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  • Violence as the expression of Trump’s nascent ideology

    I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s been getting a little bit obsessed with Donald Trump in recent months. There’s certainly a risk of overstating the threat that he poses, such that a preoccupation with the man himself risks obscuring the systemic conditions that have facilitated his emerging status, but I’m increasingly convinced we’re witnessing what…

  • The Accleration of Political Rhetoric

    From Confidence Men, by Ron Susskind, pg 23-24: But it was hard to know how even Lincoln’s rhetorical genius would have met the awesome challenge of modern politics: to explain hugely complex problems and offer first-step solutions in all of sixty seconds. Hillary Clinton could do it just like Lincoln split wood: steady and true,…

  • The LSE’s remarkable archive of public talks

    I just stumbled across the LSE’s Digital Archive. It’s an absolute goldmine. Here are some of the ones I’m planning to listen to in the near future: Niklas Luhmann (1995) Bruno Latour (2000) Steven Lukes (2006) Erik Olin Wright (2001) Tony Giddens (2000) David Harvey (1999) Charles Tilly (2005) Julian LeGrand (2006) Ernest Gellner (1994) Henry…

  • an uncertain future (for other people’s jobs)

    I gave a lecture earlier this week about the cultural politics of automation and how this might shape the emergence of mass automation as a primarily structural reality.  I wish I’d seen this Pew poll when I was preparing the lecture: This sense of the inexorability of mass automation is deeply worrying. It’s possible that people might begin to see…

  • Ontographology Cards: Oblique Strategies for Interdisciplinary Teams (sort of)

    This is my first attempt to write up an ongoing project I’m in the early stages of undertaking, as well as solicit much needed feedback on it. It’s emerged from the Digital Social Science forum I’ve put together for the Independent Social Research Foundation. The forum has been setup to develop an interdisciplinary space within…

  • The Politics of the Platform Society

    This is a great talk by José van Dijck. I can’t wait for her new book: There are some excellent responses by Sonia Livingstone, suggesting we need to be critical of an emerging grand narrative of the platform society. It meshes nicely with the observation made by Adrian McKenzie that ‘algorithms’ have replaced ‘discourse’ as the…

  • New Racisms II: Neoliberalism and its Others

    New Racisms II: Neoliberalism and its Others 9th and 10th June 2016 Venue: Silverstone Building, University of Sussex, Brighton UK Speakers Gargi Bhattacharyya, University of East London – author of Traffick, the illicit movement of people and things and Dangerous Brown Men. Arun Kundnani – author of ‘The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, extremism, and the…

  • Why Digitalization is Prior to Financialization

    From Rise of the Robots, by Martin Ford, loc 1053-1069: Virtually all of the financial innovations that have arisen in recent decades—including, for example, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and exotic financial derivatives—would not have been possible without access to powerful computers. Likewise, automated trading algorithms are now responsible for nearly two-thirds of stock market trades,…

  • Henry Rollins on the pleasures of acceleration

    At various points in the last year, I’ve made the argument that acceleration can serve to “reduce the time available for reflexivity, ‘blotting out’ difficult questions in a way analogous to drink and drugs”. My point is that this is pleasurable: it’s something that people embrace because of the satisfactions they find in it, the thrill of moving…

  • The Politics of an Uncertain Future

    The rise of the robots is a recurrent theme of popular culture. Robots are often seen as a threat, heralding the prospect of human beings being replaced by their creations, perhaps to the extent of being deemed useless by them and attacked. Underlying this fear is the reality of automation: technology being more adept at particular tasks…

  • Writing praxes beyond papers and books

    A really fascinating reflection by Rob Kitchin on ten forms of academic writing beyond scholarly papers and books: fiction, blog posts, newspaper op eds, email correspondence, policy papers, policy consultation, a television documentary script, powerpoint slides, academic papers, and grant application. What makes this so interesting is that all of these were deployed in relation to the…

  • Creating and Exploring Digital Empathy

    Creating and Exploring Digital Empathy (CEDE) is an EPSRC-funded research project jointly held between UCL, the University of Sheffield and Lancaster University.  The CEDE project had five core aims and objectives: To explore and develop the concept of Digital Empathy and how it can be facilitated via innovative methods; To improve quality of life by enabling…

