Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages and data and information processing and storage. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (IT system) is generally an information system, a communications system, or, more specifically speaking, a computer system — including all hardware, software, and peripheral equipment — operated by a limited group of IT users, and an IT project usually refers to the commissioning and implementation of an IT system.

Although humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating, and communicating information since the earliest writing systems were developed, the term information technology in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." Their definition consists of three categories: techniques for processing, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to decision-making, and the simulation of higher-order thinking through computer programs.

The term is commonly used as a synonym for computers and computer networks, but it also encompasses other information distribution technologies such as television and telephones. Several products or services within an economy are associated with information technology, including computer hardware, software, electronics, semiconductors, internet, telecom equipment, and e-commerce.

Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC — 1450 AD), mechanical (1450 — 1840), electromechanical (1840 — 1940), and electronic (1940 to present).

Information technology is also a branch of computer science, which can be defined as the overall study of procedure, structure, and the processing of various types of data.  As this field continues to evolve across the world, its overall priority and importance has also grown, which is where we begin to see the introduction of computer science-related courses in K-12 education.

History

Ideas of computer science were first mentioned before the 1950s under the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, where they had discussed and began thinking of computer circuits and numerical calculations.  As time went on, the field of information technology and computer science became more complex and was able to handle the processing of more data. Scholarly articles began to be published from different organizations.

Looking at early computing, Alan Turing, J. Presper Eckert, and John Mauchly were considered some of the major pioneers of computer technology in the mid-1900s. Giving them such credit for their developments, most of their efforts were focused on designing the first digital computer. Along with that, topics such as artificial intelligence began to be brought up as Turing was beginning to question such technology of the time period.

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, probably initially in the form of a tally stick. The Antikythera mechanism, dating from about the beginning of the first century BC, is generally considered the earliest known mechanical analog computer, and the earliest known geared mechanism. Comparable geared devices did not emerge in Europe until the 16th century, and it was not until 1645 that the first mechanical calculator capable of performing the four basic arithmetical operations was developed.

Electronic computers, using either relays or valves, began to appear in the early 1940s. The electromechanical Zuse Z3, completed in 1941, was the world's first programmable computer, and by modern standards one of the first machines that could be considered a complete computing machine. During the Second World War, Colossus developed the first electronic digital computer to decrypt German messages. Although it was programmable, it was not general-purpose, being designed to perform only a single task. It also lacked the ability to store its program in memory; programming was carried out using plugs and switches to alter the internal wiring. The first recognizably modern electronic digital stored-program computer was the Manchester Baby, which ran its first program on 21 June 1948.

The development of transistors in the late 1940s at Bell Laboratories allowed a new generation of computers to be designed with greatly reduced power consumption. The first commercially available stored-program computer, the Ferranti Mark I, contained 4050 valves and had a power consumption of 25 kilowatts. By comparison, the first transistorized computer developed at the University of Manchester and operational by November 1953, consumed only 150 watts in its final version.

Several other breakthroughs in semiconductor technology include the integrated circuit (IC) invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Laboratories in 1959, and the microprocessor invented by Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin, Masatoshi Shima, and Stanley Mazor at Intel in 1971. These important inventions led to the development of the personal computer (PC) in the 1970s, and the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT).

By the year of 1984, according to the National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review, the term information technology had been redefined as "The development of cable television was made possible by the convergence of telecommunications and computing technology (…generally known in Britain as information technology)."  We then begin to see the appearance of the term in 1990 contained within documents for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Innovations in technology have already revolutionized the world by the twenty-first century as people were able to access different online services. This has changed the workforce drastically as thirty percent of U.S. workers were already in careers in this profession. 136.9 million people were personally connected to the Internet, which was equivalent to 51 million households. Along with the Internet, new types of technology were also being introduced across the globe, which has improved efficiency and made things easier across the globe.

Along with technology revolutionizing society, millions of processes could be done in seconds. Innovations in communication were also crucial as people began to rely on the computer to communicate through telephone lines and cable. The introduction of the email was considered revolutionary as "companies in one part of the world could communicate by e-mail with suppliers and buyers in another part of the world..."

Not only personally, computers and technology have also revolutionized the marketing industry, resulting in more buyers of their products. During the year of 2002, Americans exceeded $28 billion in goods just over the Internet alone while e-commerce a decade later resulted in $289 billion in sales. And as computers are rapidly becoming more sophisticated by the day, they are becoming more used as people are becoming more reliant on them during the twenty-first century.

Data processing

Storage

Early electronic computers such as Colossus made use of punched tape, a long strip of paper on which data was represented by a series of holes, a technology now obsolete. Electronic data storage, which is used in modern computers, dates from World War II, when a form of delay-line memory was developed to remove the clutter from radar signals, the first practical application of which was the mercury delay line. The first random-access digital storage device was the Williams tube, which was based on a standard cathode ray tube. However, the information stored in it and delay-line memory was volatile in the fact that it had to be continuously refreshed, and thus was lost once power was removed. The earliest form of non-volatile computer storage was the magnetic drum, invented in 1932 and used in the Ferranti Mark 1, the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer.

IBM introduced the first hard disk drive in 1956, as a component of their 305 RAMAC computer system. Most digital data today is still stored magnetically on hard disks, or optically on media such as CD-ROMs. Until 2002 most information was stored on analog devices, but that year digital storage capacity exceeded analog for the first time. , almost 94% of the data stored worldwide was held digitally: 52% on hard disks, 28% on optical devices, and 11% on digital magnetic tape. It has been estimated that the worldwide capacity to store information on electronic devices grew from less than 3 exabytes in 1986 to 295 exabytes in 2007, doubling roughly every 3 years.

Databases

Database Management Systems (DMS) emerged in the 1960s to address the problem of storing and retrieving large amounts of data accurately and quickly. An early such system was IBM's Information Management System (IMS), which is still widely deployed more than 50 years later. IMS stores data hierarchically, but in the 1970s Ted Codd proposed an alternative relational storage model based on set theory and predicate logic and the familiar concepts of tables, rows, and columns. In 1981, the first commercially available relational database management system (RDBMS) was released by Oracle.

All DMS consist of components, they allow the data they store to be accessed simultaneously by many users while maintaining its integrity. All databases are common in one point that the structure of the data they contain is defined and stored separately from the data itself, in a database schema.

In recent years, the extensible markup language (XML) has become a popular format for data representation. Although XML data can be stored in normal file systems, it is commonly held in relational databases to take advantage of their "robust implementation verified by years of both theoretical and practical effort." As an evolution of the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), XML's text-based structure offers the advantage of being both machine- and human-readable.

Transmission

Data transmission has three aspects: transmission, propagation, and reception. It can be broadly categorized as broadcasting, in which information is transmitted unidirectionally downstream, or telecommunications, with bidirectional upstream and downstream channels.

XML has been increasingly employed as a means of data interchange since the early 2000s, particularly for machine-oriented interactions such as those involved in web-oriented protocols such as SOAP, describing "data-in-transit rather than... data-at-rest".

Manipulation
Hilbert and Lopez identify the exponential pace of technological change (a kind of Moore's law): machines' application-specific capacity to compute information per capita roughly doubled every 14 months between 1986 and 2007; the per capita capacity of the world's general-purpose computers doubled every 18 months during the same two decades; the global telecommunication capacity per capita doubled every 34 months; the world's storage capacity per capita required roughly 40 months to double (every 3 years); and per capita broadcast information has doubled every 12.3 years.

