Howard Bloom

Howard Bloom (born 1943) is the author of three books, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History; Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century; and How I Accidentally Started the Sixties. He was a publicist in the music and film industries from 1974 to 1988, working with figures like Prince, Michael Jackson, Bob Marley, Bette Midler, and John Cougar Mellencamp. He founded two new scientific fields, mass behavior and paleopsychology. The term "paleopscychology" had been coined in 1987 by Kent G. Baily in his book Human Paleopsychology: Applications to Aggression and Pathological Processes. And the phrase "mass behavior" was used by Bruno Bettelheim in his 1943 Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology article "Individual and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations." But Bloom was the first to suggest that these two catchwords become a field of study. Bloom is currently working to establish a third new field, omnology.^[1] He is also the founder of three international, multi-disciplinary scientific groups. The first group, The Group Selection Squad (1995), focused on evolutionary psychology. The second group was the International Paleopsychology Project.^[2] (1997) The third group is The Space Development Steering Committee (2006).

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Early career 1.3 Current endeavors 2 Writings 3 Recognition 4 Criticism 5 References 6 External links

Biography

Early life

Howard Bloom was born in 1943 in Buffalo, New York. At the age of ten, he became involved in science. Bloom cajoled his parents into buying him a used professional microscope and dove into microbiology. Following the lead of yet another role model, George Gamow (founder of the Big Bang Theory), Bloom also plunged into theoretical physics and physical cosmology. At the age of 12, he was tutored in "outside-the-box" science by Emil Rappaport, head of research and development for the Moog Valve Corporation, a firm that specialized in the design and production of advanced valves for jet engines.

Bloom built his first Boolean algebra machine at the age of twelve. That same year, he collaborated with Michael Wolfberg^[3] to conceive an electronic device that played the game TakTix[1]. That device won regional science awards, and was a runner-up for the Westinghouse National Science Prize (see Intel Science Talent Search). This device also helped to get Wolfberg into MIT. At the age of twelve, Bloom was granted a private audience to brainstorm on cosmology with the head of the Graduate Physics Department of the University of Buffalo. Meanwhile, Bloom borrowed books on industrial formulae from his local library, made cold cream from scratch, learned about surfactants, became fascinated by the puzzles of surface tension, and learned about piezoelectricity by building a germanium diode radio. His attempt to anneal wire for an advanced electrical coil failed, as did his attempt to build a transistor radio from a kit. But these endeavors taught him a few of the basics of electrical engineering. Bloom had lab rats multiplying in his bedroom along with guinea pigs, fish, and lizards. From a book on herpetology, Bloom learned how to raise a lizard from an egg. He secured an egg from a local pet store, and succeeded in hatching his first reptile. Bloom's interest in animal behavior would later surface in his books. At sixteen, while sick in bed for three months with hepatitis, Bloom borrowed course materials and a textbook from one of his nurses who was taking a course at the University of Buffalo in elementary psychology. Bloom put himself through the course in an era when psychology focused on the drive theories of Clark Hull^[4], and the research on lab rats being performed by the students of Yale's Neil Miller. When Bloom regained his health, E. Barton Chapin, Jr., headmaster of The Park School of Buffalo, secured him the right to attend courses at The University of Buffalo. At UB, Bloom plunged into philosophy. His study of Aristotle and Nietzsche would prove a potent influence in his books. Then, at Roswell Park Memorial Cancer Research Institute, while working as a summer lab assistant in the biochemistry department, he aided in early research on the immune system. Though he was technically too young to enter Roswell Park's summer program, Bloom had been recruited by the biochemistry department's head, Dr. David Pressman. Pressman was one of Linus Pauling's students and proteges, who, in the words of a Roswell Park historical chronology, had just won "worldwide recognition for his research on the structural characterization of antibodies and the application of antibodies to define surface antigens, including those found on neoplastic cells".^[5] Bloom entered Reed College in 1961, but dropped out and embarked on a series of adventures chronicled in his Amazon Shorts book How I Accidentally Started The Sixties. In 1963, he returned to scientific work, doing research on B.F. Skinner's programmed learning at Rutgers Graduate School of Education under Dr. Merrill Harmon. Bloom eventually returned to school at New York University, graduating magna cum laude and phi beta kappa in 1968. Bloom has been mentored since 1988 by one of his key teachers, Dr. E.E. Coons, of NYU's Graduate Psychology Department. Dr. Coons discovered the basic functions of the hypothalamus, and is the keeper of the legacy of Neal E. Miller, one of psychology's most important 20th century researchers, and one of those whose work had made an indelible impression on Bloom when he was sixteen. ^[6]