  • YouTube Conference: Call for Papers

    YouTube Conference: Call for Papers 23/4 September 2016, Middlesex University, The Burroughs, Hendon, London. Keynote speaker: Professor Jean Burgess Please send an abstract of 350 words plus a short bio of 100 words for single papers or 500 words and individual bios for group panels by email attachment to youtube@mdx.ac.uk<mailto:youtube@mdx.ac.uk>. Deadline for receipt of abstracts…

  • stuck in the mess of life: anticipation and disappointment

    In recent papers Ruth Müller has offered what I think is the very important concept of anticipatory acceleration to make sense of how subjects, in this case post-doctoral researchers, wilfully participate in social acceleration. Drawing on the work of James Scott, she outlines an attitude of ‘disregard for the present’: The present figured not as important in and…

  • defensive elites and the actions they’re willing to take

    This is a fascinating account in Mother Jones of the, seemingly botched, attempt by the Koch brothers and their political organisation to smear a New York Times journalist: Prize-winning New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer made headlines recently when she released a new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the…

  • Henry Rollins was on BBC Hard Talk!

  • Henry Rollins on drugs, alcohol & self-transformation

    I always find Henry Rollins interesting to listen to. But this interview is particularly engaging, even by his standards: It suddenly struck me how obviously this song is about self-transcendence:

  • The first year of the Accelerated Academy project

    After a year’s work, we’re pleasingly getting to the end of the first phase of the Accelerated Academy project. Here’s what we have to show for it: Keynote lectures and videos from the event An introductory reading list Podcasts from the conference Interviews with Maggie O’Neill and Roger Burrows Our first paper is still under review…

  • Early Career Researcher Event @TheSocReview: A Master-Class with Professor Éric Fassin

    The Sociological Review Foundation invites applicants to take part in a masterclass with Éric Fassin, who will delivering our Annual Public Lecture on the same day at SOAS at 6pm. The master-class will explore: How are sex, gender and sexuality racialised in contemporary Europe and the world? In what ways are nation-states implicated in sexual…

  • The Reactionary Politics of Tech Bros

    A slogan more frequently encountered on pro-police demos has been repeatedly daubed inside the Facebook headquarters, creating embarrassment for a corporation whose staff are overwhelmingly white and male: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reprimanded employees following several incidents in which the slogan “black lives matter” was crossed out and replaced with “all lives matter” on the walls…

  • The advice given by W.E.B. Dubois to his teenage daughter

    An absolutely beautiful snippet from Brain Pickings: the letter of advice W.E.B. Dubois wrote to his teenage daughter when she went away to school in England. Dear Little Daughter: I have waited for you to get well settled before writing. By this time I hope some of the strangeness has worn off and that my little girl…

  • “Let Me Stay”: Exhibition on Housing Insecurity in Manchester

    Glasgow artist Penny Anderson’s first exhibition in Manchester, in association with the Social Action and Research Foundation, presents work that interrogates the modern fact that we do not remain in a rented home for a life-time, with many tenants having to move house every six months. ‘Let Me Stay’ uses the traditional craft of embroidered…

  • The Promise of the Pivot Format

    Recent years have seen the proliferation of what I tend to think of as mini-mongraph formats. In their new book on interdisciplinarity, Felicity Callard and Des Fitzgerald offer a really nice account of the promise of these formats: The Pivot format is produced within a distinctive (rapid) temporal horizon, and offers a particular length (mid-way…

  • Protest and Performance Week @WarwickUni

    Sad I can’t make this, shared in case others can: Protest and Performance Week will take place on campus in week 10, from Monday 14th – Thursday 17th March 2016. It includes film, comedy, theatre and panel discussions. All events are free (except the film – reduced price tickets available) and open to everyone. You…

  • On Subculture

  • “feeling more or less alive on different days”

    I came across this wonderful passage by William James, quoted by Robert Frodeman in Sustainable Knowledge and reproduced on Brainpickings here: Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of…

  • Two upcoming events @socialontology @sociowarwick

    A workshop on the morphogenetic approach: June 21st, 10am to 5pm The University of Warwick This one day workshop is intended for those currently using or planning to use the morphogenetic approach in their research. In the first half of the workshop, Margaret Archer will give an overview of the morphogenetic approach and its development,…

  • The Vertigo of the Accelerated Academy

    From Sustainable Knowledge by Robert Frodeman, loc 1257: I feel like I am drowning in knowledge, and the idea of further production is daunting. Libraries and bookstores produce a sense of anxiety: the number of books and journals to read is overwhelming, with tens of thousands more issuing from the presses each day. Moreover, there…

  • John McDonnell’s New Socialism

    I listened to this earlier today and I was really impressed: It’s part of a broader intellectual project in meetings currently taking place around the country. Hopefully one in Manchester soon! Here’s the list.