Massive amounts of data are stored worldwide every day, but unless it can be analyzed and presented effectively it essentially resides in what have been called data tombs: "data archives that are seldom visited". To address that issue, the field of data mining — "the process of discovering interesting patterns and knowledge from large amounts of data" — emerged in the late 1980s.

Services

Email
The technology and services it provides for sending and receiving electronic messages (called "letters" or "electronic letters") over a distributed (including global) computer network. In terms of the composition of elements and the principle of operation, electronic mail practically repeats the system of regular (paper) mail, borrowing both terms (mail, letter, envelope, attachment, box, delivery, and others) and characteristic features — ease of use, message transmission delays, sufficient reliability and at the same time no guarantee of delivery. The advantages of e-mail are: easily perceived and remembered by a person addresses of the form user_name@domain_name (for example, email@example.com); the ability to transfer both plain text and formatted, as well as arbitrary files; independence of servers (in the general case, they address each other directly); sufficiently high reliability of message delivery; ease of use by humans and programs.

Disadvantages of e-mail: the presence of such a phenomenon as spam (massive advertising and viral mailings); the theoretical impossibility of guaranteed delivery of a particular letter; possible delays in message delivery (up to several days); limits on the size of one message and on the total size of messages in the mailbox (personal for users).

Search system
A software and hardware complex with a web interface that provides the ability to search for information on the Internet. A search engine usually means a site that hosts the interface (front-end) of the system. The software part of a search engine is a search engine (search engine) — a set of programs that provides the functionality of a search engine and is usually a trade secret of the search engine developer company. Most search engines look for information on World Wide Web sites, but there are also systems that can look for files on FTP servers, items in online stores, and information on Usenet newsgroups. Improving search is one of the priorities of the modern Internet (see the Deep Web article about the main problems in the work of search engines).

Commercial effects
Companies in the information technology field are often discussed as a group as the "tech sector" or the "tech industry."  These titles can be misleading at times and should not be mistaken for "tech companies;" which are generally large scale, for-profit corporations that sell consumer technology and software.  It is also worth noting that from a business perspective, Information technology departments are a "cost center" the majority of the time.  A cost center is a department or staff which incurs expenses, or "costs", within a company rather than generating profits or revenue streams. Modern businesses rely heavily on technology for their day-to-day operations, so the expenses delegated to cover technology that facilitates business in a more efficient manner are usually seen as "just the cost of doing business."  IT departments are allocated funds by senior leadership and must attempt to achieve the desired deliverables while staying within that budget. Government and the private sector might have different funding mechanisms, but the principles are more-or-less the same. This is an often overlooked reason for the rapid interest in automation and Artificial Intelligence, but the constant pressure to do more with less is opening the door for automation to take control of at least some minor operations in large companies.

Many companies now have IT departments for managing the computers, networks, and other technical areas of their businesses. Companies have also sought to integrate IT with business outcomes and decision-making through a BizOps or business operations department.

In a business context, the Information Technology Association of America has defined information technology as "the study, design, development, application, implementation, support, or management of computer-based information systems". The responsibilities of those working in the field include network administration, software development and installation, and the planning and management of an organization's technology life cycle, by which hardware and software are maintained, upgraded, and replaced.

Information services
Information services is a term somewhat loosely applied to a variety of IT-related services offered by commercial companies, as well as data brokers.

Ethics

The field of information ethics was established by mathematician Norbert Wiener in the 1940s. Some of the ethical issues associated with the use of information technology include:
 Breaches of copyright by those downloading files stored without the permission of the copyright holders
 Employers monitoring their employees' emails and other Internet usage
 Unsolicited emails
 Hackers accessing online databases
 Web sites installing cookies or spyware to monitor a user's online activities, which may be used by data brokers

IT projects
Research suggests that IT projects in business and public administration can easily become significant in scale. Work conducted by McKinsey in collaboration with the University of Oxford suggested that half of all large-scale IT projects (those with initial cost estimates of $15 million or more) often failed to maintain costs within their initial budgets or to complete on time.

See also
 Information and communications technology (ICT)
 Outline of information technology
 Knowledge society

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

Further reading
 .
 Gitta, Cosmas and South, David (2011). Southern Innovator Magazine Issue 1: Mobile Phones and Information Technology: United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. .
 Gleick, James (2011).The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. New York: Pantheon Books.
 .
 Shelly, Gary, Cashman, Thomas, Vermaat, Misty, and Walker, Tim. (1999). Discovering Computers 2000: Concepts for a Connected World. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Course Technology.
 Webster, Frank, and Robins, Kevin. (1986). Information Technology — A Luddite Analysis. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

External links

Computers

Intellectual capital
Mass media technology

Information technology


Epicharis () (died 65 CE) was an Ancient Roman freedwoman and a leading member of the Pisonian conspiracy against the emperor Nero.

According to Polyaenus she was the mistress of a brother of Seneca, and it may be that through this connection she became acquainted with the plot of the conspirators, though Tacitus says that it was unknown by what means she had acquired her knowledge of it.

She endeavored by all means to stimulate the conspirators to carry their plan into effect. But as they acted slowly and with great hesitation, she at length grew tired, and resolved upon trying to win over the sailors of the fleet of Misenum in Campania, where she was staying. One Volusius Proculus, a chiliarch of the fleet, appears to have been the first who was initiated by her in the secret, but no names were mentioned to him. Proculus had no sooner obtained the information than he betrayed the whole plot to Nero.

Epicharis was summoned before the emperor, but as no names had been mentioned, and as no witnesses had been present at the communication, Epicharis easily refuted the accusation. She was, however, kept in custody. Subsequently, when the conspiracy was discovered, Nero ordered her to be tortured on the rack because she refused naming any of the accomplices; but neither blows, nor fire, nor the increased fury of her tormentors, could extort any confession from her. When on the second or third day after she was carried in a sedan chair – for her limbs were already broken – to be tortured a second time, she strangled herself on her way by her girdle, which she fastened to the chair. She thus acted, as Tacitus says, more nobly than many a noble eques or senator, who without being tortured betrayed their nearest relatives.

Cultural impact
She is mentioned in Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris.

The later Italian politician and writer Niccolò Machiavelli praised Epicharis's audacity, and also stated that she had been one of Nero's former mistresses.

Daniel Casper von Lohenstein was the first dramatist to produce a drama named after Epicharis, in 1665; and in 1794 the French poet Gabriel-Marie Legouvé published the spoken play Épicharis et Néron. In 1829 Thomas Henry Lister published Epicharis: An Historical Tragedy. Epicharis has also featured as a character in other operas and dramas.

Epicharis is one of the 998 mythical, historical or notable women named on the heritage floor of Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party art installation (1979).

References

Footnotes

1st-century Romans
Imperial Roman slaves and freedmen
Members of the Pisonian conspiracy
1st-century Roman women
People who died by suicide in prison custody
65 deaths
Year of birth unknown
Suicides in Ancient Rome

Epicharis (Pisonian conspirator)


Bhumij (also transliterated as Bhumuj, Bhumija) is a Munda ethnic group of India. They primarily live in the Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Jharkhand, mostly in the old Singhbhum district. Also in states like Bihar and Assam. There is also a sizeable population found in Bangladesh. Bhumijas speak the Bhumij language, an Austroasiatic language, and use Ol Onal script for writing.

