coincidence that this famous moment occurred here, or that the countrys queer community gathered and thrived here. Deep down, it is love that rules this place, that makes it work. Its the foundation that everything is currently built upon, the big hearts of the citys ancestors and their forgotten labors of love that made the city great.

The image on the card is two people exchanging cups, and its this human connection, emotional communication, that is still the heart of the city very deep and hard to extinguish. There is a channel between this underground love and the conscious idealism of The Star. The city thinks of itself as a loving place and needs to draw upon that history in order to manifest more progressive projects.

Okay, it is not a coincidence that San Franciscos recent past is the richest dude in the deck. The King of Pentacles is materialistic, hes great at business, he earns his money and spends it luxuriously. The past always brings us to the future, so it is the work and influence of this man (these men) that has made San Francisco the epicenter of industry it currently is. But its done so at the expense of the citys spiritual and emotional aspects, as seen in the Queen of Cups. One tarot reader explained to me once that she sees that crossing card as the bridge that brings us from the past to the future, and if that is the case, the serene, emotional queen is taking our hand, pulling us away from big daddy moneybags and leading us to

The Future is Female, yall. With all my fingers crossed, I hopefully report that the energies native to the feminine healing, nurturing, love, beauty, abundance, giving, serenity, creativity are ready to lovingly ambush San Francisco. Out with the yang, in with the yin: a feminine renaissance, with intuition, healing arts, art in general and a need for equality as the citys zeitgeist. Precedence given to the experience of female-identified and otherwise feminine people. A movement to ease the burden on mothers at all economic levels, and a sense that San Francisco is our mother, and all of us her children, and lets start taking better care of her and of each other.

Yes, San Francisco won the karmic lotto, if high-paying jobs and skyrocketing rents are how one defines fortune. The city has established itself as a world-class location with all the cash and prizes that go along with that. It is, in so many ways, blessed. But the what goes up must come down rule applies to this card we may currently be that Sphinx, riding high, but the jackal and the snake will get their turn, too. Better for the city to keep its eye on the center to better able ride out the inevitable downs that come with these magnificent ups. But no matter what ever happens, the city always rises. It is The Wheel of Fortune.

This card represents the environment the querent finds themselves in, but as the querent in this reading is an environment err, uh, hmmmm. I guess this card stands for you, all of you, the citizens of San Francisco, influencing her vibes and character on the daily. And generally speaking, the people of San Francisco are new. They think thoughts that havent been thunk before, they try things that havent been tried, they live lives that havent been lived. And they love it. Thought, literature, communication, media, these are all ruled by the Ace of Swords and they rule the people of San Francisco. Debates, healthy and otherwise. These are a people who will go to the mat for what they believe. On some level, everyone knows that they are at the vanguard of our culture, and the city loves this about her children.

This card is the anxiety card of the spread, and weve got the dull, plodding if capable Knight of Pentacles. While the fantasy of big King Pentacle in the citys past is pretty attractive to pretty much everyone (even I wouldnt mind eating grapes off his lap), this Knight of Pentacles is the average Jos reality: a working stiff whose job eats her life and who doesnt have much time for anything cool or fun or creative. Is this what the city is afraid of becoming? I see this as all the inspired people who moved to town with dreams only to find themselves with big rent they need to work hella hard to pay, leaving them too exhausted to pursue their real life at the end of the day. San Francisco, dont let this be you! It suggests to me that the city is aware that its becoming a bore, and it keeps them up at night.

The card that ties it all together, and here we have the magnificent Queen of Wands, emphasizing the already-strong message that it is time for feminine energies to take the wheel. This Queen builds upon the watery power of the Queen of Cups and the nurturing abundance of The Empress and sets it ablaze. If San Francisco cant get itself together to honor the feminine, the feminine will just storm the castle. Queen of Wands is crafty and powerful, full of energy and ideas, has tons of endurance and stamina, creativity and chutzpah.

Artists, lovers, politicians, activists: this Queen makes shit happen. Youre either on her train or youre eating dust. All aboard, San Francisco! Its time to leave the past behind.

Thanks to Michelle Tea for this weeks Tarot reading. Modern Tarot: Connecting with your Higher Self Through the Wisdom of the Cards features updated, feminist, and queer-friendly reading of Tarot, personal anecdotes, and spells. Yes, spells.

The Spine is a biweekly book column. Catch us back here in two weeks.

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Reading the Cards: Michelle Tea's Tarot Advice for San Francisco - KQED

What does it mean to speak of postinternet cities or postinternet architecture? To invoke any post- term (postinternet, postmodern, post-technological), especially in the context of that trusty binary of utopia/dystopia, we seem to have an a priori whiff of the future. And yet the word alone reveals the truth of its pointing to a post hoc condition; of reflecting on something that has already come to be status quo.