  • The Sex Myth

    I first encountered the work of Rachel Hills in 2012, when she interviewed me for an essay in the Atlantic exploring asexuality. The conversation itself was incredibly stimulating and the ensuing piece of work was the best thing I’ve read about asexuality in the media. I’ve been waiting since then for her book, The Sex…

  • There are no strings on me

  • Why I’m never buying another @Jawbone product & wonder if the wearables bubble will soon burst

    I was really taken with my initial Jawbone Up24. Unfortunately, after around 9 months, it suddenly ceased to be able to hold a charge. The technical support was responsive but it was a long tedious process in which they insisted on ruling out every possibility before sending me a replacement, with the warning that it…

  • CfP: Data Friction

    AAA 2016 CFP Data Friction As the range of devices that translate bodies, states, and lives into digital data continues to expand, the way digital data expresses lived experience has garnered both popular and scholarly attention.  In popular culture the traffic of data between devices and people has been chiefly aligned with a capacity for…

  • The Pathology of the Super-Rich

    My favourite messianic political commentator on a subject that fascinates me:

  • CfP: Contemporary Political Youth Culture and Communication

    Call for Papers Contemporary Political Youth Culture and Communication http://www.york.ac.uk/sociology/research/groups/cpac/#tab-7 A two-day Symposium University of York, UK. 18-20 July 2016. Deadline for abstracts: Monday 14th March 2016 Marking the launch of the Centre for Political Youth Culture and Communication (CPAC) this two-day international symposium explores the socio-cultural factors influencing the civic engagement of young people…

  • On Techno-Fascism

    I’m really enjoying Humans Need Not Apply by Jerry Kaplan. Much more so than I expected to in fact. He offers a thoughtful and incisive insider’s critique, in the style of a less verbose Jaron Lanier, concerning the likely trajectory of contemporary digital capitalism. On pg 105 he writes about the “new regime” creeping up on…

  • The Coming Monopolies of Digital Capitalism

    From Humans Need Not Apply, by Jerry Kaplan, pg 101-102: there’s another reason the financial markets value the company at more than six hundred times earnings (2013), when the average is around twenty times earnings: they look forward to the inevitable time when the company extracts monopoly prices after locking in its customers and scorching…

  • Viral lift

    An interesting snippet in this Fast Company profile of BuzzFeed about their viral lift metric and how this trumps page views as a measure of success: Stopera, an Internet savant so steeped in pop culture that he appeared on an episode of MTV’s Fanography as a teenager for his “psychotic” love of Britney Spears, is explaining how he…

  • The Videos from @AcceleratedUni

    Interviews with the keynotes: The keynotes themselves:

  • CfP: Digital Health & Digital Capitalism

    Plenary speakers announced: Nick Fox – Professor of Sociology, The University of Sheffield ‘The micropolitical economy of posthuman health’ Graham Scambler – Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University College London ‘Digital sociology or sociology of the digital? A case study on health.’ This is your last chance to also speak at the event  by submitting your abstract for the…

  • Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled

  • CFP: AOIR 2016 panel – ‘the playful web’

    CfP: AoIR 2016 panel – ‘the playful web’ We solicit papers for a panel considering the notion of ‘play’ as a framework for conceptualising internet research. Most existing scholarship exploring play in relation to internet technologies concentrates on games and gaming (Salen and Zimmerman 2003; Juul 2003; Boellstorff 2008; Nardi 2010). Whilst undoubtedly important, little…

  • Engaging with participation, activism and technologies

    CONFERENCE THEME: ENGAGING WITH PARTICIPATION, ACTIVISM, AND TECHNOLOGIES 13th Prato CIRN Conference 2-4 November 2016, Monash Centre, Prato Italy http://cirn.wikispaces.com/Conference+2016 For some years now the CIRN Prato conference has focused on the intersection between Community Informatics (CI), Development Informatics (DI), and Community Archiving (CA). In particular, the 2015 conference focused on information and knowledge as…