Overview

Etymology
Bhumij means "one who is born from the soil" and it is derived from word bhūmi (a land or soil). According to N. Ramaswani, the word is etymologically Bhūm-jo meaning "people originating from Bhum areas, i.e. Singhbhum, Dhalbhum, Manbhum, Barabhum, etc.", Dalton also had claimed that Bhumijs were the original inhabitants of Dhalbhum, Barabhum, Patkum and Baghmundi.

Social structure
Social structure of the Bhumijs is characterised by nuclear family, patriliny, exogamy and hereditary headship of the village community. They follow Hindu practices of succession and inheritance. The Bhumijs are divided into several geographical endogamous groups based on ancestral territory and occupation, such as Tamaliya,  Na-gadi, Astha, Choto Astha in Jharkhand; Bara Bhuiya, Deshua, Haldi Pukhria, Tamadia Sikharia, Tharua in Odisha;  Borabhui, Mura, Mura bhumij, Chaibasa mura,  Khanga mura, Kumpat mura, Manki bhumij in Assam; Bara, Bhoogol, Bhuiya,  Kada kata, Manki, Nag, Patkumia, Sing in Tripura. In Mayurbhanj, segmentary Bhumija group are Tamaria Bhumij (distinct from Tamudia, a Schedule Caste of Odisha), Haldipukuria Bhumij, Teli Bhumij, Desi or Dehuri Bhumij, Bada Bhumiyas and Kol Bhumij. In Purulia Tamaria Bhumij, Sikharbhumi Bhumij. Which are generally indicated their ancestral territory and profession. Each group forms an exogamous group of its own and do not intermarry. Each one of these groups consists of a number of exogamous sub-groups called "kili", the names of which are chosen from diverse sources representing fauna and flora, heavenly bodies, earth, etc.

A Bhumij refrains from injuring anything represented by the name of the group. But there are no elaborate rituals in honour of clan totems. It may be that the exogamous groups were totemic, but with the progress of time and contact with their Hindu neighbours, the totemic system has turned into prohibitive marriage rules. Besides, lately they have developed a local grouping called the thaks, named after villages. Each of these thaks is also exogamous in the sense that a member of one thak cannot marry a member of the same village even if he or she belongs to a different sept. The rule of exogamy is so strict that a man may not marry a woman of his own sept, nor a woman who comes within the standard formula for reckoning prohibited degrees, calculated to three generations in the descending line, but sometimes extended to five where bhaiyadi or mutual recognition of kinship has been maintained between the families.

Geographic distribution
The Bhumijs are found in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Assam, and Bihar. They are concentrated in the districts of Midnapore, Purulia, Bankura and 24 Parganas in West Bengal. In Odisha, they are thickly concentrated in the districts of Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh, Keonjhar, and Balasore, and sporadically distributed in other parts. In Assam, where they are very recent immigrants, their greatest concentration occurs in the Assam valley. In Jharkhand, they are found in the districts of Singhbhum, Manbhum, Hazaribagh, Ranchi and Dhanbad. Bhumijs are also found sporadically in Chhattisgarh, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar, Meghalaya, Manipur, Delhi, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

However, the Government of India has classified Bhumijas as a Scheduled Tribes only in three states i.e., in Odisha, Jharkhand, and West Bengal; While Scheduled Castes in Bihar and Other Backward Classes in Assam (as the Ex-tea garden community) and in Tripura. Meanwhile, the remaining Bhumijas living in other Indian administrative regions are considered part of the general population.

In Bangladesh, the Bhumij people came to the Sylhet region from Bihar as tea-labourers. They can be found in Srimangal with a population of 3000. The Bhumijs lives in Sylhet, Rajshahi, Khulna, Srimangal, Dhaka and Chittagong regions. They are divided into many clans (killi) such as Kaitra, Garur, Kasim, Bhugal, Baundra, Ban, Nag, Shona, Shar, Tresha, etc. Their Bhumij dialect is less and less spoken and Bengali is more widely spoken among the community.

History
Bhumij means "one who is born from the soil". Herbert Hope Risley noted in 1890 that the Bhumij inhabit that tract of the country which lies on both sides of the Subarnarekha River. He claimed the eastern branch of Bhumij lost their connection with their original language and spoke Bengali. According to him, they were a group of Munda who moved east and lost connection with other Mundas, and later adopted Hindu customs when non-tribals arrived in the area.

While those living nearer to Chota Nagpur Plateau still retain linguistic links with Mundari, those living further east have adopted Bengali as their language. In Dhalbhum they are completely Hinduized. During British rule, or sometimes even earlier, many of the Bhumij became zamindars and some even secured the title of Raja. Others were called Sardar. However, all of them, having climbed the social ladder, proclaimed themselves to be Kshatriyas, in keeping with the trends in the region.

Rebellions
An account by Colonel Dalton claimed they were known as robbers (), and their various rebellions were called . The people in the surrounding areas were quite scared of them. The well known Chuar revolt, a series of peasant rebellions started between 1766 and 1816 by the inhabitants of the countryside surrounding the West Bengali settlements of Midnapore, Bankura and Manbhum against the rule of the East India Company (EIC). The rebels rose in revolt due to the exploitative land revenue policies of the EIC, which threatened their economic livelihoods. According to L.S.S. O'Malley, an EIC administrator who wrote the Bengal District Gazetteer, "In March 1766 Government resolved to send an expedition into the country west and north-west of Midnapore in order to coerce them into paying revenue, and to capture and demolish as many of their strongholds as possible." Amongst the many dispossessed Bhumij zamindars, those who lent support to the rebels included royalty such as Jagannath Singh of Dhalbhum, Durjan Singh of Raipur, Baidyanath Singh of Dhalbhum, Mangal Singh of Panchet, Lakshman Singh of Barabhum, Raghunath Singh of Dhalbhum, Ganga Narayan of Barabhum, Rani Shiromani of Karnagarh, Raja Madhu Singh of Manbhum, Subal Singh of Kuilapal, Shyam Ganjam Singh of Dhadka, Raja Mohan Singh of Juriah, Lakshman Singh of Dulma, Sunder Narayan Singh and Fateh Singh. In 1798, when the Puncheet estate was sold to pay taxes required of it by the East India Company, the Bhumij led a revolt against the British.

The Bhumij revolt of 1832 is quite well-known. In this case, there was a disputed succession over the crown. The court decided the eldest son of the king, the son of the second wife instead of the son of the first wife (patrani), to be the king. Lakshman Narayan Singh, the son of the patrani, opposed his brother, was arrested and died in jail. A younger son of the patrani, Madabh Singh, was appointed diwan but became widely detested as a cheat who abused his position. Therefore, Ganga Narayan Singh (Lakshman's son) attacked Madabh Singh and killed him, and afterwards led a general uprising. The Britishers were forced to send in troops to quell the revolt, and pushed him into the hills. Ganga Narayan fled to Singhbum, where he was asked by the Lakras to prove his loyalty if they would join his cause. Their condition was for him to attack a fort of Kharsawan ruled by a Thakur that claimed supremacy over the area. During the siege, Ganga Narayan was killed, and his head was set to the Britishers by the Thakur.

Culture
The Bhumijs of Manbhum claim that their original occupation was military service. Subsequently, agriculture was taken as the sole activity by all the tribes, except the iron-smelting Shelo. A few were engaged in petty trade, and some immigrated to the tea districts of Assam. In Jharkhand and Bihar, the Bhumij even today depend upon agriculture, fishing, hunting and forest produces. Thus, the Bhumijs who are mainly agriculturists also hunt and trap birds and animals in the jungles, and the landless among them work as labourers. Various seasonally available forest products are a subsidiary source of income for them. Marginal income from wage labour, minor non-forest products and animal husbandry are the main source of livelihood for the rural Bhumij.

