The initial reception of D&G’s C&S was coloured by the twin presences of its authors and the situational context of the ’68 riots. Until Lyotard’s Libidinal Economy in ’74 the political interpretation seemed to close around an orthodox reading of Deleuze and Guattari rather than a reading of C&S. LE puts into play the structuring processes of desire on the political economy at micro-economic level. Stand must be taken: to side with which aspects of C&S? * Marxist interpretation of a capital (hard left) * Psychoanalytic relation of schitzo/capital (soft left) * Micro-economies of desire (libertarian) * Pro-capital destruction of despot (neo-cons). Current battle plays itself out across intellectual topographies (journal, academic publishing) and also Capital rips up every stable political settlement, but where does it head next… CCRU track capital-war-machine path of flight: 1. 1500. Leviathan. Command core: Northern Mediterranean . Target area: Americas. Mode: Mercantile. Epidemic opportunism, selective intervention, colonial settlement. 2. 1756. Capital. Command core: Britain . Target areas: Americas-South Asia. Mode: Thermo-industrial. Imperialism control. 3. 1884. Spectacle. Command core: USA-Germany . Target areas: Africa-Russia-Nodal:periphery. Mode: Electrocorporate. Cultural overcoding / selective extermination. 4. 1948. Videodrome. Command core: USA / Target areas: Expanded:nodal:periphery. Mode: Info Satellitic-supercorporate. Cultural programming / general extermination. 5. 1980. Cyberspace, Command core: USA-Japan-Germany / Target areas: Totalized extra metropolitan space. Mode: AI-hyper corporate. Gross-neurocontrol / intermittent media-format exemplary extermination, virtual biocide. 6. 1996. Babylon. USA-EU:2-China (metalocal command centres) / Totalized planetary space. Photonic-Net Hypercapital Neo-Organic. Neuroprogramming / AI:Capital:Media:Military fusion, constant entertainment extermination process.
Category: Stage 3
Territory: For my project is the life and literary works of Charles Bukowski, a German born American writer who lived from 1920-1994. Aims: In my project I intend to look at the motivation of Charles Bukowski when he wrote and to compare this with the motivation of those who have decided to adapt Bukowski’s work into film in the modern era. This is the change I intend to look at in my project, whether or not Bukowski’s work has become a commodity under the modern day culture industry that Adorno talks about. In order to do this I will look at the three adaptations into film: Tales of Ordinary Madness, Barfly, and Factotum
~AN ANALYSIS AND ETHICS OF ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION~ How can I argue that my experience of Sunseed was ‘good’ beyond scientific measure? Sunseed is a environmental charity that aims to develop, demonstrate and communicate accessible low-tech methods of living sustainably in a semi-arid environment. I have identified two problems in the question of what constitutes ‘authentic living’: 1. Do I treat my environment as the Other? To act selflessly I must transcend the horizon of Being and move away from the ‘thought of being’, to treat the environment as ‘the infinite’. My experience of the world is anthropological and pre-contemplative. How has the problem of the philosophical unavoidability of thematising language shaped our attitude to environmental conservation? 2. How do I escape the ‘Dialectical Deficiency’? The truth of the existentialist concern for the fundamentalness of human subjectivity exposed in Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, where concerns become formulas and causes are rules and probability.
Territory: Experiments with the movement and the language of attraction have been conducted in real social situations and in virtual situations. I have taken as my territory the streets, shops, bars and clubs of Newcastle as well as setting up a myspace account in which to test theories and discover laws. Objectives: This project is entitled ‘A Philosophy…’ because it is not the philosophy of attraction. I have looked at the topic from within my immediate, personal experience. My objective is to discover how attraction works for an average male, like myself, and from here to perhaps discover certain general rules or overarching systems. Sources: David DeAngelo: ‘Attraction is not a Choice’ and other works. Neil Strauss: ‘The Game’ and related ‘Mystery Method’ materials. Kierkegaard: ‘Either/Or’ especially the Seducer’s Diary. Hegel: ‘Phenomenology of Spirit’. Levinas: ‘Totality and Infinity – An Essay On Exteriority’.