When I began using the term postinternet over a decade ago to describe my own art work and that of my peers that I wanted to support, I had no inkling that I was starting a controversial movement or coining a term over which others would fight about the provenance, insisting it must have been this or that man that actually said the word before me or knew better what he meant than I did. I could not project that Kanye West would come to call himself the Postinternet Disney and describe his wedding seating chart as arranged according to postinternet philosophy, or that Id one day open the catalogue for an exhibition I was in and find anonymously quoted London gallerists laughing around a far away dinner table about wanting to kill me for having coined the term.

Image from The New Yorker,cartoon by Peter Steiner, 1993.

As I feel Ive now had to repeat endless times over the last decade, only to constantly read that postinternet art has yet to be defined, or to endlessly see people compelled to place the words so-called before the term, I was simply doing two things in using the word Postinternet":

1. Describing my own work, which was a combination of art made online and art made offline, after the internet, i.e. immediately after logging off and in the style of the internet, both celebrating and critiquing itmuch as I also did online, independently and in my pro-surfer work as a founding member of the collective Nasty Nets;

2. Working at Rhizome, an organization then about to celebrate its tenth anniversary of supporting internet art, I wanted to expand the mission statement to address internet-engaged art that could be offline or online. At the time, it seemed radical to propose that a painter, photographer, or textile artist could be an internet artist and that these underdogs could use our support. Who knew postinternet was about to be the most common submission theme at the Frieze fair?

Both of these sentiments were informed by my having been a part of the new media scene since the mid/late-1990s. It all came out of a zeitgeist in which Id been influenced by the other artists I was seeking to champion (not to mention the thinking of much earlier artists like Nam June Paik, who said even in the late 1960s, Cybernated art is very important, but art for cybernated life is more important, and the latter need not be cybernated), as well as curators & critics like Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz, Josephine Bosma, Jon Ippolito, and Lev Manovich, whod all expressed related sentiments, including the fact that new media was not really new anymore and the novelty had worn off. In a sense, these were organizers shoring up and riding a line between utopia and dystopia: Whereas theyd once gone out on a limb to identify experimental forms and practices in art, those practitioners were now starting to feel ghettoized in the small niche expression zones painstakingly carved-out for those using technology to make art, whereas the rest of the world was using technology to do everything.

I summarize this old story here for those readers unfamiliar with it and to draw out a point I feel might be germane to the discussion of postinternet architecture. One small, yet often overlooked aspect of the postinternet movement is its social context. In a broader art world in which curators are controversially including their partners in biennials and nepotism abounds, social connections are often a dirty joke, if not a secret, but I think it behooves those with an interest in city planning, architecture, and broader concepts of world-building to consider these social aspects when they draw on networked culture and aesthetics to design for the social and emotional needs of communities that are increasingly defined by their relationship to digital media. I do not mean to imply that nepotism was the word of the day and that it should also drive architecture, but rather that sharing, social bookmarking, the old saw that information wants to be free, and a spirit of internet friendship were the guiding ethos behind the genesis of the movement.

Sondra Perry,Lineage for a Multiple-Monitor Workstation: Number One, 2015.Courtesy of the artist.

Much as I referred earlier to the late-90s dichotomy between what new media artists were doing with technology and how the rest of world related to it, the reason that the term postinternet now refers to a status quo is that, certainly for those who are reading and exchanging the word (those whom I presume to be literate Westerners with access to the World Wide Web), the internet is a given. We know what it is, what it looks like, what its aesthetics and many of its inside jokes are about, and were not surprised when we see its vapors offline: Yelp stickers on restaurant doors, emoji magnets, Tumblr aesthetic bedsheets, etc. In fact, we increasingly see very little difference between online and offline, because the internet keeps our calendar of events, GPS helps us arrive at destinationsmoreover, technology often helps us be in two places at once, we live-tweet and Instagram experiences (if only in our minds and conversations), we punctuate our downtime by checking our phones for emails and texts, and as we so often joke, we never log-off.

If there is any reason at all to have a word like postinternet (and at this point, it really could be any word), it is to have a placeholder to discuss the situation of network conditions. Feeling unable to unplug (due to the forces of capital, the infrastructural reach of the grid, family expectations, FOMO, etc.) is but one of many symptoms of network culture, which may also include the perversion of the notion of transparency in the slippage between surveillance and software lingo; the dismissal of failure and the abject along with a conflation of disruption and experimentation; a naivet as to the physicality of infrastructures and the spatial logic of the net; the ongoing veiling of physical, intellectual, and affective labor involved in the production and maintenance of network culture and its participants; an outdated assumption that technological determinism is somehow teleological; and finally two that relate most to our purposes here: an overarching internet centrism, a la Jaron Lanier's cybernetic totalism that casts an anthropomorphic lens on the net privileging a singularity in which nature and technology are fusing in a misguided assumption that technology and the net will solve all of our emotional problems; and lastly a kind of eschatological cynicism of the doomedness of the network (and hence human cultures) that has led to the misnomer (and subsequent criticism) that "post-internet" refers to the death of the internet, a fallacious techno-apocalypse.

