Mauer's primary focus has been to understand and to create shifts in information storage and retrieval practices in response to new information technologies. A secondary focus of his work is to understand and develop democratic means for including the public in policy deliberations.
Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, e... more Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, environmentalists, Muslims, atheists, minorities, foreigners, poor people, women, and gays — typically the least powerful people in America. This combination of grandiose and persecutory delusions creates the seeds of hatred, war, slavery and genocide. We are not paranoid to link these delusions to such crimes. We\u27ve seen these delusions lead European-Americans to commit war and genocide against Native Americans, to enslave Africans and to wage wars against Vietnamese people, Iraqis, and many others
Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, e... more Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, environmentalists, Muslims, atheists, minorities, foreigners, poor people, women, and gays — typically the least powerful people in America. This combination of grandiose and persecutory delusions creates the seeds of hatred, war, slavery and genocide. We are not paranoid to link these delusions to such crimes. We\u27ve seen these delusions lead European-Americans to commit war and genocide against Native Americans, to enslave Africans and to wage wars against Vietnamese people, Iraqis, and many others
The Florida State Board of Governors is proposing a new rule that would effectively end tenure fo... more The Florida State Board of Governors is proposing a new rule that would effectively end tenure for professors in the state's higher education system. We don't need this rule because it addresses a made-up problem. Florida's higher education system ain't broke, so
This study argues that the context of a print's re-use and exhibition not only changes it... more This study argues that the context of a print's re-use and exhibition not only changes its meaning and evokes different responses, but also that the circulation of this text through the 'popcycle'-the ensemble of discourses that sustain institutions and construct identity-facilitates the process of cultural invention at key moments in history.
This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing About Pop... more This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing About Popular Music.” I designed the course with the help of Dr. Robert Ray while finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Florida and continued to develop it with the help of Li Wei of the music program at the University of Central Florida. Though this course offers standard approaches to music history, theory, and analysis, it also aims to produce new forms of writing about music that are themselves musical. To this end, the course explores how information is stored, organized, and processed in music, and it borrows and transforms these musical practices into writing practices.The course is framed around the following research questions:1. If music communicates information, what are the modes by which it does so? What are the processes by which we assign meaning to music?2. Are storage technologies (sheet music, the phonograph) necessary for music? 3. How do compositional strategies associated w...
The Citizen Curator Project, established in 2014 in Orlando, encourages ordinary citizens to try ... more The Citizen Curator Project, established in 2014 in Orlando, encourages ordinary citizens to try curating for themselves and to approach the task as a form of public policy consultation. Curating as activism requires that we assume the identity of uninvited consultants who have witnessed catastrophe, deliberated about it, and wish to share our epiphanies and policy recommendations with policy makers and other members of society. Because curating has been crucial to ideas of community in the modern era—for example, museums arose with nations and reflected national priorities—we want citizens to think of curating as another means of building and shaping community, a means of increasing their own agency within a more democratic and participatory process. The Citizen Curator Project invites participants from the area to create a series of exhibitions on various themes. In spring and summer 2017, we are focusing on the theme of “Eliminationism and Resilience.” A particularly potent examp...
* Available as a photocopy reprint only. Allow two weeks reprinting time plus standard delivery t... more * Available as a photocopy reprint only. Allow two weeks reprinting time plus standard delivery time. No discounts or returns apply. ... Standard delivery in the US is 7 to 10 business days and outside the US delivery is 4 to 6 weeks or longer. For further details, please see shipping policy. ... Listed below are the papers found in this volume. Click the paper title to view an abstract or to order an individual paper. ... Sign up for monthly alerts of new titles released.
Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ide... more Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ideas recruit the mind’s defenses to protect themselves, even if that recruitment ends up harming the mind that hosts it. This process is similar to what happens with metastatic cancer, which spreads from one location in the body to a distant one. Metastatic cancer “flips” elements of the body’s immune system, recruiting them to defend tumors and attack the body. When bad ideas hijack the mind’s immune system, these bad ideas become resistant to correction and the mind becomes susceptible to more bad ideas. Bad ideas spread in the mind and can eventually take it over.