Rice is their staple food and is consumed throughout the year. They are non-vegetarians, but do not eat pork or beef. The Bhumijs also eat white-ants (termites) and insects. Drinks like rice beer and toddy are commonly consumed by them. Mahua liquor is used sumptuously during feasts and festivals.

As regards dress and ornaments, they follow their Hindu neighbours. Children of both the sexes go naked till the age of four or five years and after which they wear a towel or trouser till adolescence. The male dress consists of a shirt, a dhoti or lungi, and a towel. The women wear sari and blouse. Young girls are fond of ornaments such as nose-rings, earrings, bead necklaces, armlets and bangles made of brass. They put on flowers in their hair.

In the early 1900s, no Bhumij followed child marriage unless they were from the more Sanskritized wealthy families. Brides would be given for an amount ranging from Rs 3 to Rs 12 (in the early 20th century). Usually the wedding would be at the bride's house, where a square space, called a marwa, would be created in a courtyard by dabbing it with rice-water. In the center mahua and sidha branches would be placed, bound with cowries and 5 pieces of turmeric. At the ends of the square were placed 4 earthen water-vessels, each half-filled with pulses and covered with a lamp. The pots were connected with a cotton thread marking the boundary of the marwa. On the bridegroom's arrival, he would be led to the marwa and sit on a board called a pira. The bride would then sit on his left-hand side, and a short introduction would be delivered by relatives. A priest, would chant mantras, then the bride would light and blow out the lamps at the corners of the marwa 5 or 7 times, depending on the custom. The bride would then be "given" to the groom, and the priest would then join the couple's right hands. Finally, the groom applied kumkum to the bride's forehead and tied a knot that would remain intact for 3–10 days, after which they would rub themselves with turmeric, bathe, and untie the knot.

Sex before marriage was not considered taboo, but it was understood that if the girl became pregnant she would marry the father of the child. The Bhumij recognise polygyny, barrenness of first wife is the main reason. Polyandry is unknown. Widows are allowed to remarry according to the sanga ritual in which all the ceremonies of a regular marriage are not performed. Remarriage often takes place between widowers and widows, though bachelors are not barred from such a union. However, in case of woman, levirate applies mainly to widows. In case of widow-marriage also, bride-price of lesser amount is given. Divorce is also allowed among the Bhumijs in extreme cases of adultery, and the divorced women may remarry according to the sanga rite. However, a woman has no right to divorce her husband, and if she is neglected or ill-treated, only remedy available to her is to run away with another man. Adultery within the community is generally condoned with a fine but adultery with a member of another tribe results in ostracization.

At birth, a woman is attended by a midwife of the Ghasi community, and the umbilical cord is severed by her, and after birth it is put in a hole dug outside the hut. Birth-related pollution varies from 8 to 10 days, during which mother remains in the lying-in-room. After it, a Hindu washerman and barber are engaged to clean the clothes and shave and pare the nails. This is followed by naming ceremony.

After death, the rich section of the Bhumijs generally cremates the bodies of adults, and the poor ones bury them due to cost of firewood. However, the children of both rich and poor are buried. The practice of burial or cremation and observance of death pollution vary a little from place to place. But mourning takes place generally for ten days after which the cleaning and shaving rituals are performed, followed by certain rituals and feast marks the last part of death rituals. At times even the charred bones are kept in an earthen pot and carried to the ancestral clan ossuary for burial.

They also practice the martial art called Firkal, although it has been reduced to a single village among the Bhumij who perform it.

Language

Bhumij is the language of the Munda subfamily of the Austroasiatic languages, related to Ho, Mundari and Santali, spoken mainly in the Indian states Jharkhand, Odisha and West Bengal. It is spoken by around 100,000 people in India.

In January 2019, Bhumij was accorded the status of second language in the state of Jharkhand.

Religion and festivals
The Bhumijs revere the sun under the name of Sing Bonga and Dharam, both considered to be their supreme deities. They worship Jahuburu in the sacred grove of the village at the Sarhul festival in Baisakh (April–May) and Phalgun (February–March). Karakata, a female deity, responsible for rains and bumper crops, Baghut or Bagh-Bhut, a male deity, responsible to ward off the animals and protect the crops in Kartik (October–November), Gram-Deota and Deoshali, the village deities to ward off sickness and watch over supply of water for drinking and irrigation in Ashadh (July–August), Buru, a mountain deity, for general prosperity in Magh, Panchbahini and Baradela, local deities of Bankura Bhumijs, etc., are worshipped by the Bhumijs. Manasa, a deity, presiding over snakes, is worshipped in Shravana (July–August) for two or three days in the courtyards of Seraikela Bhumijs. The Bhumijs also worship Paori, a female deity, in Jaistha (May–June) and again in Asadh (June–July) for timely rains and general welfare of the village. Asadhi puja is performed before ploughing and transplanting of paddy seedlings. They worship Jaharburi in Chaitra (March–April), associated with the better flowering of the sal tree and also better shooting out of sal leaves. Atra, a Goddess, for protection from smallpox is worshipped. Dhulla Puja is held in Baisakh (April–May) for the wellbeing of the village. Vadhna Parab is held on the day of the new moon in Kartik (October–November) before reaping, and Nua-Khia, the new rice-eating ceremony. The Bhumijs also celebrate Karam festival in Bhadra (August – September) for prosperity of the village. An unmarried male goes to the jungle and brings a branch of the Karam tree and plants near the house of the Dehuri or at any particular place meant for it. After a long spell of dance and music throughout the night, they immerse it in water on the next day.

The community priest, variously known as Laya, Naya or Dehuri, is from their own tribe rather than a Brahmin, and he solely conducts all the rituals and ceremonies for all deities. As the Naya is a communal servant of the village, all its inhabitants have equal claims on his services. For his services he receives a few plots of rent-free land and the heads of sacrificed animals in the communal religious rites. For this, in addition to performance of religious rituals, he makes certain sacrifices like avoiding certain food and observing fast on certain occasions. The office of Naya is generally hereditary. The whole community gets involved in any social or religious celebration. People dance to the tune of a madal (drum) and sing religious and romantic songs depending on the occasion. Community feast and intoxicating drinks provide the Bhumijs the desired amusement. The institutions of soya and phul among the Bhumijs of Manbhum help in establishing ceremonial friendship with people of other communities. Thus, the Bhumijs have a good sense of community feeling and they maintain equilibrium and peaceful coexistence. However, by the turn of the 20th century, Hinduism had begun to change many of their local customs.

The followers of Sarnaism among the Bhumij have been organising protests and petitions to have their religion recognised by the government of India in census forms.

Genetics
According to genetic study conducted on Bhumij population on 2010, it was found that their 70% Y Haplogroups belongs to O2a-M95 found among population of Southeast Asia and Austro-Asiatic language speaker and rest belongs to Haplogroups found in India. Their mitrocondrial Haplogroups belongs Haplogroup M (mtDNA) found in Indian subcontinent.