In this project I hope to explore our contemporary urban experience and the postmodern condition, with regards to its arguably revolutionary potential. Is ours truly a time when ‘other worlds’ and ‘other voices’ are able to find expression within society? Has postmodernity witnessed the end of meta-narratives as Lyotard would have us believe, making way for a multiplicity of truths, or is postmodernity the grandest narrative of all? I will be tackling such questions by reflecting upon the Tate Modern Art Gallery, which I believe in many respects is representative of postmodernity and by striking up some kind of dialogue between itself and those world views which have lead to its arrival. I have named it ‘A View from the Bridge’ after the Arthur Miller play, for I appreciate that what I will be attempting to argue is merely expressive of one perspective. There are various ways in which one could understand postmodernity and its consequences and mine is merely one, although I will at intervals offer other options for perception, other ‘views’ so to speak. My thesis will thus unfold as though it were literally my journey to the Tate Modern. For I begin at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is arguably representative of the Christian world view of the Middle Ages, I then proceed to the Millennium Bridge which functions as the Enlightenment did, ‘bridging the divide’ so to speak between antiquity and Modernity, or Postmodernity even, and then I reach the gallery, which is the embodiment of our contemporary social experience.
Objective: My main objective in researching and writing this project is to understand as far as I can how the fluid thing which we can generalise by terming ‘self-identity’ is shaped by the idea of impending death. My objective is not to make the claim that death, or our awareness of its implications to our ‘being’ is the only factor or even the most important factor in shaping our identity; but rather to explore what parts of our identity are affected by this impending doom and in what way. Further, I mean to do this by means of an example, that being my territory which is the site where the twin towers once stood: Ground zero. I aim to use this territory as almost a platform from which to show mortality’s affects. What I mean in saying this, is that our understanding of what Ground zero represents because of its links with the concept of terrorism and thus with the concept of death, through our exposure to the events surrounding it in the media, has had an affect upon the way in which many people relate to the world around us; thus altering, or shaping to a certain extent the manner in which we form our identities. Concepts: The concepts which hold the most importance for this investigation are the concepts of a) Death, b) self-identity and c) human awareness. In looking at the concept of death we must somehow determine what death actually is. What does death really mean for a living entity, does it have boundaries as a term, and to what extent is it truly definable within the limits of language? In looking at self-identity we are looking at the essence of what makes a person who they are, how it is that they identify with themselves and with their surroundings by a method of differentiation and association. In examining this concept we must also note that identity is not as might be misconstrued, a fixed thing, but rather a fluid process of becoming or being. My third main concept is that of human awareness which is implicitly linked with the fluid concept of self-identity. I must undertake an examination of the idea of awareness in order to understand where the connection between death and identity takes place. This is the faculty, if you will, which allows the conception of impending death to affect the continuing process of forming self-identity. Sources: For this project I shall be using diverse sources which spread through a range of different Disciplines i.e. Social-anthropology, evolutionary-biology, sociology and of course Philosophy. I shall refer to older philosophical ideas of death and its effects, however the texts which are most central to my investigation are: Heidegger: Being and Time, and Blanchot: The Death Sentence
Territory- My territory is Western Society moving from the time of Ancient Greek philosophers through to postmodernist philosophers. Objectives- I asked myself a series of questions, these were as follows 1 “What is the golden rule of ethics and why is it so important?” 2 “Where does our ideas of morality and the idea of reciprocity come from?” 3 “Does the golden rule still apply?” 4 “Is there really a moral framework of ethical conduct prevalent within our society?” 5 “With the changes that can be seen within our society, can a moral framework based upon an ancient idea of reciprocity continue to work?” My aim in answering these questions was to use the works of Aristotle, Kant and Lyotard to chart a change in the ideas of ethics through time.
Brief Overview of The Catcher in the Rye
The novel is narrated Holden Caulfield, who reveals that he is undergoing treatment for a mental breakdown. He has been informed that he is to be expelled from school at the end of the current semester. Following a distressing evening, Holden decides to return to Manhattan a few days early but instead of going home he chooses rather to book into a hotel. The novel is comprised of the events that take place in the few days between booking into the hotel and his return home. Holden narrates his encounters with various people, both strangers and acquaintances.
Alienation as proof of the presence of the ‘other’
Holden describes himself as trapped on “the other side” of life but it soon becomes clear that his alienation is, at least in part, self-inflicted and that he deliberately employs it as a means of protection. He is continually overwhelmed by his interactions with other people. He is constantly confronted by that which is unfamiliar and ‘other’ to himself. Though his alienation acts as a guard against that which he sees as ‘other’ it is also that which is the source of his pain and anxiety.