All of that said, to imagine planning for the city of the future in the context of designing postinternet architecture is to imagine designing for the singularitya moment in which the intelligence, creative, and emotional capacity of humans is seen to merge with or be surpassed by machines. It should be pointed out that this concept is defined by its speculative nature, and that various writers have cast it as utopian versus dystopian. As an artist and cultural historian of technology, my interest lies in the perseverance of the theory, as an artifact, and the way that it reflects and even affects (as a phantasmatic byproduct of programmers and developers who subscribe to the ideal) the way that we share information across social networks and the public sphere writ large. After all, these are our commons and the spheres around which we bounce and mold our ideas of public and private. In fact, I would argue that the introduction of metaspheresof online and offline spaces that are both real and different worldshave bifurcated these concepts so that we have more than one notion of public or of private. There can be private acts in public space, public records of very private information, an insistence on privacy that stands parallel to a persistence in frequent public disclosure.

Installation view of Signe Pierce, Virtual Normality, 2017.

Its almost as if the more we try to push toward these binaries, the more tenuous they reveal themselves to be. To give in to them is to be locked into a kind of Althusserian subjectivity that queer theory has described all too well as a non-choice. If we try to persist with frameworks of proposed heterogeneity that really offer only a sequence of either/or choiceschoose your own adventure: public or private, inside or outside, utopia or dystopia, skyscraper condo or suburban duplexwe may in fact be both liquidating all fantasy potential from the concept of the utopic and overriding the greatest creative tactic at the disposal of the overall schema of postinternet art, which falls under the rubric of appropriation.

To speak first to the latter, I mean to say that whether a work of postinternet art is online or offline, in any medium or duration whatsoever, part of its distinction as such is its participation in conveying, critiquing, existing under or during the conditions of network culture. The work itself is somehow part and parcel of those conditions, and one likely would not have to look hard to see those symptoms. This ability to appropriate at a sort of constitutive, DNA-level blows open the shutters on discourses of relationality, binarism, perspectivalism, and either/or states of being. This is where postinternet meets sci-fi meets 17D-modeling.

This is where we meet fantasy and look back to the future. The literary and film theorist Jos Esteban Muoz wrote, in Cruising Utopia, "The here and now is a prison house. We must strive, in the face of the here and nows totalizing rendering of reality, to think and feel a then and there. Some will say that all we have are the pleasures of the moment, but we must never settle for that minimal transport; we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds. Muoz, a pioneer among queer theorists in arguing for a postbinary way of looking at the world, drew on close readings of multiple artists to expand the definition of queer to embrace a broad vision of an alternate reality: Queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality or concrete possibility for another world."

I am not an architect, not a city planner, not even an engineer or psychic with a great sense of what the future holds. I am simply a city dweller. A resident. Ive called four countries home in my life, and numerous cities. Ive read and even taught all the great undergrad theories on the poetics of space and place, and their phenomenologies and semiotics too, but at the end of the day I find myself thinking more about Black Mirror and Tron and Tati than Bachelard or Merleau-Ponty when I think about the future and what I may or may not want in a living space. I think about FOMO vs JOMO (the Fear of Missing Out versus the Joy of Missing Out) while at home, isolating oneself from humans on a social network, and the relationship between windows in rooms and computer screen windows. I wonder about the smart devices were going to be living with and if they are going to be smart enough to trick us into actually going outside now and then, or to tell when were lonely or even dead, rather than just lying very still for a very long time, uploading and downloading material to and from our consciousness. I wonder how tall the buildings will need to be to accommodate our planets growing population, and sometimes I just imagine buildings like the ones we have now, copied and pasted many times on top of each other. I just wonder if we will be able to see this sky of ours that we keep polluting with new technologies and the factories that produce them in, and the server farms that run the social networks we use to organize our environmental protests on

But above it all I try to keep an open mind. I remember that those speculative forecasts about unregulated growth, the ones that would pitch our dwellings and computer brains into an endless scroll, are just speculation. Its not like we wouldnt be there to keep up with it. Its not like we wouldnt be participating in the design and appropriation, going along for the cruise. And its not like Im describing the status quo and not a future, right?

Post-Internet Cities is a collaborative project between e-flux Architecture and MAAT Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology within the context of the Utopia/Dystopia exhibition and Post-Internet Cities conference, produced in association with Institute for Art History, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Universidade NOVA de Lisboa and Instituto Superior Tcnico Universidade de Lisboa, and supported by MIT Portugal Program and Millennium bcp Foundation.

Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, and media theorist. Her interdisciplinary work combines performance, video, drawing and installation to address the cultural history of technology, the politics of participation in pop culture and the aesthetics of failure.

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On the Internet, No One Knows You're a Doghouse - E-Flux

Is India overshadowed by a monologue? Is there space for alternative views? Or, are we expected to fall in line? And speak in unison?