Early career

Bloom edited grant proposals and conference proceedings for Sol Gordon, head of the Middlesex County Mental Health Clinic and author of books like How Can You Tell If You're Really in Love? and All Families Are Different (1963). A year later, he edited and wrote for the Boy Scouts of America during a summer vacation. He updated the Boy Scout Handbook chapter on masturbation and field manuals on stalking, tracking, and camouflage. In 1966 he wrote Ten Steps to Organize a Boy Scout Troop, the manual on how to build new Boy Scout troops. Since he had previously been kicked out of the Boy Scouts for incompetence at Morse Code, the experience convinced him that if you do enough research and you care enough about your reader, you can write on any subject. After that, Bloom edited and art-directed an experimental graphics and literary magazine that won two National Academy of Poets prizes (1967-1968). In 1968, Bloom turned down four graduate school fellowships in clinical psychology to embark on a scientific expedition into what he called "the heart of society's myth-making machine, the aorta of human mass behavior, and the closest vantage point I could find to the forces of history"--popular culture, business and mass media. In 1968, he co-founded Cloud Studio^[7], and in 1970, was featured on the cover of Art Direction Magazine for his role in establishing what became one of the leading avant-garde commercial art studios on the East Coast.^[8] In 1971, he became the editor of Circus magazine. He helped increase the magazine's circulation by 211% , and was credited by veteran Rolling Stone editor Chet Flippo with "creating a new magazine genre: the heavy metal magazine". From 1973 to 1976, Bloom started public and artist relations departments for Gulf & Western's fourteen record companies and ABC Records. In 1976, Bloom founded The Howard Bloom Organization, Ltd.,^[9] the largest public relations firm in the record industry. His clients included Michael Jackson, Prince, Bette Midler, John Mellencamp, Bob Marley, David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Billy Idol, Joan Jett, Luther Vandross, George Michael, Lionel Richie, Hall & Oates, Kool and the Gang, the Simon & Garfunkel Reunion Tour, the 25th Anniversary of the Beatles Invasion of the United States, Queen, AC/DC, Kiss, Aerosmith, Supertramp, Genesis, Phil Collins, Styx, Supertramp, REO Speedwagon, Joan Armatrading, Simply Red, Chaka Khan, ZZ Top, Spirogyra, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, and Run DMC. Bloom was instrumental in the growth of several new musical forms, including Heavy Metal, country crossover, disco, punk rock, fusion jazz, and rap.^[10] Bloom’s firm publicized Amnesty International’s first effort to gain visibility in the US, handled the launch of Farm Aid, and worked on major films from Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, and New Line Cinema. He was also involved with the three films that established a new identity for Disney, Down and Out in Beverly Hills, Ruthless People, and Outrageous Fortune. Working closely with Prince's manager and current Chairman of the Buena Vista Music Group, Bob Cavallo,^[11] Bloom played a role in saving a Prince film Warner Brothers was about to trash, Purple Rain. Bloom was also consulted on a regular basis during the formative days of a venture that became MTV. He also devised and ran three programs for the black community, an Earth, Wind, & Fire campaign to raise the visibility of The National Black United Fund^[12], Lionel Richie's SuperStudent Program (sponsored by Pepsi Cola), and Kool and the Gang's 'It's Kool to Stay In School' campaign (sponsored by Coca Cola). With Spin Magazine founder Bob Guccione, Jr. and rock manager David Krebs, Bloom co-founded the national anti-censorship group Music In Action. Bloom was the organization's day-to-day work horse, battling a campaign by Tipper Gore, Susan Baker, and other wives of high-placed government officials, who had founded the Parents Music Resource Center. From 1984 to 1991, Bloom appeared on television and radio, combating what he felt was the "propaganda" of born again extremists. In addition, Bloom assigned one of the account executives of The Howard Bloom Organization, Rhonda Markowitz, to defend political rock singer Jello Biafra from the Parents Music Resource Center's attacks.