On April 18, 2017, David Neiwert presented a talk to the University of Central Florida titled “Th... more On April 18, 2017, David Neiwert presented a talk to the University of Central Florida titled “The New Age of Eliminationism in America: How the Internet Feeds Radicalization and Dehumanization.” The next day, he sat down for a discussion with Dr. Barry Mauer, Interim Director of the Texts and Technology Doctoral Program and a co-director of the Citizen Curator Project, which is sponsoring exhibitions about Eliminationism and resilience on the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Neiwert summarized his April 18th talk as follows: The politics of elimination — embodied in nativism, white supremacism, and similar authoritarian ideologies -have long been part of the American political fabric, but in recent years have come bubbling forward in the wave of hate-crime incidents associated with the 2016 election, as well as mass killings such as those in Charleston, S.C., and at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Historically fueled by dehumanizing rhetoric and belief systems, eliminat...
In 2020, the US Department of Defense elicited research that "would look at audience vul... more In 2020, the US Department of Defense elicited research that "would look at audience vulnerability to suasory discourses, as delivered by a variety of authentic and inauthentic actors and at methods to improve audience resilience to malign and deceptive information attacks" (DoD 2020, 48). This chapter argues that malign and deceptive information fosters pathological belief systems. Why are pathological beliefs still a modern problem after centuries of the Enlightenment project? Enlightenment thinkers, such as French Revolutionary leader Nicolas de Condorcet, predicted that progress would lead to reason's triumph, benefitting all humanity. Condorcet claimed that human beings would perfect their reasoning abilities and abandon their prejudices (Condorcet 1795). But the Enlightenment project fell short for two reasons: (1) it contained significant blind spots; and (2) It didn't go far enough. Condorcet's most significant blind spot was his belief that human progress was a natural law. He wrote, "that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is absolutely indefinite; that the progress of this perfectibility, henceforth above the controul of every power that would impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us." He added that human progress was not only inevitable, but also irreversible; "The course of this progress may doubtless be more or less rapid, but it can never be retrograde" (11-12).
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, ... more On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen\u27s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will continue to metastasize. Unless we deal with right wing eliminationism, we will not transform the losses caused by Mateen\u27s attack on Pulse into lasting positive change. This exhibit is intended for an audience of people sympathetic to the victims who were killed and injured during the Pulse shooting. I do not intend to convince those who feel otherwise; they are probably beyond reach...
Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, e... more Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, environmentalists, Muslims, atheists, minorities, foreigners, poor people, women, and gays — typically the least powerful people in America. This combination of grandiose and persecutory delusions creates the seeds of hatred, war, slavery and genocide. We are not paranoid to link these delusions to such crimes. We\u27ve seen these delusions lead European-Americans to commit war and genocide against Native Americans, to enslave Africans and to wage wars against Vietnamese people, Iraqis, and many others
Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, e... more Many right wingers believe they are the only real Americans and are persecuted by progressives, environmentalists, Muslims, atheists, minorities, foreigners, poor people, women, and gays — typically the least powerful people in America. This combination of grandiose and persecutory delusions creates the seeds of hatred, war, slavery and genocide. We are not paranoid to link these delusions to such crimes. We\u27ve seen these delusions lead European-Americans to commit war and genocide against Native Americans, to enslave Africans and to wage wars against Vietnamese people, Iraqis, and many others
The Florida State Board of Governors is proposing a new rule that would effectively end tenure fo... more The Florida State Board of Governors is proposing a new rule that would effectively end tenure for professors in the state's higher education system. We don't need this rule because it addresses a made-up problem. Florida's higher education system ain't broke, so
This study argues that the context of a print's re-use and exhibition not only changes it... more This study argues that the context of a print's re-use and exhibition not only changes its meaning and evokes different responses, but also that the circulation of this text through the 'popcycle'-the ensemble of discourses that sustain institutions and construct identity-facilitates the process of cultural invention at key moments in history.