As India celebrates the seventieth year of Independence, this book brings together diverse views: Politicians, activists, administrators, artistes and academicians offer their myriad ideas of the nation. With a contextual introduction by Nidhi Razdan, this politically charged, argumentative, candid and humorous book opens a window to our understanding of India.*

Who thought up paper money? How did the contraceptive pill change the face of the legal profession? What was the secret element that made the Gutenberg printing press possible?

The world economy defies comprehension. A continuously changing system of immense complexity, it offers over ten billion distinct products and services, doubles in size every fifteen years and links almost every one of the planets seven billion people. It delivers astonishing luxury to hundreds of millions. It also leaves hundreds of millions behind, puts tremendous strains on the ecosystem and has an alarming habit of stalling. Nobody is in charge of it. Indeed, no individual understands more than a fraction of whats going on.

How can we make sense of this bewildering system on which our lives depend?

From the tally stick to the barcode, concrete to cuneiform, each invention in Tim Harfords fascinating new book has its own curious, surprising and memorable story, a vignette against a grand backdrop. Step by step, readers will start to understand where we are, how we got here and where we might be going next. *

Smart and provocative, witty and uncompromising, this collection of Laurie Pennys writing establishes her as one of the most urgent and vibrant feminist voices of our times. From the shock of Donald Trumps election and the victories of the far right, to online harassment and the transgender rights movement, these darkly humorous articles provoke challenging conversations about the definitive social issues of today.

Penny is lyrical and passionate in her desire to contest injustice; she writes at the raw edge of the zeitgeist at a time when it has never been more vital to confront social norms. These revelatory, revolutionary essays will give readers hope and tools for change from one of todays boldest commentators.*

*All text from flap/back of the book.

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HT Picks: This week's most interesting reads - Hindustan Times

Sally Rooney wrote Conversations With Friends over three months while studying for a masters in American literature at Trinity College in Dublin. A short year later, she found herself caught in the middle of a seven-way tussle between publishers vying for the rights. (It should go without saying that this is a remarkable situation for any novelist, let alone a 26-year-old who had only recently finished her thesis.) Faber emerged from the battle victorious, and since the release of her book, which came out late May in the U.K., and earlier this month in the States, Rooneys writing has been compared to that of Sheila Heti and Edna OBrien, described by Kazuo Ishiguro as a moment of real significance, and, in a uniquely zeitgeist-y turn-of-phrase, she was dubbed no less than the Salinger of the Snapchat generation .

Set firmly in the digital age, Conversations With Friends thankfully veers away from the easily labored territory of Snapchat and selfies, and instead follows Frances, a student at Trinity who moonlights as a spoken-word poet alongside her best friend and ex-girlfriend, the abrasive and magnetic Bobbi. When the pair are profiled for a distinguished magazine by Melissa, a celebrated writer and photographer, they fall into the older womans alluring sphere, populated by glamorous creative types, and soon, Frances starts an affair with Nick, Melissas faintly famous 32-year-old actor husband. Trying to play their romantic assignations outside the hackneyed clich (the older man, the younger girl), Nick and Frances find themselves flailing and failing to convey what they actually mean to each other. They are armed with all this feminist theory, and they are kind of conscientious people who obviously dont want to be oppressing each other. It takes them both some time to actually see past the superficial power disparity between them and try and negotiate what they are actually going through as individual people, says Rooney, on the phone from her parents house in Mayo, Ireland, and the novel knits together the various ways we communicate in the novel, as the characters conversations slip seamlessly across face-to-face, email, text, and instant messenger, meshing together the series of tangled, overlapping relationships that color the plot.

There is often a weighted assumption that young, female writers mirror their own lives in their work (see Jami Attenberg s essay, Stop Reading My Fiction as the Story of My Life ), and while Conversations With Friends is certainly not autobiographical, it does draw upon Rooneys experience as a competitive debater while at Trinity, which the author recalls as an introduction to an elite and unfamiliar world. I thought, I have to very quickly now absorb the norms and the social behavior and the etiquette that will make me socially acceptable, says Rooney. And that certainly informed the novel. Thats how Frances feels with Melissa and their friends: I want these people to accept me. How do I do that? How do I observe them closely enough that I can fool them into thinking I can belong? The book becomes a treatise about not just the complexities of desire in the modern era, but also the complexities of being a young woman in the world, with all of the potential heights and hazards that follow along.

Vogue spoke with Rooney about the changing face of Ireland, what good dialogue and sex scenes have in common, and whether the Internet is a good or bad thing, below.

You are from Mayo, and you lived there until you went to Trinity. How much of the novel did you draw from your life and experiences?

Frances is actually from Dublin. Her parents are from Mayo, and they move back there, but she actually grows up in Dublin. There are certainly elements of the social world that I inhabited growing up and then in college that I draw from. I mean, obviously, I studied English in Trinity, and I think the book is very much about observing a social milieu as much as anything else, and obviously I chose to write about social circles that I felt I had an understanding of the norms and manners. So in that sense, absolutely there are autobiographical elements, and its written about a city that I have lived in for eight years and that I know pretty well, but, in terms of the actual substance of the book, its not drawn from my real life.