Holden’s inautheticity
Throughout the novel Holden expresses his unwillingness to accept change. He is constantly overwhelmed by complexity and wants everything to be eternally fixed. He does not understand everything about his surroundings which is a source of anxiety for him yet he refuses to acknowledge this anxiety. For Heidegger it is through anxiety that we are able to become authentic, however, Holden refuses to acknowledge his anxiety and as such remains in a state of inauthenticity. The apparent “phoniness” of the adult world comes to represent inauthentic living in Holden’s mind, adults seem to be driven by what one ought to do in a particular situation. In Heidegger’s words, the actions of adults are determined by what the anonymous ‘they’ consider to be appropriate. Childhood on the other hand, for Holden, represents an authentic living. As a result Holden is reluctant to enter in adulthood himself. He mistakenly believes that eccentricity is authentic and as such strives to assert his socalled uniqueness, this is represented in the red hunting hat. However, it is clear that he is not entirely comfortable with wearing it. As such it becomes a symbol of his inauthenticity rather than his authenticity.
Death
Two instances of death in the novel, the first is the metaphorical death of innocence. The novel is concerned with what seems to be an ongoing dying of innocence which represents that which Holden cannot quite grasp about the adult world. It is a constant opening up of his relationship with the other. Holden’s breakdown too symbolises the struggle of the ego to remain itself over time, his illness, becomes that which separates him from himself. The second instance of death is the death of his brother, Allie, which serves as a reminder of the impossibility of possibility (Blanchot).
An examination of minor literature: the deterritorialization of language and how the use of language relates to the notion of différance in terms of identity. Aims: I aim to demonstrate within my investigation, how deterritorialization, as a central concept to minor literature, is affluent in the writings of the authors within my territory. I wish to further argue that within minor literature, Derrida’s concept of différance helps us to understand the position that identity has to play for the author. Territory: Works from Franz Kafka and Hunter.S.Thompson will be central within my territory of authors of minor literature and their works will be related to the philosophical concepts of Deleuze and Derrida. Philosophical concepts and thinkers: Deleuze: deterritorialization and the process of ‘becoming minor’ and Derrida: deconstruction and the concept of différance.
Territory: Branding (the world’s largest include Coca-cola, Microsoft, IBM and Nokia) Philosophy: Existentialism, notably that of Jean-Paul Sartre(1905-80), (right). The aim of my project is to explore the world of branding and assess the relevant applications of existentialism. I shall examine how an investigation into existential freedom can reveal new and intriguing insights into the world of brands. I consider the significance of branding to my own existential freedom, (and issues including brand loyalty), asking such questions as: In what way does branding affect my freedom? Is my freedom diminished by brand loyalty? Is brand loyalty merely a symptom of existential freedom; perhaps an inevitable outcome in light of the vast choice offered? Is it a safe option, to avoid anguish and anxiety over my freedom, to choose the big brand? Through investigating our everyday existence, I hope to explore, the relationship between ourselves, our freedom, and branding. I aim to develop these ideas through the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, and existential philosophy, which itself has undergone considerable change, from its birth to its present-day form. However the most important element of change, that I discuss in my project, is the movement from my own existential freedom in relation to brands, to the existential freedom of the brand itself –an existential brand/’brand existentialism’.
Territory. I used the corporate world as my territory and looked at it through the role and nature of the individual within this world. Areas of Investigation • I explored the relationship between the corporate world and the individual by looking at the evolution of the corporate structure and its rise to prominence within society. • I also investigated the ethics involved within a corporate structure and the relationships between individuals in this environment. • I looked at the relationship between the individual and the idea of power relations within society. • I also explored what the future of the corporate world could be and the role of the individual within this, with an emphasis on the rise of the postmodern and its impact on this world. Philosophical Ideas. I use the philosophical ideas on the nature of power and the individual from Foucault, and the rise of the corporation as an institution to replace the factory from Deleuze’s thought. When I explore the ethics within a corporate structure I look at the work of Robert Solomon and Robert Jackall on management ethics and their theory on ‘embededness’. In the relation to the future of the corporate world I have looked at the postmodern thought of Gianni Vattimo and Jean-Francois Lyotard to consider the idea that the over-arching structure of the universal narrative is disintegrating to be replaced by a multitude of individual voices. Conclusions. Throughout my project I seek to explore the relationship between the individual and the corporate world and to explain how this has changed as different aspects of the world have developed and the way in which we are propelled towards the postmodern individual
Food goes along with sleep, water and recreation to formulate the fundamental necessaries we as humans need to survive. In most developed countries we have cultivated mechanisms and technologies that greatly improve the provision of food and this has given rise to experimentation with flavours and recipes that has produced a variety of tastes and delights. Within these countries eating has lost its association with need and has developed a new connotation with pleasure. Restaurants are just one of the industries that have been born of that pleasure, as we enter the beginnings of a still very young millennium, the changes and growth of the restaurant industry provides a vessel in which to explore the drive for consumption, the importance of the meal and society in its relation to culture. All this is amidst a backdrop of those country’s which still encounter the struggle for food and in many ways reflect the same picture of life from the beginning of the last millennium. Part One – Analysis of three restaurants in Leeds:- Anthony’s – Fine Dining; The Outside In – Family Restaurant / Nouvelle Cuisine; McDonald’s – Fast Food. Part Two – History of The Restaurant, Parisian Phenomena, Move to England and USA, Last 50 years – diet revolution. Part Three – McDonaldization of Society, Max Weber – Rationalisation, Mass Culture / Consumerism. Part Four – Food Technology, Martin Heidegger and Albert Borgmann – Technology, Healthier Attitudes – Slow Food. Key Texts – Heidegger – Question Concerning Technology, Eric Schlosser – Fast Food Nation, George Ritzer – The McDonaldization of Society, Rebecca Sprang – History of the Restaurant, Peter Davison – The Cultural Debate, Theodore Adorno – The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, Albert Borgmann – Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, Alan Warde – Consumption, Food and Taste.