Notable people

 Durga Bhumij - politician
 Haren Bhumij - politician
 Jogeswar Bhumij - cricketer
 Pranjal Bhumij - footballer
 Gambhir Singh Mura - Padma Shri recipient and tribal Chhau dancer
 Amulya Sardar - politician
 Hari Ram Sardar - politician
 Maneka Sardar - politician
 Sanatan Sardar - tribal leader and politician
 Sanjib Sardar - politician
 Rani Shiromani - queen of Karnagarh and leader of Chuar rebellion
 Baidyanath Singh - leader of Chuar Rebellion

 Durjan Singh - leader of Chuar Rebellion
 Ganga Narayan Singh - leader of Bhumij rebellion and Chuar Rebellion
 Jagannath Singh Patar - leader of Chuar Rebellion
 Raghunath Singh - leader of Chuar Rebellion
 Shyam Ganjam Singh - leader of Chuar Rebellion
 Subal Singh - leader of Chuar Rebellion

See also
Bhumij language
Ganga Narayan Singh
Bhumij rebellion
Chuar Rebellion
Ol Onal

References

Bibliography
  Alt URL

Further reading

External links

Social groups of Assam
Scheduled Tribes of India
Tribes of West Bengal
Social groups of Odisha
Tribes of Jharkhand
Ethnic groups in Bangladesh
Social groups of West Bengal
Social groups of Jharkhand
Scheduled Tribes of Jharkhand

Bhumij people


Marland T. "Ren" Höek and Stimpson J. "Stimpy" Cat, created by John Kricfalusi, are the title characters in the Nickelodeon animated series The Ren & Stimpy Show, and its 2003 spin-off Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon". Kricfalusi created the characters during his stay at Sheridan College and they first appeared on film in the pilot episode "Big House Blues". Ren is a scrawny, emotionally unstable, and sociopathic "Asthma Hound" Chihuahua, and his best friend Stimpy is a dim-witted, good-natured Manx cat. The show portrays their wacky, bizarre, and often surreal adventures.

Characters

Ren Höek
Marland T. "Ren" Höek is a scrawny "asthma-hound" anthropomorphic chihuahua. Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman of Animation World Magazine described Ren as scrawny, dyspeptic, naive and violently psychotic, who loses his mind occasionally in a cumulative process resulting in him becoming, in Goodman's words, a "screaming klaxon, neon-pink eyes dilating into twin novae inches above his jagged, monolithic teeth." Andy Meisler of The New York Times described Ren as "adventurous", "intelligent", and "emotionally brittle".

Ren has a fairly long, rat-like, pink tail. However, in the first two seasons, Ren's tail constantly disappeared and was even docked by George Liquor in the season 2 episode "Dog Show", while getting Ren and Stimpy both ready for an upcoming dog show (even though Stimpy is a cat), although it continued to appear afterwards in the episode, as well as episodes afterwards. This was because during production of 1990's "Big House Blues", John had to animate the toilet scene leading to the "Big Sleep" freakout; as he tried to mix limited animation with smooth tidbits and wanted Ren to move sloppily, his tail was a pain to animate – later on he swore to not animate a tail again. After season 2, Ren's tail had a rare form of continuity throughout the show, not even appearing at all in most episodes. In most of the episodes, Ren's ambition is to develop huge pectoral muscles. In the season 3 episode "Ren's Pecs", that is accomplished with the help of Stimpy. His wrestling name is "Mad Dog Höek".

Kricfalusi originally voiced Ren in a manner that he describes as "a bad imitation of Peter Lorre". Billy West said that he auditioned to play Ren; the creators of the series believed that having West—who was also voicing the title character in fellow charter Nicktoon Doug at the time—voice both Ren and Stimpy would give him too large a workload. West voiced Ren after Nickelodeon fired Kricfalusi; Kricfalusi would return for the TNN episodes and unaired episodes of The Ren & Stimpy Show. Chris Edgerly would voice the character in the game Nicktoons MLB. In the pilot episode, Pierre Decelles provided Ren's signature diabolical laughter, while West performed Ren's laugh in the series. His catchphrase is "You eediot", and he also uses variations of "What is your problem, you sick little monkey?", which is similar to a quote by Lorre in The Maltese Falcon: "You... you imbecile. You bloated idiot. You stupid fat-head, you."

Kricfalusi complained about Nickelodeon executives requesting that Ren have "a softer side". Bill Wray said that Ren was his favorite character to write for; Wray described Ren as "fun" because "you can make him mean." In 1993 he added that "It drives me crazy when I tell people I work on the show and they always say, 'Make Ren meaner.'"

Stimpy
Stimpson J. Cat is a 3-year-old anthropomorphic mildly overweight red and white, manx cat, with a blue nose, purple eyelids, no tail, paws with gloves and four fingers that have fingernails, human-style buttocks, flat human feet, four wiggly toes and a brain the size of a peanut. He is portrayed as intelligent enough in some episodes to be a chef or a scientist and sometimes as nonsensically stupid. Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman of Animation World Magazine described Stimpy as "obese" and "brain-damaged." Andy Meisler of The New York Times described Stimpy as "bosom", "barrel-chested" and "good-natured".

Stimpy's trademark facial expression is a blissfully ignorant smile with his tongue hanging out. When he gets excited, he says his catchphrase, "Oh, Joy!", or simply "Jooooooy". Stimpy is named after an art school classmate of Kricfalusi, whose nickname was "Stimpy Cadogen" ("Killer Cadoogen" was Stimpy's pseudonym in several episodes and in a few others he is referred to as Stimpleton Cadogen). West said that he based Stimpy's voice on an "amped up" Larry Fine of the Three Stooges. West described Stimpy as one of his favorite characters. Stimpy was inspired in Kricfalusi's former girlfriend and Canadian animator Lynne Naylor.

Stimpy likes to create destructive electronic devices. Andy Meisler of The New York Times says he feels a fixation for "sensory pleasures of fresh kitty litter".

Wray described Stimpy as his favorite character to draw. Wray said that Stimpy does not have "a huge range of emotion."

West declined to voice Stimpy in the Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" because he believed that the series was not funny and that voicing Stimpy in it would damage his career. Consequently, Eric Bauza would instead voice the character and reprised the voice role in the Nicktoons MLB video game. West will reprise his role as Stimpy (along with voicing Ren) in Comedy Central's reboot of the show.

History
In a 1993 interview by a comics magazine, Bill Wray stated that he believes that Kricfalusi created Ren and Stimpy around 1978 for Kricfalusi and his friends' personal amusement in college; Kricfalusi attended Sheridan College in Canada. Wray said that he had initially "forgotten about" the characters. When Nickelodeon requested a new series, Kricfalusi assembled a presentation called "Your Gang", similar to a children's show with a live action host presenting various cartoons. Each cartoon parodied a genre, and Ren & Stimpy parodied the "cat and dog" genre. Vanessa Coffey, the producer of the show, said that she did not like the general idea, but that she liked the characters.

Kricfalusi originally created Ren and Stimpy as the pets of George Liquor and Jimmy The Idiot Boy.

Kricfalusi received inspiration for Ren from a black and white photograph of a chihuahua in a sweater next to a woman's feet. The original photograph is called "New York City, 1946" and was taken by Elliott Erwitt. He received inspiration for Stimpy's design by a Tweety Bird cartoon called A Gruesome Twosome where the cats in the animation had big noses. The relationship of both Ren and Stimpy was inspired in the relationship of Gandy Goose and Sourpuss from Terrytoons.