It strikes me that the novel seems to be about Dublin very much as it is now. I moved to Dublin in 2010, and it was in the middle of the crash, and it has changed so much.

Yes, its certainly set [today]. . . I think the economic situation of the characters reflects contemporary Dublin, which is kind of slowly grappling with recovery from the crash, and I think the last sector recovering is that millennial class, who have never really had an experience of properly waged work. People think the book is about extraordinarily privileged people, but its not really. At one stage, Frances has got so little money that she cant feed herself, and she has an unpaid internship at one point, and a minimum wage job, and she makes reference to several other minimum wage jobs she has had. . . . [Theres this culture in creative fields of] constantly being shuffled around very low paid unsatisfying work that you have to do to get by, and that to have any prospect of having a satisfying career you are expected to do loads of unpaid work. I think its miserable.

The fact that people come away from the book thinking it portrays a really privileged lifestyle is really confusing to me. The characters read a lot and are very culturally literate, but they are not really privileged people. Nick and Melissa have a nice house, but they are not predatory capitalists or anything. . . they certainly occupy a cultural position that people associate with privilege, in that they are artists that lead a bohemian lifestyle.

I know you debated at Trinity. What impact did that have on your use of language, and your ability to construct plot and narrative?

One thing debating did was bring me in contact with a whole social world that I had never experienced before. Its sort of a very international, very niche hobby. . . and once you rise to a certain level, you find yourself constantly taking flights to faraway countries and youre seeing all the same faces everywhere you go, and it wasnt very unlike being on the festival circuit as a young writer. It was an introduction to a world I was previously unfamiliar with, and I thought I have to very quickly now absorb the norms and the social behavior and the etiquette that will make me socially acceptable in this world. And that certainly informed the novel. Its very much that worldthats how Frances feels with Melissa and their friends. I want these people to accept me. How do I do that? How do I observe them closely enough that I can fool them into thinking I can belong? So that was part of my experience at college that I definitely encountered in debating. But as for use of language, I dont know, that was that one of the reasons I was drawn to debating was that I probably already was drawn to language, and politics and stuff in a way that probably comes through in the novel as well.

Sex is notoriously difficult for authors to write about well. It comes up a fair amount in this book.

I think the whole idea of a sex scene is strange, because we would never say a dialogue scene; that scene is defined by the content of what happens in the dialogue. Similarly, a sex scene where the two characters end up crying in a bed is not going to be substantially similar to a sex scene where they have just started their affair and are obsessed with each other. A lot of what my characters encounter in their dialoguestrying to express themselves and trying to connect but also trying to guard themselves against feeling vulnerablethose are the same issues that came up in their sex scenes, too.

I wonder if the way you approach and have structured the relationship and the fluid sexualities in the bookFrances is bisexual, Bobbi is a lesbian, other characters seem sort of open. . . is that something that would have been written or well received say, five, six years ago, even? Do you feel like there is a moment of tangible change in Ireland in terms of social progress?

Five, six years ago, maybe. 10 years ago, Im not sure. 20 years ago, almost certainly not. So there definitely is now the idea that you can write about these characters and their realities without delving into the oppression that they have faced, the difficulties they may have had in coming out. Its like, now lets just get to the interesting part of them being adults and working their lives out without having to explain how they got to that situation.

I was talking to my Mum about this, actually, and she definitely has [witnessed progress firsthand]. Ireland now is so different even from the Ireland of the early 1990s. You know, gay pride went through Castlebar yesterday afternoon. Its accepted that there is a vibrant gay community in small towns, and that is a massive change. We still havent had the emergence of a left-wing movement. And I think that is something that would mark a real sort of landmark shift in Irish political life, if that was to happen. When I was at university I was quite active in the Repeal the 8th [pro-choice] movement. Since leaving university I go to protests and rallies, Im not involved in any activist groups, but I must get involved now, because I know there is going to be a referendum next year, over the next few months probably. Its something that any young Irish woman cant be unaware of.

Irish writing is having a big moment, and I have read that you dont necessarily perceive yourself as an Irish writer.

I saw this as well, but I think its been misinterpreted. I definitely do see myself as an Irish writer, and I see myself as part of a community of Irish writers, and I am really excited about the writing that is coming out of Ireland at the moment. I guess its the whole idea of richness and nationality, Im increasingly not really sure what it means. In the past, we obviously had a national identity that was defined by opposition to British imperialism, and that is all very well and in the past, now. And our new national identity is just seems to be a way of justifying our privileged position in the world and protecting ourselves at the expense of others. You know, deporting people, refusing to admit asylum seekers. Is that now what Irishness really means? Is that a protective gesture against open borders and this idea that we have a national identity that we quote unquote have to protect? That is not something that I am interested in participating in at all. But I think generally most Irish writers arent and Irish literature is not really a part of that project, and certainly I dont want to think that it is. But I definitely identify as an Irish writer, but when it comes to the question of what Irishness is and what is Irish writing, I definitely dont have a convincing answer to any of those questions.