  • Everyday analytics: The politics and practices of self-monitoring

    There’s so much good stuff at 4S. Wish I had the resources to go, in spite of the fact it’s not hugely important to anything I’m doing in a direct sense: We welcome submissions to our open track on ‘everyday analytics’ at 4S/EASST, Barcelona, 2016 Track convenors: Kate Weiner, Catherine Will, Minna Ruckenstein, Christopher Till and Flis Henwood,…

  • Say More Fire

  • CfP for AOIR2016: Panel/Roundtable on “Aging in a Digital World”

    CfP: Panel/Roundtable on ‘Aging in a Digital World” We are looking for some additional participants for either a roundtable or panel submission to #AoIR2016 in Berlin on the topic of “Aging in a Digital World.” Specifically, we are looking for works that highlight the intersection of the internet with later life (50+ years). In keeping…

  • The Escalation Dynamics of Social Media

    One of the crucial ideas for my new book are the temporal implications of the escalation dynamics which characterise social media platforms. In his Social Media in Academia, George Veletsianos identifies precisely the dynamic that interests me. From loc 834: [R]emaining visible on a social networking and fast-moving platform such as Twitter means that one has to share often and frequently,…

  • Open access as a mechanism for the acceleration of higher education

    An interesting extract from Social Media in Academia, by George Veletsianos, conveying one reason why I’m instinctively cautious about open access. From loc 614-631: empirical evidence relating to citation metrics indicates that OA articles may be cited earlier than NOA articles (Eysenbach, 2006; Zawacki-Richter, Anderson, & Tuncay, 2010), suggesting that OA may allow faster access…

  • The imposter syndrome of the young Neil Gaiman

    I love this description by Neil Gaiman of his experience of imposter syndrome early in his career, quoted in Presence by Amy Cuddy: I would have this recurring fantasy in which there would be a knock on the door, and I would go down, and there would be somebody wearing a suit not an expensive suit, just…

  • Call for Papers: Political Citizenship and Social Movements

    BSA Citizenship Study Group and the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Standing Group on Citizenship: Political Citizenship and Social Movements University of Portsmouth, 27-28 June 2016 Sponsored by University of Portsmouth’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Citizenship, ‘Race’ and Belonging Research Group and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Keynote Speakers: Prof Engin…

  • CFP for the themed issue of ‘Subjectivity’ on Radical Negativity

    *CALL FOR PAPERS: Themed issue on ‘Radical negativity’*Over the past decade, feminist and queer scholarship has begun to productively address the dark aspects of human subjectivity, such as unhappiness, irresponsibility, passivity, vulnerability, failure, shame, hesitancy, pain, dispossession, disappointment, rage, madness and depression, contributing to a rethinking and revaluation of the negative. Critique has focused on…

  • The Skilled Demagoguery of Donald J. Trump

    This is disturbing and skilful stuff. A performance of populism quite unlike the rhetoric of it which we’re much more familiar with: “The other night in the debate,” he told thousands in Manchester, “they asked Ted Cruz a serious question: what do you think of waterboarding? Is it OK? I thought he’d say absolutely, and he didn’t. And…

  • Forced migration & digital connectivity in Europe

    Dear list members, Kevin Smets (postdoc, University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Koen Leurs (assistant professor Gender & Postcolonial Studies, Utrecht University, the Netherlands) are sending out this email to see whether there are people on the list interested in submitting a panel / roundtable proposal on ‘Forced migration & digital connectivity in Europe’ for the…

  • Silicon Valley: The New Welfare State?

  • Special Issue of Discover Society on Digital Futures

    Co-edited by Mark Carrigan and William Housley Social media is conventionally located within a commercial narrative that theorises an array of emerging ‘disruptive technologies’ that includes big data, additive manufacture and robotics. These and related technologies are underpinned by computational developments that are networked, distributed, digital and data driven. It has been argued that these…

  • things that I’ve been reading recently #19

    Battle of the Titans – Fred Vogelstein The Internet of Garbage – Sarah Jeong The Hard Things About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz The Sex Myth – Rachel Hills Essential Zen Habits – Leo Babauta Graphic Novels: Daredevil: The Biography of Matt Murdock – Mark Waid DMZ: Diary of a Journalist – Brian Wood X-Men vs Apocalypse…

  • 17 podcasts about realist social theory

  • 35 podcasts about #digitalsociology

  • the inanity of post-democratic political leaders

  • Fictive Futures: Exploring Future Research Agendas

    — Fictive Futures: Exploring Future Research Agendas — * Submission Deadline: Friday, February 12, 2016 * Decisions Announced: Friday, April 22, 2016 GROUP Conference at Sanibel Island, FL: November 13-16, 2016 We seek submissions that imagine possible futures for research on the relationships between computers and people. Submissions will include two portions: a fictional document…