Sexuality
From its start, there were hints at the characters' sexuality. During the Spümcø years of the show on Nickelodeon, a running gag would have Ren and Stimpy engaging in something intimate (such as Stimpy bathing Ren during the episode "Nurse Stimpy"), with Stimpy assuring Ren that "no one will know" about the private and rather embarrassing encounter, only to pan towards a window in the room and showing several characters (including Mr. Horse) witnessing the event. The episode "Svën Höek" shows Stimpy having a romantic affair with Ren's cousin Svën, including an intimate "private" moment in Stimpy's litterbox and scrawling "Svën + Stimpy" all over the walls. This was dropped after Spümcø was fired from the show.

Kricfalusi discussed the sexuality of the characters in a January 28, 1997 interview with the San Francisco Examiner, confirming their sexuality, saying: "Totally. In Ren's case, it's not completely by choice. He'd rather have a beautiful human woman if he could get away with it. Since he can't, Stimpy's easy. Stimpy's madly in love with Ren."

Jeffery P. Dennis said in the journal article "The Same Thing We Do Every Night: Signifying Same-Sex Desire in Television Cartoons" that Ren and Stimpy are within a world where "gay identities cannot exist", so the series portrays same-sex romantic desire as "anomalous and perverse". Dennis added that the critics of the series "made much" of the gay connotations of Ren and Stimpy, such as their sharing of a house and bed, their reminiscing of a wedding, and Stimpy's "giving birth" to flatulence. Dennis said that Ren is "socially and sexually" the aggressor in the relationship; in addition he says that some episodes portray Stimpy as "a stereotypical 1950s wife" who cleans, cooks food, and irons Ren's underwear. Dennis stated that the aspects "may adhere to a reading of a sexual relationship." Dennis concludes that the relationship between Ren and Stimpy is a parody of heterosexual relationships rather than an actual gay or an actual romantic relationship. Dennis adds that in other situations Ren and Stimpy are "read more appropriately" as coworkers, enemies, friends, and house pets. Dennis argues that Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo are more consistently gay than Ren and Stimpy. Dennis also stated that the scenes of Ren and Stimpy as a couple emulate a heterosexual couple instead of being a union between two men.

In a response to Dennis' statements, Martin Goodman of Animation World Network said that Kricfalusi had outed Ren and Stimpy as gay and adds that while the Ren & Stimpy "Adult Party Cartoon" had not yet been released and therefore Ren and Stimpy had not been explicitly portrayed as gay, Ren and Stimpy would qualify as a consistently gay couple since they share a bed, live as partners, discuss a planned wedding, and had a "child", with the child being flatulence.

References

External links

Ren and Stimpy at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on January 9, 2017.

Animated duos
Characters created by John Kricfalusi
Anthropomorphic cats
Anthropomorphic dogs
Fictional duos
Fictional inventors
LGBT characters in animation
Male characters in animated series
Nicktoon characters
Television characters introduced in 1990
Animated characters introduced in 1990
Ren and Stimpy
Television duos

Ren and Stimpy (characters)


Abiodun Oyewole (born Charles Davis, February 1948), is a poet, teacher and member of the African-American music and spoken-word group The Last Poets, which developed into what is considered to be the first hip hop group.  Critic Jason Ankeny wrote, "With their politically charged raps, taut rhythms, and dedication to raising African-American consciousness, the Last Poets almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop."

Early life
Oyewole was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and he moved with his maternal aunt and her new husband at age three to Queens, New York. At the age of 15, he attended a Yoruba Temple in Harlem. It was there that he was given the name by which he is best known.

As a youth, Oyewole was influenced by jazz and gospel music played by his parents and the poems of Langston Hughes.

The Last Poets
The group was born on May 19, 1968, Malcolm X's birthday, when Oyewole, David Nelson, and Gylan Kain read poetry in tribute to Malcolm X. The group was based in black nationalism and quickly became known throughout the African-American community.  They are generally credited, along with Gil Scott-Heron, as being major influences on the development of hip hop.

At one point, Oyewole was forced to leave the group as he spent four years in a North Carolina prison, convicted of larceny. After serving two and a half years of a three-year sentence, because of good behavior he was eligible for study release during the day. Oyewole continued his education at nearby Shaw University in Raleigh, and earned his undergraduate degree.  He subsequently went on to earn a doctorate from Columbia University in New York City, where he once served as a member of the faculty.

Later years
In 1994, Oyewole appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation CD, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, appearing on an update of "This is Madness" alongside Omar Ben Hassen and Pharoah Sanders. The album was named "Album of the Year" by Time.

Recently, Oyewole has been touring the world giving lectures on poetry and politics and hosting a weekly Open House for up-and-coming poets. He has also taught at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. In 2022, he released a solo CD entitled "Gratitude".

Quotes
 "(Malcolm X) was our pathway to revolutionary understanding. Malcolm X went through a series of rites of passage - from Malcolm Little to Detroit Red to Satan to Malcolm X to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. All this because the man never stopped trying to develop and recognize the best of himself. He was self-determined. Malcolm was saying we need to be more. And we heard that. And he said it better than anybody ever said it. He made it clear to us. So all we wanted to do, was to be disciples of Malcolm, in a sense, using poetry to illuminate the same values that he planted in our head." On Malcolm X's influence on the Last Poets (2001).

See also

 Black Nationalism
 Gil Scott-Heron
 Hip hop music
 Jalal Mansur Nuriddin

References

External links

African-American musicians
1948 births
Living people
Writers from Cincinnati
African-American poets
American poets
American spoken word poets
Poets from Ohio
Poets from New York (state)
Writers from New York City
21st-century African-American writers
20th-century African-American writers
21st-century African-American musicians
20th-century African-American musicians

Abiodun Oyewole


Erol Günaydın (16 April 1933 – 15 October 2012) was a Turkish theater and film actor, as well as a renowned showman famous particularly for his portrayal of Nasreddin Hoca and his performances in the traditional Turkish meddah (one man shows).

Biography
In 1955 was played in Haldun Dormen Pocket Theater, "The priest ran away" from a professional actor began his career with the game.<ref>Biyografy of Erol Günaydın :http://www.biyografi.info/kisi/erol-gunaydin</ref> In theater since 1955 and in cinema since 1960, he recently celebrated his golden jubilee together with the fortieth anniversary of his marriage with spouse Güneş Günaydın, a native of Manisa, in company of his children, one of whom married into an Italian family.

Erol Günaydın was born in Akçaabat, Trabzon Province, and became involved in theater while he was a student in Galatasaray High School. He played in a very varied range of plays and character roles in films since then and became nationally famous especially once he also started appearing in TV shows on a frequent basis, first as the Turkish voice of Yogi Bear, and then in his Nasreddin Hoca and meddah shows, with also a leading role in the very successful TV serial "Çiçek Taxi''". He is one of the best known faces in Turkey's world of performing arts.

His memoirs, put in writing in the form of long interview with the journalist Emine Algan, were published in 2007. He also voiced Carl Fredericksen in the Turkish dub of the 2009 Pixar film Up.

Death
Erol Günaydın died on 15 October 2012 in a hospital in Istanbul. On 24 August he had been admitted to hospital with dyspnea, in an intensive care unit in Bodrum. Being without consciousness, Günaydın was transferred to Istanbul by air ambulance on 22 September. Günaydın's death was announced by his daughter Günfer Günaydın in her Twitter feed. He was laid to rest at the Feriköy Cemetery, Istanbul.