Territory: All Saints Church, Hannington; a small country church, in the village of Hannington in Hampshire. Situated in the centre of the village, it is both physically, and spiritually the core of the village. As well as Sunday Worship the church is used for Women’s Institute meetings and play groups and holds lots of village history, for example the millennium tapestry, and engraved windows of Rose Hodgson and William Whistler. Major Concepts: The main aim of my project is to prove that the loss of strict dogma in society from a universal law or code of practice is problematic, as it has caused the decline in morality that we witness in society today. * My main focus is on the Ten Commandments from Exodus Chapter 20. It is evident that numbers 5-10 are still important in society to both believers and non-believers. Whilst before the importance lay upon the Christian doctrine, now society enforces Laws. * There is a difference now in which crimes are punishable, as the rise in science has made all things measurable. We can empirically verify if for example a rape has happened through DNA testing, whereas in the past it was one person’s word against another’s. This dependence on scientific fact extracts from the importance of faith and resembles a reason for the decline in religious belief: people do not believe what they cannot see, and therefore do not trust in a metaphysical God. Philosophers: My main focus will be upon Kant, using his Moral Law and Categorical Imperative which states, “Act only on a maxim, which has the possibility of becoming a universal law”. Whilst Kant only infers that God ought to be true rather than is true, a good Kantian is a good Christian as he infers that one must be moral to everyone at all times. * I will also study Foucault, particularly relating to his ideas on madness in Madness and Civilisation, in which he asserts to us that the rise in science has amounted to a change in society, for people who were considered mad were let out of the mental institutions in the 1980’s as they passed a scientific test. Clearly here, society is being measured, in the same way that proof in the law is measured, meaning one’s relation to oneself is measured and laws are no longer a priori moral truths. I hope to prove that whilst in a dogmatic society individuals strive to be unique, in the free society we live in, citizens strive to be like everyone else but also place themselves way above everyone else, causing a lack of community feel and a rise in immoral behaviour.
In my project this year I have decided to investigate the area of youth culture in Twenty-First Century Britain. What are the factors which make our younger generation feel so misunderstood by their elders? Using various media sources I have drawn upon examples of contemporary British culture where the younger generation seem to be veering off any track of recognised social development. These areas include crime, identity, media, artistic expression, drug use, gangs and many more. In my final project I hope to find some links between the changes in youth culture as we know it and some philosophical concepts which I have studied during my degree. The first section of my project will concentrate on the growing gap between the attitudes and characteristics of the older generation and the younger generation. I hope to use Nietzsche’s work on the master and slave morality to explain the reversal of the attitudes towards the elderly from a stance of respect for experience and wisdom to one of burden and frustration. It seems we now value the progress, originality and vitality present in the youth of today as far more important than anything the older generation can offer unlike fifty years ago when children were taught to respect their elders. It seems this has resulted in a loss of communication and understanding between the two groups, where the older group was once seen as dominant and the younger group as passive, we now encourage the youth of today and the elderly are either forgotten about by the state, or at least take a secondary role in society. The next section will address the growing need for our youth to differentiate themselves into identity groups depending on their fashion, music, consumer or social tastes. Whether it is choosing a particular group of friends or enjoying a special past-time the younger generation seem intent on defining every individual into a certain group or trend. Such examples as “Goths”, “Chavs”, “Hippies” or “Ras” are common in most school playgrounds. I will also look at internet sites such as “Myspace.com” and other blog sites and using the work of Vattimo and his “Transparent Society” text I hope to gain a better understanding of the growing need for personal narratives in the Twenty-First Century and why our younger generation require these categories to “fit in” with society. The final section of my project will deal with the growing concern towards the anti-social behaviour displayed by the youth of today. This will include all aspects of daily life from truancy, graffiti, theft, drug use, to more serious crimes such as assault and rape. Why is it we feel the youngsters of Britain these days have a lack of respect for authority? Could it be linked with some changing social dynamics put forward by thinkers such as Beck and Giddens, or the increased pressure put on our children to follow a globally fast paced, informational, consumer driven society? In my final project I hope to address these issues and find some answers to some of the most pressing issues concerning Twenty-First Century Britain.