  • Call for Papers: Cunning Knowledge and Media Technologi

    Call for Papers: Cunning Knowledge and Media Technologies *Platform: Journal of Media and Communication* http://platformjmc.com An interdisciplinary journal for early career researchers and graduate students Volume editor: Christopher O’Neill Abstract submissions due: *5th of March, 2016* Full paper submissions due: *20th of May, 2016* Everyone is on the side of the cunning. Media, communications, and…

  • 6th annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics

    Call for abstracts The Center for Digital Ethics & Policy at Loyola University Chicago (digitalethics.org) will be holding its 6th annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics on Nov 4th, 2016.  The keynote speaker will be Professor Lilie Chouliaraki from the London School of Economics. We are looking for papers on digital ethics.  Topics might include…

  • unpicking the political economy of digital cats

    Much deserved Guardian coverage of the weird phenomenon that is the internet cat video festival. What grips me about things like this is not the fact that people are trying to make money from their cats, but rather that many others people are trying and failing to make money from their cats. Not unlike the aspiring professional…

  • Relating to data through visualisation: three funded PhD studentships in the UK

    *Deadline for applications: 5th March 2016.* *Start date: October 2016.* *Relating To Data: understanding data through visualisation* is a network of three funded PhD studentships which focuses on how people relate to data through their visualisation, the narratives and meanings people attach to visualisations and the potential understanding produced by them. The successful candidates will…

  • modern life has let me down

  • Technology, Self and Society in an Era of Digital Rankings

  • moderating social media and the challenge of normativity

    This interesting article (HT Nick Couldry) explores the challenge faced by Facebook in imposing standards on a user base distributed around the globe: As Facebook has tentacled out from Palo Alto, Calif., gaining control of an ever-larger slice of the global commons, the network has found itself in a tenuous and culturally awkward position: how to…

  • Call for Abstracts: Themed Issue on Body Weight and Digital Media

    Call for Abstracts: Themed Issue on Body Weight and Digital Media This themed issue, to be edited by Deborah Lupton, focuses on the ways in which digital media and technologies are used to represent and manage body weight and size. It will be published in the journal Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and…

  • Should academics blog? Rather unsurprisingly I suggest that they should

    I’m getting an “argh, it’s so weird listening to my own voice” reaction for the first time in years:

  • Call for Papers: A workshop on Competition(s)

    Call for Papers A workshop on Competition(s) As part of a broader project – Performances of Value: Competition and Competitions Inside and Outside Markets – we call for papers for a workshop on Competition(s) that will take place on June 10-11, 2016 at the Copenhagen Business School. Costs for travel, lodging, and meals for workshop…

  • Special issue on Digital Evidence for Philosophy & Technology

    Call for Papers for Philosophy and Technology’s special issue on Digital Evidence GUEST EDITORS Judith Simon (IT University Copenhagen & University of Vienna) Shannon Vallor (Santa Clara University) INTRODUCTION Digital technologies of the 21st century are profoundly transforming the nature of evidence and evidential practices in a wide range of domains, including science, medicine, law,…

  • business for rappers

    I’ve written a few times recently – here, here and here – about the notion of business for punks propounded by the founder of BrewDog. This extract from loc 89 of The Hard Thing About Hard Things conveys something similar in terms of hip hop: I’ve also been inspired by many friends, advisers, and family members who have helped me…

  • the peak experiences of intensified work

    In the Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz recounts his experiences of his company Loudcloud coming close to failure. At a climatic moment, he makes a speech to his staff declaring the commitment they will have to show over the coming months. From pg 48: “I have some bad news. We are getting our…

  • Sing, Sing, Sing

  • The Epistemic Consequences of Technological Privilige

    I’ve often wondered about how the working environments within which proponents of cloud computing exist have shaped their enthusiasm for it. If your work is never interrupted by the broadband going down then it’s easier to be committed to moving all your applications into the cloud.  In Battle of the Titans, the author quotes the…

  • the messianic zeal of Eric Schmidt

    A bit later in Battle of the Titans, Fred Vogelstein transcribes a talk he saw Eric Schmidt give at a technology conference. From loc 1904-1918: We have a product that allows 82 you to speak to your phone in English and have it come out in the native language of the person you are talking to.…