The way that we communicate has changed so much, and so much of it is online. A lot of communication in the book is through digital means. But I dont feel like it has pervaded literature enough.

Its funny because the forms of novel have often been associated with changes in technological forms. If you look at the history of the letter in the novel, small changes in the British postal service became really significant because of how quickly people are suddenly able to communicate, and letters actually arrive at the intended time, and they arrive to the correct recipient. All of this is really important to a plot. It seems really natural that when our forms of communication change as rapidly as they have over the last 20 years that the form of our fiction should be changing rapidly too. And I couldnt imagine how these characters would live their lives without constantly sending texts and emails and or without having instant messgage conversations, or looking back on their old conversations, or looking at videos or clips of each other. In the beginning, when Frances finds out that Melissa is married to Nick, obviously the first thing she does is put his name in the Internet and look at pictures of him. I wasnt trying to write a commentary on our use of Google Images, I was just trying to think: What would I do? I would want to know what the guy looks like.

All those forms of experience dictate so much of how we relate to one another, and particularly I think if you meet people who are of a certain status in society, they have a presence that precedes you meeting them because that presence is maintained on the Internet. It would be really difficult for me to imagine how you would go about navigating that without recourse to the technology that supplies how much of how we communicate now. I wasnt trying to do it in any way as a commentary on the use of the Internet. I dont have any answers as to whether the Internet is a good or a bad thing, but its certainly an important thing for the novel because novels are so much about communication, and when communication changes, the novel has to change.

Something I related to was the idea of constructing a dry, wry version of yourself online, with someone you are in a relationship with, and how this gap between that person and how you are really feeling can form.

Certainly, and Frances will use any possibility she can to protect herself from vulnerability. She finds it very difficult to open up about her emotional life. The Internet is just one of many tools she will use for the purpose of trying to protect herself from the difficult aspects of intimacy with other people, but certainly the Internet gives her an ability. . . . You can spend an hour drafting an email and it will look like youve written it in 10 seconds. In real life, your body language will communicate what you may not want the other person to know. You may not have the same control over yourself like you do over text and that makes sense for Frances, she is a writer.

I felt that the book brought up this question of the divergence between how you may think of yourself and who you actually are. At one point, Nick refers to himself as oppressive white male. He cant help being a white man. So how does he operate past that?

That is one of the central questions of the book. When people mean well and they want to do the right thing and they really think about it and they seriously put some thought into power structures and how do we actually live that out on a individual level, and how do we actually ask of ourselves, and how much can we give to ourselves to other people in service of trying to live a good life. I mean, I obviously have no answers to any of those questions. But I think thats what the book is trying to analyze.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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Sally Rooney Sees Right Through You - Vogue.com

Watercolours of five-Bengali artists make for the soul of the ongoing exhibition at Kalakriti Art Gallery. Art often grows based on personal experiences and therefore the title Souls of Wide Walls was chosen as a way of looking at individual proclivities through the creative expression of these five maestros.

The exhibition showcases the recent and gives a glimpse of past works, which reflect years of hard work and efforts in different styles, but similar medium.

The five artists includeJogen Chowdhury, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Paresh Maity, Samir Mondal and Avijit Dutta. Artist Jogen Chowdhury is known for his ability to successfully marry traditional imagery with the zeitgeist of contemporary painting, in a skillful blend of an urbane self-awareness and a highly localised Bengali influence. His early works show an attention to figuration that carries through in his current pieces.

Artist Sanjay Bhattacharyas involvement with the streets of Calcutta comes through on his artworks, and convey a story in themselves. Some of his works are most endearing and refreshing works on Gods Own Country.Watercolours created in the flat mold with sinuous lines and curves are more for fun, to let creative juices flow, an attempt at a serious amalgam of words and lines in art, says Sanjay Bhattacharya.

Another artist, Paresh Maity unveils the viewer with the opportunity to be led into a new invigorating experience of landscapes, essentially a representation of space that radically extends the possibilities of an aesthetic experience. Samir Mondals watercolours bring alive faces, landscapes, flowers, butterflies, animals images that will haunt you, not for their apparent beauty but by their secret power.

His complete mastery over his medium, the way he makes the watercolours move and sway at his touch, the flow and confluence of colours, is the true sign of his genius. Samir is now part of the Global Watercolour Art Movement, his works are part of international art books and magazines.

Avijit Duttas life and art have always been intertwined and existed as a single entity. His curiosity to know the past lives of people and their lifestyle has always been profound, which gets reflected in his paintings repeatedly.

I tried to bring forward all the existing taboos and experiences of the long-lost lives of people , which are somewhat intertwined with my present life, he says. Since its a collection of his journey with these past life stories and its associated taboos hence it is titledMy Private Museum.The art show is on until July 31.