Object, Place, Event. The Internet and the World Wide Web of Interactive Global Networking. A Mechanism of Change. A new medium is claiming to absorb almost all older forms of media and literature which is very different from previous mediums. The Internet is a super integrative medium which moves one step further and claims to leave behind the physical ground of older media, transforming these into non-corporeal electronic data that can be stored and accessed beyond the constraints of space, thus making time the decisive criterion by which we should judge the new media age and the future of language and literature. This current media change is negating not only the physical nature of prose, but the individual as we know him or her, be it the author or the political individual rooted in a local community. This claims to change the self into a non corporeal being and thus can be considered in many ways to end 2,500 years of Western Metaphysics. The interactive global is not primarily a storage device, but rather a communication tool that attempts to build a free intellectual and emotional virtual community. In order to participate in this virtual community, one is forced to necessarily negate the physical conditions of human existence and to invent a virtual personality with an easily changeable identity. The Negation of the ‘Natural’. Has the internet destroyed the singular work of literature, of art, in such a way as to engender not only a loss of its aura or its affect, but its former context as transposed by the bourgeoisie to a secular ritual of the work of literature or art?
Introduction. The Rhizome and the arborescent model. The powerful tree trunk, here representing a hierarchy of opinion against the horizontal, discontinuous and free flight of the rhizome. The trunk is filiation. The rhizome on the other hand represents multiplicities. It has no beginning or end, just a middle (a milieu). It is a subterranean shoot, it spreads horizontally, and at certain junctures plateaus arise. A rhizome is about connectivity. It does not run opposed to the arborescent (or state) but it is a line of escape/flight, a different way. No one language in a rhizome, multiplicity. Arborescent might seek a universal language. Nomad thought verses state space. The overall aim is to investigate the music press and the changes that have occurred due to advances in communication and technology and to look at the potential future of the music press plus industry and the implication for the consumer, artist and the record labels. Plateaus. What are the new plateaus that have arisen due to advances in technology and communication? New web sites, the advent of file sharing. The consumer ideally jumps from one to another (metacritic.com) and makes informed decisions on what to listen to or buy. The eventuality of the rhizome might be becoming ‘a self facilitating media node,’ (Nathan Barley, Channel 4). What about those who can’t reach these plateaus? Is the arborescent structure still in existence? The event. ‘The best of all worlds is not the one that reproduces the eternal, but the one in which new creations are produced, the one endowed with a capacity for innovation or creativity: a teleological conversion of philosophy,’ (p79, The Fold, Deleuze). Deleuze’s theory of the event and the growing sense that music is becoming more about the event. The live sphere is the only one that doesn’t represent an absence. Can the press ever influence us more than the first hand experience? Examples, Polyphonic Spree, Arctic Monkeys. War Machines. The war machine is a kind of movement which is separate to the state, and it causes concern to, or somehow disturbs the sedentary cultures within the state. For the purpose of this discussion the arborescent root within the music industry could be equated with the state. Independent labels and bands as war machines. They try to mix the state apparatus up. Runs away from as well as struggle against the state. Eventually become recoded by capital, example Creation records. Reterritorialization and deterritorialization, capitalism and the attempt by the state to limit desires. Do the new plateaus mean a creation of desires. Hell is For Heroes and Captains of industry case studies Interview with an independent label and band. The band have been signed to a major, and independent, and a have released an album on their own label. Captains of Industry is run as a collective, skills which can be used are used. There is no management structure and yet they have been relatively successful. How much can a small label and a rock band do? The culmination of war machines to strangle the arborescent root. Bands that have been directly affected by the changes in technology- Arctic Monkeys, Wilco etc. Are there pitfalls to file sharing? Conclusion. Is the music mainstream music press losing its influence? How much did it have in the first place? Is there a cycle going on- the arborescent, the struggle to topple it then the creation of another? If we are bored of trees, why do we keep planting them?
