"The information economy that we are currently building doesn't really embrace capitalism, but rather a new form of feudalism," writes Jaron Lanier, in Who Owns the Future? That book is published today, and you can order it from all the usual places. (Indiebound; Amazon; McNally Jackson; Barnes & Noble; Powell's. See what I did there?)

Jaron Lanier is the author of You Are Not a Gadget, and is a "scholar-at-large" at Microsoft Research. LOL he's also working on an alternative to the space elevator.

But right now, he's looking at how things have come to work on the web. "The primary business of [...]

"This is the easiest of connections; I don’t even have my thinking cap on. Apple is the most valuable technology brand in the world. Their products are sold to People Of Wal-Mart but the aesthetic still shimmers diamond-hard, like faith beyond reason. When the first iPhone came out the cast of the Apple store applauded every buyer.

Radiohead is the most valuable band in the world. Their music references the phone book but sounds like nobody else. They’ve turned hard sell/soft sell into their own loud-quiet-loud solution. Their intelligence burns even at street level; the more they refuse to dumb it down the less they alienate even dumb people." [...]

Tumblr's business model revealed to be "good feelings." Sounds like someone's been reading Lovemarks. (You remember: "Take a brand away and people will find a replacement. Take a Lovemark away and people will protest its absence.")

Last week, I looked at the grotesque dominance of Apple product placement in TV and film. Now let's take a look at the most noteworthy Apple product placements of all time.

That is a pretty remarkable thing: From propaganda vehicle Act of Valor to propaganda vehicle Argo, Mercedes product placement dominated the 34 number-one box office flicks of last year, appearing in ten of them. (The big winner last year was Apple, with appearances in 42% of #1 films.) Don't you want to drive a Mercedes now. And drink human blood. What will become of our children. When we are all pressed into service of the brands and industrial entertainment war complex. They will fight each other in the streets and then get into their Mercedes car-robots and zoom away to their abandoned buildings. So sad.

It’s that magical time of the year when brand preferences are being lodged in the consumer psyche by any means necessary, be it free online shipping offers or conventional “doorbuster” style shopper stampedes. (Plus, in an admirable show of advance conditioning, there are those sidebar Four Loko-fueled parking lot brawls.)

But the romance of the brand is a notoriously ephemeral thing, as any casual survey of thrift-store Tickle-Me Elmo and Tamagotchi displays will promptly demonstrate. To do the job right, in this as in so many other realms, we would do well to heed the example of the Germans. As Bloomberg’s Chris Reiter reports, Deutschland’s [...]

"Whereas once comedians could be easily placed into three very broad categories – 'Men,' 'Women,' or 'Black People' – and marketed accordingly, now there are a seemingly infinite number of niche subcultures within the comedy community, each with its own unique demographics and strat. Before you worry about writing down a single joke or trying to have an original thought, it is crucial for you to first decide on a unique comedy 'brand' so you can easily market/promote yourself."

Avatar is in contention for an Oscar because it dominated its field, both technologically and financially. But another cinematic player was even more dominant last year: Apple. In the 44 films in 2009 that topped the box office for at least one weekend, an Apple logo or device could be seen in at least 18 of them. (That's almost 41%.) In some, Apple products even eclipsed their human scene partners. This high appearance rate does not include the heap of mass-market films from 2009 that did not own a weekend but also featured Apple product placement.

Here's some horsemen of the apocalypse of the coming Reputation Market, in which all humans will be searchable, sortable and assigned a value by a judge, jury and executioner of their peers across the Internet. For the delectation of their favorite brands and/or employers!

• "Enliken’s users voluntarily download software that tracks their online activity. A personal dashboard lets them limit what gets captured and sold to advertisers. Users pick one of several independent charities to receive the proceeds."

• Startup founder Chris Carella has mickey-moused something together that's a little janky but genius: his personal website draws together various outputs under the categories of his last [...]

I had not noticed that Dreamworks has been renouncing product placement in movies for young people! This is heartening. What's more? "Megamind also has no product placement 'jokes,' the likes of which were so prevalent in the Shrek series—that is, until the most recent Shrek film, another brand-less children's film that signaled the trend that Megamind now confirms. Product placement in animated children's films might be dead."

1. This morning, Goldman Sachs held its quarterly earnings call and all the questions were about the SEC investigation. "You go to trial — which is what we're doing — but you always have the option of settling," is what Goldman said. In fact, they brought up settling so frequently that everyone's pretty sure they'll settle up and this'll go away. And they'll be using a lawyer with a great brand.

Ana Marie Cox, Washington correspondent: 823,643 Twitter followers. Jet Blue, bargain airline: 873,897 Twitter followers.

Previously: The Atlantic v. Pottery Barn.