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The Occupy Wall Street movement is well into its second week of operation, and is now getting more attention from media as well as from people planning similar actions across the country. This is a promising populist mobilization with a clear message against domination by political and economic elites. Against visions of a bleak and stagnant future, the occupiers assert the optimism that a better world can be made in the streets. They have not resigned themselves to an order where the young are presented with a foreseeable future of some combination of debt, economic dependency, and being paid little to endure constant disrespect, an order that tells the old to accept broken promises and be glad to just keep putting in hours until they can't work anymore. The occupiers have not accepted that living in modern society means shutting up about how it functions. In general, the occupiers see themselves as having more to gain than to lose in creating a new political situation - something that few who run the current system will help deliver. They are not eager for violence, and have shown admirable restraint in the face of attack by police. There may be no single clear agenda, but there is a clear message: that people will have a say in their political and economic lives, regardless of what those in charge want. Occupy Wall Street is a kind of protest that Americans are not accustomed to seeing. There was no permit to protest, and it has been able to keep going on through unofficial understandings between protestors and police. It is not run by professional politicians, astroturfers, or front groups with barely-hidden agendas. Though some organizations and political figures have promoted it, Occupy Wall Street is not driven by any political party or protest organization. It is a kind of protest that shows people have power when they are determined to use it. Occupy Wall Street could be characterized as an example of a new type of mass politics, which has been seen in

Don't you think our schools, hospitals, workplaces, markets and even our homes could be better off, with a few concepts of wellness incorporated in their design? Go through the feature and leave us your views...

What solutions can architecture offer to those segments of the global population that currently has no access to a well-designed environment? Check out the ongoing exhibition at Bengaluru that tugs at some crucial issues and leave us your views…

While the United States has suffered the worst recession in living memory, things have only gotten better for the wealthy.

Computer games are a global phenomenon and a $25 billion a year industry. Over 800 million people worldwide are regular players. Gamer Revolution looks past the hype, paranoia and hoopla to explore the real stories behind the computer game revolution. Gamer Revolution explores how computer games are not only changing the world, but giving rise to a new version of life itself. The line between the real world and the virtual world is disappearing. Millions of people feel that they have a life inside these games and that it's better than their real life. Gamer Revolution takes viewers around the world from Asia to the heart of the Middle East in search of the most mind-bending stories from the cutting edge of the game revolution. It also features interviews with gamers and game developers including Will Wright, creator of the wildly popular life simulation game, The Sims. Just how pervasive has gaming become? The US army uses video games to train new recruits and to simulate real-life battle situations in preparation for combat. In Korea, computer nerds are the sex symbols of the 21st century. In Syria, a developer has designed an extremely popular shooter game in which the player gets to kill Israeli soldiers. Every year, the biggest companies in the industry try to out-do each other in an effort to create buzz for their games. It's a high-stakes business. The development cost of a new game has almost tripled in a decade. Eighty percent of games fail in the first year, but for those who succeed, the payoff is huge.

When we study Marx in my graduate social theory course, it never fails that at least one student will say (approximately), "Class struggle didn't escalate in the way Marx expected. In modern capitalist societies class struggle has disappeared. So isn't it clear that Marx was wrong and his ideas are of little value today?" I respond by challenging the premise that class struggle has disappeared. On the contrary, I say that class struggle is going on all the time in every major institution of society. One just has to learn how to recognize it. One needn't embrace the labor theory of value to understand that employers try to increase profits by keeping wages down and getting as much work as possible out of their employees. As the saying goes, every successful capitalist knows what a Marxist knows; they just apply the knowledge differently. Workers' desire for better pay and benefits, safe working conditions, and control over their own time puts them at odds with employers. Class struggle in this sense hasn't gone away. In fact, it's inherent in the relationship between capitalist employer and employee. What varies is how aggressively and overtly each side fights for its interests.

One of the most fascinating things to come out of the current We Are 99%/Occupy Wall Street protests is the We Are 99% Tumblr.  At the site, people hold up signs that explain their current circumstances, and it tells the story of a whole range of Americans struggling in the Lesser Depression.  It is highly recommended. DATA The site features pictures of individuals holding their signs, and occasionally the tumblr reproduces the text of the signs themselves underneath the image as html text.  Sometimes the text under the image is blank, sometimes it is a different message, but often it is the sign itself. In order to get a slightly better empirical handle on this important tumblr, I created a script designed to read all of the pages and parse out the html text on the site.  It doesn't read the images (can anyone in the audience automate calls to an OCR?), just the html text.  After collecting all the text on all the pages, the code then goes through it to try to find interesting points. It's a fun exercise, pointing out things I wouldn't have seen otherwise.  For instance, I found this adorable little rascal, pictured below, mucking up the algorithm, as the first version of the code assumed all the ages would have two digits.  I found that he, and the sign his mom made for him as a confessional to her son, hit me a ton harder than any of the more direct signs of despair in this economy:

Steven Pinker is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, the author of several magnificent books about the human mind, and one of the most influential scientists on earth. He is also my friend, an occasional mentor, and an advisor to my nonprofit foundation, Project Reason.Steve's new book is The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Reviewing it for the New York Times Book Review, the philosopher Peter Singer called it "a supremely important book." I have no doubt that it is, and I very much look forward to reading it. In the meantime, Steve was kind enough to help produce a written interview for this blog.

Co-Founder & Editor of IndiaArtnDesign, Savitha Hira addresses the readers with a round-up of the year 2020, thanking them for their support and love and wishing them warmly for better tomorrows