This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing About Pop... more This essay explores three approaches to “musical writing” from a course called “Writing About Popular Music.” I designed the course with the help of Dr. Robert Ray while finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Florida and continued to develop it with the help of Li Wei of the music program at the University of Central Florida. Though this course offers standard approaches to music history, theory, and analysis, it also aims to produce new forms of writing about music that are themselves musical. To this end, the course explores how information is stored, organized, and processed in music, and it borrows and transforms these musical practices into writing practices.The course is framed around the following research questions:1. If music communicates information, what are the modes by which it does so? What are the processes by which we assign meaning to music?2. Are storage technologies (sheet music, the phonograph) necessary for music? 3. How do compositional strategies associated w...
The Citizen Curator Project, established in 2014 in Orlando, encourages ordinary citizens to try ... more The Citizen Curator Project, established in 2014 in Orlando, encourages ordinary citizens to try curating for themselves and to approach the task as a form of public policy consultation. Curating as activism requires that we assume the identity of uninvited consultants who have witnessed catastrophe, deliberated about it, and wish to share our epiphanies and policy recommendations with policy makers and other members of society. Because curating has been crucial to ideas of community in the modern era—for example, museums arose with nations and reflected national priorities—we want citizens to think of curating as another means of building and shaping community, a means of increasing their own agency within a more democratic and participatory process. The Citizen Curator Project invites participants from the area to create a series of exhibitions on various themes. In spring and summer 2017, we are focusing on the theme of “Eliminationism and Resilience.” A particularly potent examp...
* Available as a photocopy reprint only. Allow two weeks reprinting time plus standard delivery t... more * Available as a photocopy reprint only. Allow two weeks reprinting time plus standard delivery time. No discounts or returns apply. ... Standard delivery in the US is 7 to 10 business days and outside the US delivery is 4 to 6 weeks or longer. For further details, please see shipping policy. ... Listed below are the papers found in this volume. Click the paper title to view an abstract or to order an individual paper. ... Sign up for monthly alerts of new titles released.
Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ide... more Some bad ideas get past a mind’s defenses and then hijack the mind’s immune system. These bad ideas recruit the mind’s defenses to protect themselves, even if that recruitment ends up harming the mind that hosts it. This process is similar to what happens with metastatic cancer, which spreads from one location in the body to a distant one. Metastatic cancer “flips” elements of the body’s immune system, recruiting them to defend tumors and attack the body. When bad ideas hijack the mind’s immune system, these bad ideas become resistant to correction and the mind becomes susceptible to more bad ideas. Bad ideas spread in the mind and can eventually take it over.
On April 18, 2017, David Neiwert presented a talk to the University of Central Florida titled “Th... more On April 18, 2017, David Neiwert presented a talk to the University of Central Florida titled “The New Age of Eliminationism in America: How the Internet Feeds Radicalization and Dehumanization.” The next day, he sat down for a discussion with Dr. Barry Mauer, Interim Director of the Texts and Technology Doctoral Program and a co-director of the Citizen Curator Project, which is sponsoring exhibitions about Eliminationism and resilience on the anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Neiwert summarized his April 18th talk as follows: The politics of elimination — embodied in nativism, white supremacism, and similar authoritarian ideologies -have long been part of the American political fabric, but in recent years have come bubbling forward in the wave of hate-crime incidents associated with the 2016 election, as well as mass killings such as those in Charleston, S.C., and at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Historically fueled by dehumanizing rhetoric and belief systems, eliminat...
In 2020, the US Department of Defense elicited research that "would look at audience vul... more In 2020, the US Department of Defense elicited research that "would look at audience vulnerability to suasory discourses, as delivered by a variety of authentic and inauthentic actors and at methods to improve audience resilience to malign and deceptive information attacks" (DoD 2020, 48). This chapter argues that malign and deceptive information fosters pathological belief systems. Why are pathological beliefs still a modern problem after centuries of the Enlightenment project? Enlightenment thinkers, such as French Revolutionary leader Nicolas de Condorcet, predicted that progress would lead to reason's triumph, benefitting all humanity. Condorcet claimed that human beings would perfect their reasoning abilities and abandon their prejudices (Condorcet 1795). But the Enlightenment project fell short for two reasons: (1) it contained significant blind spots; and (2) It didn't go far enough. Condorcet's most significant blind spot was his belief that human progress was a natural law. He wrote, "that no bounds have been fixed to the improvement of the human faculties; that the perfectibility of man is absolutely indefinite; that the progress of this perfectibility, henceforth above the controul of every power that would impede it, has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us." He added that human progress was not only inevitable, but also irreversible; "The course of this progress may doubtless be more or less rapid, but it can never be retrograde" (11-12).