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Beyond the colours on canvas - The Hans India

At a time when alternative facts rule the day and the landmark achievements of the Civil Rights Movement, and democracy itself, are on life support, its important for those of us in the know and in the struggle to share stories of local victories and profiles in courage to fuel our hope for a better tomorrow (particularly as thousands of recent law school graduates sit and prepare for their bar exams). Indeed, two quotes come to mind the first from the late critically acclaimed historian and social activist Howard Zinn, the second from the slain New York Senator and promising presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy:

One such man is Harvard Law Professor and Harvard College Faculty Dean Ronald S. Sullivan Jr.

I first met Dean Sullivan seven years ago, at Morehouse Colleges A Candle in the Dark Gala, where I was honored to introduce him as that years Bennie Leadership Award recipient (one of the colleges highest alumni awards). Well, seven years ago, Sullivan was 43 years-old and just a year into his historic appointment as the first African American Faculty Dean (formerly known as House Master) in Harvards nearly 400-year history.

In addition to his appointment as Faculty Dean of Winthrop House at Harvard College, hed been recruited from the faculty of Yale Law School (where he won the award for outstanding teaching after his first year) to Harvard Law School by then-Harvard Law School Dean (now Supreme Court Justice) Elena Kagan where he continues to serve as a senior member of the faculty and Faculty Director of both the Criminal Justice Institute and the Trial Advocacy Workshop; before Yale, he served as Director of the D.C. Public Defender Service, where he broke records for never losing a case for his indigent defendants; and before that, he was a visiting scholar for the Law Society of Kenya, where he sat on a committee charged with drafting a new constitution for Kenya.

Seven years ago, hed achieved this and more, but seven years later, he has clearly established himself as a history-making social engineer (of course Charles Hamilton Houston reminds us that a lawyers either a social engineer or a parasite on society). Not only has he just completed a $300-million capital campaign to completely renovate Winthrop House, enabling New Winthrop to open to its 500-plus students, (historically diverse) faculty and staff next month (a year ahead of schedule), but he was also recently invited to give a TED Talk in Washington, DC on the news that hed won the release of more wrongfully incarcerated individuals over 6,000 than arguably anyone in U.S. history.

In her zeitgeist-shifting book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander reveals how President Reagan's malicious drug war media offensive cultivated an implicit bias against blacks, "[leaving] little doubt about who the enemy was in the War on Drugs," to the point where by the time a 1995 survey (published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education) asked "Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?" 95% of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5% imagined other groups (of course multiple studies have now shown that whites use drugs at a similar or higher rate than blacks).

Consequently, with the presumption of "criminality" being ascribed to "blackness" in the public mind, "blackness" was increasingly met with the presumption of "guilt" (without due process/fair trial) in the criminal justice system a fact evinced by the rise in both (1) support for the racially biased death penalty over the past decades since the "get tough"/drug war campaigns, and (2) wrongful criminal convictions since that time.

On the latter, with "Gideon's promise" in mind, Dean Sullivan answered Justice's call in 2014 by designing and implementing a Conviction Review Unit for the newly elected Brooklyn District Attorney. In its first year, Sullivan discovered over 10 wrongful convictions (which the DA ultimately vacated, exonerating some citizens who had served over 30 years behind bars) and issued a clarion call to district attorneys across the nation to follow suit given the fact that out of 2,300 district attorney offices nationwide, just over a dozen had conviction integrity programs as of 2014. Brooklyns Conviction Review Unit went on to exonerate more wrongfully convicted persons and has become regarded as the model conviction integrity program in the nation. In fact, Sullivan was recently tapped by the newly elected District Attorney of Chicagos Cook County (the second-largest prosecutors office in the nation) to revamp that offices Conviction Integrity Unit, in hopes of ending Cook Countys reputation as the wrongful conviction capital of the U.S.

Whether at the D.C. Public Defender Service or in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina and the criminal justice crisis that came with it where Sullivan was tasked to design an indigent defense delivery system that resulted in the release of nearly all the 6,000 inmates who lacked representation and whose official records were destroyed by the hurricane; whether in Brooklyn or in Chicago; whether at Harvards Criminal Justice Institute educating law school students through practice in representing Massachusetts indigent defendants or at the White House serving on the team that represented former president Bill Clinton or serving as Chair of the Criminal Justice Advisory Committee for then-Senator Obamas (his former law school classmate) presidential campaign, member of the National Legal Advisory Group for the Obama campaign, and Advisor to the Department of Justice Presidential Transition Team; whether representing 1 of the Jena 6, the family of Michael Brown, or star athletes like Aaron Hernandez winning what many said was an unwinnable case due to Hernandezs prior murder conviction (not to mention the bitter-sweet posthumous exoneration on that prior conviction) Sullivan has clearly established himself as the Muhammad Ali in the fight against Mass Incarceration and, in so doing, inspired us all to take a minute of each day to do some justice (see the Ted Talk, below, that left many in tears and earned him the only standing ovation of the day).