Current endeavors

Bloom is a former faculty member of The Graduate Institute's Conscious Evolution and Organizational Leadership programs, a recent visiting scholar in the Graduate Psychology Department at NYU , and founder of the Big Bang Tango Media Lab.^[13] He also founded the Group Selection Squad, a team of forty scientists who championed group selection and multi-level selection over commonly accepted Neo-Darwinian theories. His campaign was supported by David Sloan Wilson, an important evolutionary scientist, and one of the first to introduce the term "multi-level selection". In 2006 Bloom founded The Space Development Steering Committee, which includes the second astronaut on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, the sixth astronaut on the moon, Edgar Mitchell, the Chief of the Future Science and Technology Exploration Branch of the US Air Force, Peter Garretson, the National Science Foundation Program Director for Control, Networks & Computational Intelligence, Paul Werbos, the Chief Scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center, Dennis Bushnell, NASA's Senior Risk Analyst, Feng Hsu, Boeing Phantom Works' Ed McCullough, Air Force Research Laboratory veteran James Michael Snead, and the world’s leading expert on space solar power, 25-year NASA veteran John Mankins. The Space Development Steering Committee also includes the heads of the National Space Society, the Space Frontier Foundation, and the Mars Society. In theoretical physics, Bloom claims to be the co-author and supporter of the hidden-time approach to quantum theory. This approach was developed by Pavel Kurakin and George Malinetsky, of the Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Bloom is a founding board member of both the Epic of Evolution Society and The Darwin Project, is a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society, and is a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Psychological Science^[14], the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, The International Society of Human Ethology, the Academy of Political Science, and the NASA-founded Aerospace Technologies Working Group. He is also an advisory board member of the Institute for Accelerating Change. One of Bloom's speeches at an annual conference of the Space Frontier Foundation was the catalyst that drove the Seattle-based Foundation for the Future to convene an international symposium on "Energy Challenges: The Next Thousand Years" in the spring of 2007. Bloom has appeared on North America's highest-rated overnight talk radio show, Coast to Coast Live, 34 times. On a November 4, 2006 appearance, this Wikipedia article was cited by one of show's hosts, Ian Punnett.

Writings

Bloom has written three books, The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, and the recently-published Amazon Shorts ebook How I Accidentally Started the Sixties. Three international conferences have been convened based in whole or in part on the unfinished draft of his next book, The Rise of the Cup and Saucer: A Radical Reperception of Western Civilization OR Reinventing Capitalism: Putting Soul In the Machine. Those conferences have been in New York (December 2005), Amsterdam (March 2006), and Malaysia (July 2007), and have attracted attendees from as far afield as Germany and Australia. As of 2005, Bloom had two papers in physics publications: "The Xerox Effect: On the Importance of Pre-Biotic Evolution"^[15] and "Conversation (dialog) Model of Quantum Transitions"^[16] at arXiv.org. Bloom's articles have also appeared in the periodicals The Washington Post, Wired, The Village Voice, Cosmopolitan, Omni, The Independent Scholar, Across Species Comparisons and Psychopathology, New Ideas in Psychology, and in two book series, Research in Biopolitics and the Disinformation Company's trilogy You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know is Wrong, and Abuse Your Illusions.

Recognition

Bloom has been featured in every issue of Who's Who in Science and Engineering since the publication's inception in 1991. He's also won several awards from Performance Magazine, and in 2005, was awarded the Global Entertainment and Media Summit's only Award for Lifetime Achievement and Commitment to Career Excellence.^[17]

Criticism

Bloom has been accused of racism against Arabs and other people of Middle-Eastern descent because of his book The Lucifer Principle.^[18] However, supporters point out that this criticism misquotes Bloom in several respects. He criticizes "certain Islamic societies", not all. He footnotes his quotes from the Koran, and says Islam does have its positive sides. He also says "Christians by the millions would take upon themselves the privilege of killing, torturing and raping those who weren't members of their triumphant creed."^[19]

References

External links

• HowardBloom.net - 'Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind' (Howard Bloom's homepage)
• Howard Bloom's Blog
• HowardBloom.net - 'Instant Evolution. The Influence of the City on Human Genes: A Speculative Case', Howard Bloom, New Ideas in Psychology, vol 19, no 3, December 2001, p 203-220 (first presented May 11, 2000)
• BigBangTango.net - 'Big Bang Tango Media Lab'
• Why Do The Iraqis Hate Us - 'Why Do The Iraqis Hate Us'- The World's 1st Bio-Political Cartoon
• EntelechyJournal.com - 'The Roots of Omnology: an academic base for the promiscuously curious, a discipline that concentrates on seeing the patterns that emerge when one views all the sciences and the arts at once', Howard Bloom
• PhysicaPlus.org - 'Xerox Effect: On the Importance of Pre-biotic Evolution', Howard Bloom, PhysicaPlus (October 1, 2004)
• [2] “Conversation (dialog) model of quantum transitions”. George Malinetsky, Pavel Kurakin, and Howard Bloom.
• Sursumcorda.com (ram file) - Audio interview with Howard Bloom
• Interview with Howard Bloom - Topic was 'The Lucifer Principle' on BookTalk.org