On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, ... more On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injured 53 at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. We may never know or understand what was in Mateen\u27s mind, but we can situate his attack within the history of eliminationism in America. Islamist terrorism is just part of a larger phenomenon: right wing eliminationism. But despite centuries of right wing eliminationist words and deeds in the U.S., there is little or no mainstream recognition of the phenomenon. Instead, we are treated to more denial, more distraction, more obfuscation. Until we look this problem squarely in the face, it will continue to metastasize. Unless we deal with right wing eliminationism, we will not transform the losses caused by Mateen\u27s attack on Pulse into lasting positive change. This exhibit is intended for an audience of people sympathetic to the victims who were killed and injured during the Pulse shooting. I do not intend to convince those who feel otherwise; they are probably beyond reach...
Educators want their students to live healthy, ethical lives within a healthy, ethical society. B... more Educators want their students to live healthy, ethical lives within a healthy, ethical society. But an enormous obstacle stands in the way: a right-wing cult that poses an existential threat to personal and collective well-being. This cult, tens of millions strong, blocks efforts to address all other major problems including climate change, racism, economic exploitation, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet many people fail to see the right wing for the serious threat that it is. Often, those who do take the threat seriously lack a holistic understanding of the problem and grossly underestimate the difficulty of confronting it. The rise of an anti-intellectual, science-hating, rage-driven right wing is the culmination of sustained efforts by right wing organizations coinciding with multi-systemic failures in the domains of journalism, education, and politics. The right wing is dragging the world to doom and furiously blocking all attempts by good people to stop it. We are witnessing the suicide of human civilization and the closing of all opportunities to intervene effectively. We need a wake-up call, a proper diagnosis of our condition, and decisive action.Our situation has become so extreme that the proper terms for it – the president is a psychopath; his followers are delusional fanatics locked in a genocidal cult – sound like hyperbolic and childish name calling. The very words required to diagnose our condition have been banished from mainstream public discourse by decorum, disbelief, and a misbegotten sense of fairness. While we debate whether such terminology is appropriate, right-wing pathologies have grown more malignant and engrained in our society. We are at an impasse.
Educators want their students to live healthy, ethical lives within a healthy, ethical society. B... more Educators want their students to live healthy, ethical lives within a healthy, ethical society. But an enormous obstacle stands in the way: a right-wing cult that poses an existential threat to personal and collective well-being. This cult, tens of millions strong, blocks efforts to address all other major problems including climate change, racism, economic exploitation, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet many people fail to see the right wing for the serious threat that it is. Often, those who do take the threat seriously lack a holistic understanding of the problem and grossly underestimate the difficulty of confronting it. The rise of an anti-intellectual, science-hating, rage-driven right wing is the culmination of sustained efforts by right wing organizations coinciding with multi-systemic failures in the domains of journalism, education, and politics. The right wing is dragging the world to doom and furiously blocking all attempts by good people to stop it. We are witnessing the suicide of human civilization and the closing of all opportunities to intervene effectively. We need a wake-up call, a proper diagnosis of our condition, and decisive action.Our situation has become so extreme that the proper terms for it – the president is a psychopath; his followers are delusional fanatics locked in a genocidal cult – sound like hyperbolic and childish name calling. The very words required to diagnose our condition have been banished from mainstream public discourse by decorum, disbelief, and a misbegotten sense of fairness. While we debate whether such terminology is appropriate, right-wing pathologies have grown more malignant and engrained in our society. We are at an impasse.
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