Nevertheless, for all the heavy-lifting that Dean Sullivan and his contemporaries (those like Michelle Alexander and Bryan Stevenson, whom Ava DuVernays riveting documentary, 13th, prominently feature) have done, we have our work cut out for us. But with the wisdom of Coretta Scott King in mind (Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.) we take solace in the fact best illustrated through the Latin metaphor nanos gigantum humeris insidentes, which essentially says that we, as small and powerless as we may seem, can see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants. And should we ever stumble or falter along the way, well look back, in Sankofa fashion, to glean from the luminous blueprint that these giants have left for us.

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An Unsung Hero in Our Midst: Ronald S. Sullivan Jr., the Man Who Dealt the Biggest Blow to Mass Incarceration - HuffPost

Monday July 24 2017

Nasa leader Raila Odinga addresses a rally at Hola Stadium in Tana River County on July 22, 2017. Nasa is seeking to exploit its national appeal linked to its ethnic diversity. PHOTO | KEVIN ODIT | NATION MEDIA GROUP

With less than two weeks to go to the General Election, its all hands on deck for National Super Alliance (Nasa) presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his running, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka.

While not a new concept, the formation of a super alliance with five key principals from diverse ethnic groups, coupled with a devolved government, a relatively autonomous Judiciary, and populist movement for change zeitgeist, has seen Mr Odingas odds to win the presidency steadily increase.

VOTER TURNOUT The alliances ability to execute an effective elections strategy will be vital, considering that Mr Odingas strongholds have historically registered low voter turnouts.

The ability of the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) to conduct credible elections will be a key determinant of the outcome.

This will be Mr Odingas fourth and possibly final attempt to secure the big office.

Over the years, he has become skilled at opposition politics, having played kingmaker for former President Mwai Kibaki in 2002.

This was followed by his contribution to creating the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), which in the 2005 referendum, successfully opposed the implementation of a new constitution.

His greatest political success came in 2007 when he became the Prime Minister, a post created under a caretaker government after the 2007/08 post-election violence.

Mr Odinga is the flagbearer of the super alliance, which is brimming with confidence, but also banging a drum around perceived efforts by the incumbent to manipulate the results.

This could set the scene for a contested election outcome.

The rebirth of the pentagon structure under Nasa follows a multi-ethnic representation narrative, as Jubilee Party is deemed to be dominated by Kikuyus and Kalenjins.

Although the represented tribes in Nasa remain largely the same as in 2007, the political landscape has changed significantly over the past 10 years.

Notably, the post-election violence allegations against Mr Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr William Ruto in the International Criminal Court (ICC) a crucial bond for their 2013 election victory no longer exists.

There is also general frustration over the recurring Kikuyu/Kalenjin presidency, with parts of the electorate calling for change over perceived governance failures.

This is around national security, food security, and inconsistencies in the infrastructure development, on which Jubilees campaign is anchored.

Nasa has some power brokers who will be crucial in delivering the strongholds and swing counties.

Governors Hassan Joho (Mombasa) and Josphat Nanok (Turkana) can win key constituencies for Nasa.

Both have openly tussled with President Kenyatta, who has lambasted them.

This has worked in Nasas favour by degrading the Executive voice.

RIFT VALLEY The inclusion of Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto in the new pentagon could also earn Nasa some vital votes in the Rift Valley.

Mr Ruto, who has a historical rivalry with Deputy President William Ruto, has developed his stature as a respected politician in the Rift Valley and nationally.

Mr Musalia Mudavadi and Mr Musyoka, who also harbour presidential ambitions, are pushing to be in government to remain relevant, in the emergence of younger exciting politicians.

Although Jubilee has the incumbency advantage, a first-round victory by Mr Odinga cannot be ruled out.

However, the IEBCs questionable credibility and preparedness reduces the odds of such a victory.

A second-round victory would have the odds tipped narrowly in Jubilees favour despite growing momentum in the opposition campaign.

Nasas strategy includes shaming the government and key players and discrediting the administration to push the populist change narrative.

This has been driven through an effective social media campaign.

Nasa is also seeking to exploit its national appeal linked to its ethnic diversity despite some of the sensitivities entailed in such identity-based politics.

Nasa has also voiced concern over IEBCs independence and preparedness.

This serves the twin aim of discrediting the authorities to win sympathy, and providing the grounds for contesting any potential loss.

President Kenyatta and his Jubilee administration maintain a narrow advantage heading into the poll.

However, a consistent campaign by Nasa could see this lead erode further, replicating similar opposition campaigns witnessed in several other recent African elections.

Ms Cheramboss is an intelligence and analysis consultant at Africapractice EA Ltd. Twitter: @africapractice

Presiding officers have power to eject people from polling stations, says Chiloba.

President says debate a waste of time.

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Tight race in Raila's fourth attempt - Daily Nation