Central Questions: ▫ How and why do we want to capture our memories in media such as photographs, film and literature? ▫ What can we learn from this need to preserve our experiences? In particular this will relate to Robert Antelme’s The Human Race. ▫ How does our need to preserve memory relate to our struggle with the other? Exploration of the Territory and Central Concepts: ▫ Look at current ways of memory capture such as web archiving, and see how these relate to a need to capture experience as comprehensively as possible. ▫ Look closely at The Human Race and more generally at the ways in which we strive to preserve the memory of the holocaust. I also intend to separate individual and collective memory. ▫ Look at Heidegger’s work on the other in Being and Time. ▫ Look at Derrida’s notion of the other in relation to identity. I want to link identity to memory and see how we assert our individual and group identities through memory capture.
Aims: I aim to find in this project the changes in our beliefs on freedom over the past 50 years. I will do this by examining a number of different areas; Politics, sociology and philosophy. I will investigate how far we are free and how far we, as individuals, are able to have an input in global decisions. I will also use Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece Brave New World. With this I will compare the negative utopia Huxley created with our world today. How far are we conditioned with the use of television and mass media and can you compare these two modern creations with Huxley’s invented Soma? In terms of politics, this is the domain where are where are freedoms are formed. Politics sets forth the rules that both protect us and inhibit us. However how far has and can our voice been heard? How far can we influence governments? With one million people protesting in London alone over the war in Iraq, the British government still sent troops to a war which was both illegal and unethical. On a sociological level I will be examining freedom in terms of racism and minority groups. Have minority groups gained equal footing a predominantly white western world? With the philosophy world I will use Derrida and most of all Michel Foucault. He aimed to show that we are in actual fact freer that we actually think. He confronts all types of political thought. He aimed to find links between global politics and the individual. Sources: As I have said the major philosopher I will use in Michel Foucault and his works Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexulaity. I will also look at philosophers such as Nietzsche and Derrida. The major piece of literature I will use is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Which will supply both an early twentieth century view on freedom and a piece with which I can compare our world today.
AIM: Explore the complexity that arises with respect to our understanding of the word mother(hood) in non-genetic gestational (full) surrogacy. METHODOLOGY: • Consider the recent achievements of reproductive biology • Analysis of the word mother(hood) and what is “natural” mother(hood) • Consider the influence of the gestational mother (being-in-the-womb + genotype-phenotype distinction) • Consider the “supplementarity” of the gestational mother. CONCLUSION: Both genetic mother and gestational mother are of equal importance for the child’s existence. KEY CONCEPTS: • Being-in-the-world • Thrownness • Genotype-Phenotype distinction • Supplement
My Territory is the broad subject of education. To be more precise I shall be documenting the way education has developed itself to thrive in a knowledge economy. I shall be looking at the way it had affected and been affected by the economy, the government and the public since the 1950s. My Philosophy shall be Daniel Bell’s work on the ‘Post-Industrial Society,’ which I shall be using in comparison with Manuel Castells’ ‘Post-Information Society.’ My Aim is to understand why education has become the cornerstone of today’s society; it has become the locus for equal opportunities; it had become essential if one is to be successful; and it has become the foundation of our economy. With reference to Bell and Castells I wish to discover why education is now so important for the individual, the politics, and for the economy; and how it got to this stage. My Method shall be to first examine Bell’s forecast on the post-industrial society, by looking at ‘The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society,’ which he wrote in 1973. Then progress onto a thorough examination of my territory which shall be split into three; (i) Economy and education: I shall be looking at how globalization is affected by/ affects education by looking at Colin Leys’ ‘Market Driven Politics,’ and Alison Wolf’s ‘Does Education Matter.’ (ii) Politics and Education: I shall be researching every political Act that has been passed since the 1950s and discussing its importance. (iii) Attitudes of the Individual: understanding why there has been such an increase in higher and adult education as well as understanding the lengths parents will go to in order to ensure their child gets a top quality education. I shall then go on to revisit Bell so I can examine whether his forecast can be reinforced by my findings, and compare his work with that of Castells.