References

 Who is Who database - Biography of Erol Günaydın

External links

1Turkish Erol Günaydın's Biography

1933 births
2012 deaths
Turkish male stage actors
Turkish male film actors
People from Akçaabat
Best Screenplay Golden Orange Award winners
Best Supporting Actor Golden Orange Award winners
Galatasaray High School alumni
Burials at Feriköy Cemetery

Erol Günaydın


The DynaRig is a conceptualization of a square-rigged form of rigging, designed in the 1960s by the German engineer Wilhelm Prölß. While having the appearance of the rigging of a 19th-century clipper ship, it was not actually implemented on a sailing vessel until several decades after its design because of a lack of adequate construction materials. It was fitted to one of the world's largest yachts, the Maltese Falcon. When the original patent rights and residual technology were purchased from the German government by an American investor in 2001, it was renamed the Falcon rig.

The DynaRig, along with the original, "DynaSchiff", is a trademarked name. The original concept by Prölß was for a combined rig and hull with extremely high efficiency of operation and the use of wind power to propel a large vessel across an open body of water. The modern controller for the entire ship's rig consists of a single panel operated by a single person. The masts are freestanding, the curved yards being attached rigidly to the masts. To adjust the angle of the sails, the entire mast rotates in place. When fully deployed, the sails on each mast have no gaps between them, creating a single panel to capture the wind. It is estimated to have twice the efficiency of a traditional square rig.

The design for the rig of Maltese Falcon was formalised and tested by Dutch naval architects Dykstra Naval Architects, and engineered and built by Insensys Ltd. on the premises of Perini Navi in Istanbul.

In 2016 a similar rig designed and engineered by the same team was built by Magma Structures in Portsmouth and fitted to the 106 m vessel Black Pearl built by Dutch shipyard Oceanco in Alblasserdam and designed by Italian Nuvolari Lenard. Naval architecture and DynaRig design of Black Pearl was done by Dykstra Naval Architects.

References

Sailing rigs and rigging
German inventions
1960s introductions
1960s in West Germany

DynaRig


Philip Edward Archer  (22 February 1925 – 10 May 2002) was the Chief Justice of Ghana between 1991 and 1995. He was the eighth person to hold this position since Ghana became an independent nation. He died on 10 May 2002.

Life
Philip Edward Archer was born 22 February 1925, Abontiakrom, Tarkwa. He was educated at St Peter's School in Sekondi, Adisadel College, Cape Coast and the University of Nottingham in England. Admitted a solicitor of the Supreme Court of Jurisdiction of England and Wales in 1957, he returned to Ghana and joined the office of the Registrar-General. Appointed registrar-general in 1959 and judicial secretary in 1961, he became a High Court judge in 1964 and a Supreme Court judge in 1980. He was pro-chancellor and chairman of the University of Cape Coast Council from 1979 to 1983. Retiring as a judge in 1983, he was appointed full-time chairman of the Law Reform Commission. Chief Justice from 1991 until 1995, he was made a member of the Council of State in 1995. In 2000 he was honoured with the Order of the Star of Ghana.
He died at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital on 10 May 2002.

See also
Chief Justice of Ghana
List of judges of the Supreme Court of Ghana
Supreme Court of Ghana

References

1925 births
2002 deaths
20th-century Ghanaian lawyers
Recipients of the Order of the Star of Ghana
Alumni of Adisadel College
People from Western Region (Ghana)
Justices of the Supreme Court of Ghana
Fante people
Ghanaian Anglicans

Philip Edward Archer


Mark Fisher (11 July 1968 – 13 January 2017), also known under his blogging alias k-punk, was an English writer, music critic, political and cultural theorist, philosopher, and teacher based in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. He initially achieved acclaim for his blogging as k-punk in the early 2000s, and was known for his writing on radical politics, music, and popular culture.

Fisher published several books, including the unexpected success Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (2009), and contributed to publications such as The Wire, Fact, New Statesman and Sight & Sound. He was also the co-founder of Zero Books, and later Repeater Books. After years intermittently struggling with depression, Fisher committed suicide in January 2017, shortly before the publication of The Weird and the Eerie (2017).

Early life and education
Fisher was born in Leicester and raised in Loughborough to working-class, conservative parents; his father was an engineering technician and his mother a cleaner. He attended a local comprehensive school. Fisher was formatively influenced in his youth by the post-punk music press of the late 1970s, particularly papers such as NME which crossed music with politics, film, and fiction. He was also influenced by the relationship between working class culture and football, being present at the Hillsborough disaster. Fisher earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Philosophy at Hull University (1989), and completed a PhD at the University of Warwick in 1999 titled Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction. During this time, Fisher was a founding member of the interdisciplinary collective known as the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, which were associated with accelerationist political thought and the work of philosophers Sadie Plant and Nick Land. There, he befriended and influenced producer Kode9, who would later found the Hyperdub record label. In the early 1990s, he also made music as part of the techno group D-Generation, releasing the 12" Entropy in the UK. In the 1990s Mark wrote "White Magic" for CritCrim.org.

After a period teaching in a further education college as a philosophy lecturer, Fisher began his blog on cultural theory, k-punk, in 2003. Music critic Simon Reynolds described it as "a one-man magazine superior to most magazines in Britain" and as the central hub of a "constellation of blogs" in which popular culture, music, film, politics, and critical theory were discussed in tandem by journalists, academics, and colleagues. Vice magazine later described his writing on k-punk as "lucid and revelatory, taking literature, music and cinema we're familiar with and effortlessly disclosing its inner secrets". Fisher used the blog as a more flexible, generative venue for writing, a respite from the frameworks and expectations of academic writing. Fisher also co-founded the message board Dissensus with writer Matt Ingram.

Career
Subsequently, Fisher was a visiting fellow and a lecturer on Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College, a commissioning editor at Zero Books, an editorial board member of Interference: A Journal of Audio Culture and Edinburgh University Press's Speculative Realism series, and an acting deputy editor at The Wire. In 2009, Fisher edited The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson, a collection of critical essays on the career and death of Michael Jackson, and published Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, an analysis of the ideological effects of neoliberalism on contemporary culture.

Fisher was an early critic of call-out culture and in 2013 published a controversial essay titled "Exiting the Vampire Castle". He argued that call-out culture created a space "where solidarity is impossible, but guilt and fear are omnipresent". Fisher also argued that call-out culture reduces every political issue to criticizing the behaviour of individuals, instead of dealing with such political issues through collective action. In 2014, Fisher published Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, a collection of essays on similar themes viewed through the prisms of music, film, and hauntology. He also contributed intermittently to a number of publications, including the music magazines Fact and The Wire. In 2016, Fisher co-edited a critical anthology on the post-punk era with Kodwo Eshun and Gavin Butt titled Post-Punk Then and Now, published by Repeater Books.

Capitalist realism

In the late 2000s, Fisher re-purposed the term "capitalist realism" to describe "the widespread sense that not only is capitalism the only viable political and economic system, but also that it is now impossible even to imagine a coherent alternative to it".
He expanded on the concept in his 2009 book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, arguing that the term best describes the ideological situation since the fall of the Soviet Union, in which the logics of capitalism have come to delineate the limits of political and social life, with significant effects on education, mental illness, pop culture, and methods of resistance. The result is a situation in which it is "easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism." Fisher writes:

Capitalist realism as I understand it ... is more like a pervasive atmosphere, conditioning not only the production of culture but also the regulation of work and education, and acting as a kind of invisible barrier constraining thought and action.

