The First Freedoms and America&#039;s Culture of Innovation

Narain D. Batra

doi:10.5771/9781442225886

Summary

This is a book about the dynamics of the aspirational society. It explores the boundaries of permissible thought--deviations and transgressions that create constant innovations. When confronted with a problem, an innovative mind struggles and brings forth something distinctive--new ideas, new inventions, and new programs based on unconventional approaches to solve the problem. But this can be done only if the culture creates large breathing spaces by leaving people alone, not as a matter of state generosity but as something fundamental in being an American. Consequently, the Constitutional mandate of “Congress shall make no law…” has encouraged fearless speech, unrestrained thought, and endless experimentation leading to newer developments in science, technology, the arts, and not least socio-political relations. Most of all, the First Freedoms liberate the mind from irrational fears and encourage an environment of divergent thinking, non-conformity, and resistance to a collective mindset. The First Freedoms encourage Americans to be iconoclastic, to be creatively crazy, to be impure, thus, enabling them to mix and re-mix ideas to design new technologies and cultural forms and platforms, anything from experimental social relations and big data explorations to electing our first black president.

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2013
ISBN-Print: 978-1-4422-2587-9
ISBN-Online: 978-1-4422-2588-6
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 235
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. 1. Prometheus and Confucius No access
  2. Human Rights and Julian Assange No access
  3. Gratitude No access
1. Promethean Possibilities of the Aspirational Society No access
1. 1. Pragmatism No access
2. 1. Court Ruling No access
3. But Thank God: For Every Jerry Falwell There’s Larry Flynt No access
4. Crude and Outrageous Speech as Corrective No access
5. 1. Historians Need Lessons No access
  2. Doubtfully Trusting No access
6. 1. State of Paranoia No access
7. 1. Creative Disequilibrium No access
  2. Warning No access
8. When the U.S. Supreme Court Woke Up No access
9. 1. Tyranny of Self-Censorship No access
1. 1. Right of Procreation No access
  2. Mitigating Reproductive Constraints No access
  3. Seeking Answers No access
2. Freedom from Revealed Truth No access
3. 1. Sustainable Innovation No access
  2. Civic Participation No access
4. Openness Makes Americans Inventive No access
5. Global Brain-Grid Emerging No access
6. Democratization and Innovation No access
1. 1. Unfiltered and Unbridled No access
  2. Harassment No access
  3. A Hazardous Vocation No access
  4. Balancing Competing Interests No access
  5. Trust, But Verify No access
  6. Outrageously Transparent No access
2. 1. Unreliable Sources No access
3. 1. Dark Journalism No access
4. Social Media and Online Civic Journalism No access
5. 1. Exaggerated Fears No access
6. 1. Exceptional No access
7. The Power of Weak Ties No access
8. Building Trust in Social Networks No access
9. Can Social Networking Create Social Capital Despite Weak Ties? No access
10. 1. Making Sense No access
  2. New Challenges No access
1. 1. Status Change No access
  2. Challenging Authority No access
2. Commercial Speech and the Public Interest No access
3. 1. Fired Up and Get Going No access
  2. Beautiful Deceptions No access
4. The Culture of Aspiration and the Arab Street No access
5. 1. Mashing Up No access
6. Business Methods Patenting No access
7. Corporate Speech No access
1. The Dark Side of the Aspirational Society No access
2. Sources of Corruption No access
3. Insatiable at the Top No access
4. Hit the Numbers or You Are Out No access
5. The Moral Neutrality of Numbers No access
6. Money, Money, Money, and More Money No access
7. When Drug Companies Sell Snake Oil No access
8. Free Press and Corporate Behavior No access
9. Who Do You Call When Nothing Works? No access
1. The Roar of the Dragon No access
2. Vicious Capitalist Energy No access
3. Extreme Nationalism No access
4. No Gratitude No access
5. Pacific Ocean Issue No access
6. Can China Challenge America without Embracing the First Freedoms? No access
7. Pragmatism No access
8. Dissidents in the Digital Age No access
9. 1. Virtual Struggle No access
  2. Cyber Resistance No access
10. The Persistence of China’s Dissenters No access
11. 1. Abundance without Freedom No access
12. Half-Hearted Freedom No access
13. The Future Is a Dragon. Do You Hear It Coming? No access
14. Points of Light No access
15. Innovation in a Closed Society No access
16. Challenge to the United States No access
1. To Live and Die in Freedom; That’s America, But What About the Rest of the World? No access
2. The Decider-Warrior President No access
3. War Games and Diplomacy No access
4. Awesome Temptations of Neoimperialism No access
5. Beware the Power of the Unexpected No access
6. Building Pillars of Freedom on Soft Power No access
7. How Does Soft Power Arise? No access
8. The First Amendment and the Aspirational Society No access
9. A Just and Meritorious Society No access
10. The Flight of the Black Swan to the White House No access
11. The Aspirational Society Must Not Shrug No access
12. 1. Propaganda No access
1. 1. Dilemma No access
2. Dependent Origination of the Aspirational Society No access
Notes No access Pages 195 - 218
Index No access Pages 219 - 234
About the Author No access Pages 235 - 235