  • things that I’ve been reading recently #18

    Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo by Nicholas Carlson In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy Zero To One: Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet by Finn Brunton How Google Works by Eric…

  • the carefully cultivated public persona of Eric Schmidt

    From Battle of the Titans loc 1846: Anyone who has ever worked for Schmidt will tell you that he is one of the toughest, most competitive executives walking. Ask Rubin what it was like to be on the receiving end of a few “Don’t fuck it up” lectures from Schmidt. “Not fun,” Rubin says. But…

  • theorising socio-materiality: strong and weak processes

    In this extremely important paper, Alistair Mutch offers a realist critique of sociomateriality which I hope to further develop in my own work in the not too distant future. In it he argues that sociomaterial “approaches tend towards a perverse (given the promise of the concept) neglect of the specificity of the systems involved and an…

  • the creative destruction of intra-organisational conflict

    From Battle of the Titans loc 1056: From his office on the second floor of IL 2 on Apple’s campus, Forstall started pulling in some of the best engineers from around the company, creating lockdown areas all over the building as he went. “If you were working weekends, you’d see the construction crews come in…

  • business for punks from the bottom-up

    In the last week, I’ve been exploring the notion of ‘business for punks’, the philosophy propounded by the founder of BrewDog, as the formulation of an increasingly dominant ethos in which ‘disruptive’ corporate activity is valorised as anti-authoritarian. I’ve been thinking about this mostly from the top-down, as a characteristic of founders and CEOs, but…

  • CfP: Freedom and Control of Expression in the Digital Aftermath of the 2015 Paris Attacks

    This looks great! One of those things too far outside my area to contribute to but I’d love to attend, if only there were unlimited time and travel budget in my life: Freedom and Control of Expression in the Digital Aftermath of the 2015 Paris Attacks, Workshop in Toulouse, France, October 13 & 14 2016…

  • About Today

    Today you were far away and I didn’t ask you why What could I say I was far away You just walked away and I just watched you What could I say How close am I to losing you Tonight you just close your eyes and I just watch you slip away How close am…

  • the obsessive secrecy of Apple

    From Battle of the Titans loc 543. I’m intruiged by non-disclosure of non-disclosure agreements: why stop there? Surely this could be grounds for an infinite loop? More seriously, I wonder how this effects the framing of the proposition to potential staff: is there a performative element to this in order to convey the importance of…

  • the psychology of business for punks

    I wrote last week about the notion of ‘business for punks’ propounded by the founder of BrewDog. This little snippet from Battle of the Titans reflects a similar ethos. Is Silicon Valley full of people who understand themselves as ‘doing business for punks’: is this the ethos underlying a commitment to ‘disruption’? From loc 333: Jobs…

  • The Platform Wars

    From Battle of the Titans, loc 113-127. This dynamic seems likely to intensify with time: A lot of what we buy via Apple’s iTunes store—apps, music, movies, TV shows, books, etc.—doesn’t work easily on Android devices or at all, and vice versa. And both companies know that the more money each of us spends on…

  • on nihilism and hope

    A remarkable passage by the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips at the end of his Forbidden Pleasures, pg 181. We have to choose between them: the stark nature of the dichotomy is often unclear but this is little more than wilful obsfucation, on the part of the social order if not the individual. To give up on hope…

  • FutureVision?! Which life do we want?

    FutureVision?! Which life do we want? Vienna, 30 March – 1 April, 2016 The European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research will be held in Vienna from March 30 to April 1, 2016. It will be the first pop up conference meeting in the field of Systems Science, called emcsr avantgarde. The name reflects the vision and…

  • Making The Familiar Strange: A Festival of Critical Social Thought

    A small collective is currently in the early stages of planning Making The Familiar Strange: A Festival of Critical Social Thought for summer 2017. See here for some background to the event. If you’d like to get involved, we’re having a planning meeting: Tuesday 23rd February 12:00-16:00. Room G05 (ground floor) of Cloth Hall Court Leeds Beckett…

  • the discourse of ‘burn out’ in silicon valley

    A weird little snippet I came across from Marissa Mayer, former Google high-flyer and now head of Yahoo, on how to avoid burnout by “empowering” yourself to “work really hard for a long period of time”. Find one thing you absolutely refuse to miss then completely subordinate the rest of your life to your work, safe…