As a philosophical concept, capitalist realism is influenced by the Althusserian conception of ideology, as well as the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. The concept of capitalist realism also likely stems from the concept of Cultural hegemony proposed by Italian theorist, Antonio Gramsci; which can generally be described as the notion that the "status quo" is all there is, and that anything else violates common sense itself. Capitalists maintain their power not through violence or force, but by creating a pervasive sense that the Capitalist system is all there is. They maintain this view by dominating most social and cultural institutions. Fisher proposes that within a capitalist framework there is no space to conceive of alternative forms of social structures, adding that younger generations are not even concerned with recognizing alternatives. He proposes that the 2008 financial crisis compounded this position; rather than catalyzing a desire to seek alternatives for the existing model, the response to the crisis reinforced the notion that modifications must be made within the existing system. Fisher argues that capitalist realism has propagated a 'business ontology' which concludes that everything should be run as a business including education and healthcare.

Following the publication of Fisher's work, the term has been picked up by other literary critics.

Hauntology

Fisher popularised the use of Jacques Derrida's concept of hauntology to describe a pervasive sense in which contemporary culture is haunted by the "lost futures" of modernity, which failed to occur or were cancelled by postmodernity and neoliberalism. Fisher and others have drawn attention to the shift into post-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which he argued has "gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new". In contrast to the nostalgia and ironic pastiche of postmodern culture, Fisher defined hauntological art as exploring these impasses and representing a "refusal to give up on the desire for the future" and a "pining for a future that never arrived". Discussing the political relevance of the concept, Fisher wrote: At a time of political reaction and restoration, when cultural innovation has stalled and even gone backwards, when "power ... operates predictively as much as retrospectively" (Eshun 2003: 289), one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity's terminal time. When the present has given up on the future, we must listen for the relics of the future in the unactivated potentials of the past.
Fisher and critic Simon Reynolds adapted Derrida's concept to describe a musical trend in the mid-2000s. Fisher's 2014 book Ghosts of My Life examined these ideas through cultural sources, such as the music of Burial, Joy Division, and the Ghost Box label, TV series such as Sapphire & Steel, the films of Stanley Kubrick and Christopher Nolan, and the novels of David Peace and John le Carré.

The Weird and the Eerie
Fisher's posthumous book The Weird and the Eerie explores the titular concepts of "the weird" and "the eerie" through various works of art, defining the concepts as radical narrative modes or moments of "transcendental shock" which work to de-centre the human subject and de-naturalise social reality, exposing the arbitrary forces that shape it. Summarizing Fisher's characterizations, Yohann Koshy stated that "weirdness abounds at the edge between worlds; eeriness radiates from the ruins of lost ones". The book includes discussion of science-fiction and horror sources such as the writing of H. P. Lovecraft, Joan Lindsay's 1967 Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Philip K. Dick, films such as David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006) and Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin (2013), and the music of UK post-punk band The Fall and ambient musician Brian Eno.

Acid Communism
At the time of his death, Fisher was said to be planning a new book titled Acid Communism, excerpts of which were published as part of a Mark Fisher anthology, k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016), by Repeater Books in November 2018. Acid Communism would have attempted to reclaim elements of the 1960s counterculture and psychedelia in the interest of imagining new political possibilities for the Left.

On Vanishing Land
Following Fisher's death, the Hyperdub record label started a sub label called Flatlines which published an audio-essay by Justin Barton and Fisher in July 2019. Fisher and Barton edited together music from various musicians which was made to accompany the text, and Barton, working in part with suggestions from Fisher, wrote the text for the audio-essay, which "evokes a walk along the Suffolk coastline in 2006, from Felixstowe container port ('a nerve ganglion of capitalism') to the Anglo-Saxon burial ground at Sutton Hoo". Both Barton and Fisher narrate the essay. Adam Harper wrote about the elements of Hauntology in On Vanishing Land, as well as its relation to the environmentalist movement. In a review for The Quietus, Johny Lamb referred to On Vanishing Land as a "shocking revelation of the proximity of dystopia."

Critique of political economy
Fisher critiqued economics, claiming that it was a bourgeois "science" that moulds reality after its presuppositions, rather than critically examining reality. As he stated it himself:

Personal life
In an article posted to the k-punk blog on 29 September 2004, Fisher wrote about  having experienced sexual abuse in his early twenties.

Death
Fisher committed suicide at his home on King Street, Felixstowe on 13 January 2017 at the age of 48, shortly before the publication of his latest book The Weird and the Eerie (2017). He had sought psychiatric treatment in the weeks leading up to his death, but his general practitioner had only been able to offer over-the-phone meetings to discuss a referral. Fisher's mental health had deteriorated since May 2016, leading to a suspected overdose in December 2016, when he was admitted to Ipswich Hospital. He discussed his struggles with depression in articles and in his book Ghosts of My Life. According to Simon Reynolds in The Guardian, Fisher argued that "the pandemic of mental anguish that afflicts our time cannot be properly understood, or healed, if viewed as a private problem suffered by damaged individuals."

Legacy
Fisher has been posthumously acclaimed as a highly influential thinker and theorist. Commenting on Fisher's influence in Tribune, Alex Niven recalled that Fisher's "lucidity, but more than that, his ability to get to the heart of what was wrong with late-capitalist culture and right about the putative alternative...seemed to have cracked some ineffable code". In The Irish Times Rob Doyle wrote that "a more interesting British writer has not appeared in this century", while The Guardian described Fisher's k-punk blog posts as "required reading for a generation". In the Los Angeles Review of Books, Roger Luckhurst called Fisher "one of Britain's most trenchant, clear-sighted, and sparky cultural commentators...it is a catastrophe that we no longer have Mark Fisher". He still has a large influence on contemporary Zer0 Books writers, with him being cited extensively in Guy Mankowski's 'Albion's Secret History: Snapshots of England's Pop Rebels and Outsiders'. After Fisher's suicide, English musician the Caretaker, who had a symbiotic relationship with the writer, released Take Care. It's a Desert Out There... in memory of him, with its proceeds being donated to the mental health charity Mind.

Bibliography
 The Resistible Demise of Michael Jackson (editor). Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.
 Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009.
 Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Winchester: Zero Books, 2014.
 Post-Punk Then and Now (editor, with Gavin Butt and Kodwo Eshun). London: Repeater Books, 2016.
 The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Books, 2017.
 Flatline Constructs: Gothic Materialism and Cybernetic Theory-Fiction (foreword by exmilitary). New York: Exmilitary Press, 2018.
 k-punk: The Collected and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fisher (2004–2016) (edited by Darren Ambrose, foreword by Simon Reynolds). London: Repeater Books, 2018.
 Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures (edited and with an introduction by Matt Colquhoun). London: Repeater Books, 2020.

References

External links

 2012 podcast discussion with Mark Fisher – discussing issues relative to the recession, insurrection, and Really Existing Capitalism
 K-Punk Blog Archive – Mark Fishers "K-Punk" Blog
 Mark Fisher Tribute Site & Video Archive
 Dissensus forum

1968 births
2017 suicides
2017 deaths
Suicides by hanging in England
English music journalists
English Marxists
British literary theorists
English bloggers
Alumni of the University of Hull
Alumni of the University of Warwick
British anti-capitalists
Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London
20th-century British journalists
21st-century British journalists
English political philosophers
British male bloggers
Critics of political economy
Accelerationism
Academics from Leicester
Writers from Leicester

Mark Fisher