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  • the politics of stupidity

    From the new Centre for Philosophy of Technology at Birmingham:

  • the next front in the war on ad blocking 

    If a critical mass of the dominant free providers were to do this, would it deter consumers from using ad blocking or merely piss them off and lead them to go elsewhere? From Boing Boing:  The company says it’s not policy to do this — yet — but they’re testing locking Yahoo Mail users out…

  • the old world of banking 

    From Other People’s Money, by John Kay, loc 244: I was a schoolboy in Edinburgh in the 1960s. The capital of Scotland is Britain’s second financial centre and was the headquarters of two major banks, the Bank of Scotland and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Banking was then a career for boys whose grades were…

  • the digital repression that a trump presidency would bring 

    A rather disturbing response to the Paris attacks, building upon his previous advocacy of a mass expulsion program that would necessitate an unprecedented militarisation of US society for logistical reasons, let alone ideological ones: Donald Trump would not rule out tracking Muslim Americans in a database or giving them “a special form of identification that…

  • digital capitalism and the search for work

    A really interesting Pew study on what seems likely to become a growing source of digital inequality. The Internet is becoming more important than ever to much job searching: A majority of U.S. adults (54%) have gone online to look for job information, 45% have applied for a job online, and job-seeking Americans are just…

  • Developing a Research Agenda for Human-Centered Data Science

    I really wish I could go to this: CALL FOR PAPERS/PARTICIPATION: One-day Workshop on *Developing a Research Agenda for Human-Centered Data Science* in conjunction with CSCW 2016 http://cscw.acm.org/2016/ Sunday, February 28th, 2016 San Francisco, CA, USA Workshop Website: https://cscw2016hcds.wordpress.com/ ———————————- Important dates: – 11th December 2015: Submission of Position Papers – 18th January 2016: Notification…

  • CFP: Transhumanist Education, Politics, and Design

    Call for Papers Confero: Essays on Education, Philosophy and Politics Special issue on “Transhumanist Education, Politics, and Design” For this special issue on ‘Transhumanist Education, Politics, and Design’, we welcome contributions from scholars with various disciplinary backgrounds to debate transhumanistic issues in relation to education, politics, and design. In the soon to come future, technological…

  • BSA Sociology and Feminism Event

    BSA Sociology and Feminism Event Wednesday 16 December 2015 4pm – 6pm Kings Place, 90 York Way London, N1 9AG (near Kings Cross) Gender Struggles? Feminism? Sociology? This event provides a brief introduction and update on how analysing gender inequality in sociology contributes to challenging everyday sexism and gender troubles. It also provides an opportunity for you to raise your own experience and…

  • the origins of apple as a luxury goods company 

    From Jony Ive, by Leander Kahney, pg 104: Jobs aimed at making innovative products again, but he didn’t want to compete in the broader market for personal computers, which was dominated by companies making generic machines for Microsoft’s Windows operating system. These companies competed on price, not features or ease of use. Jobs figured theirs…

  • organisational minimalism

    From Jony Ive, by Leander Kahney, pg 101-102: Much was about to change in how Apple was run, beginning with the product lineup. When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company had forty products on the market. To appreciate the baffling nature of Apple’s kitchen- sink strategy at the time, consider the company’s computer…

  • cognitive triage and the acceleration of design

    From Jony Ive, by Leander Kahney, pg 72: The production schedules also got shorter and shorter. When Brunner first started at Apple, the product development cycle was eighteen months or more. ‘It was crazy generous,’ Brunner said. ‘You had an amazing amount of time to make something work.’ Within a couple of years, however, the…

  • deadline tomorrow to register for the accelerated academy!

    Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life 2nd-4th December 2015, Prague (Vila Lanna) Organised by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and supported by the Strategy AV21. Register here There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and…

  • giddens on digital tech

    As digital sociology, it’s not exactly great. But interesting to listen to for those interested in the work and careers of Giddens:

  • from risk to resilience: responsible citizens for uncertain times

  • call for proposals: @thesocreview monograph series

    The international refereed journal The Sociological Review is home to the Sociological Review Monograph Series. This series publishes edited collections of outstanding and original scholarly articles on issues of wide sociological interest and is dedicated to promoting emerging as well as established academics. For more information, see www.sociologicalreviewmonographs.com CALL FOR PROPOSALS: We are currently seeking proposals for two…

  • funding call: @thesocreview seminar competition 2016/2017

    The Board of The Sociological Review are pleased to announce that the journal is sponsoring a single-themed Research Seminar Series (which may consist of three or more research seminars) as well as three One Day Symposia events.  The Board hopes to make this funding available on an annual basis. Guidelines for Applicants The proposed Research Seminar Series…

  • mike savage on ‘making sense of big data’

    This is an excellent lecture by Mike Savage. It’s particularly interesting to hear him reflect on the ‘coming crisis’ paper almost 10 years on. Would anyone now deny that he and Roger Burrows were correct?

  • large environmental protest in paris banned

    From the Guardian. A foretaste of more to come? The French government has cancelled marches planned for international climate talks in Paris at the end of the month, citing security concerns. All demonstrations organised in closed spaces or in places where security can easily be ensured could go ahead, foreign minister Laurent Fabius said in the statement.…

  • rough sleeper

  • tech giants and the possibility of craft

    There’s an interesting discussion of craft in the book about Apple’s lead designer Jony Ive I’m currently reading. It describes his early consultancy career and his deep discomfort with the self-marketing necessary to thrive in this environment, as well as the design compromises that are often required when the whims of a client are paramount.…

  • Streams of Consciousness: Data, Cognition and Intelligent Devices

    Streams of Consciousness: Data, Cognition and Intelligent Devices  http://warwick.ac.uk/streamsofconsciousness  21st and 22nd of April 2016 Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies University of Warwick “What’s on your mind?” This is the question to which every Facebook status update now responds. Millions of users sharing their thoughts in one giant performance of what Clay Shirky once called “cognitive…

  • imagining the apple ecosystem 

    I found this description of work undertaken in the apple design lab, long before the design of the iPhone, extremely interesting. From Jony Ive, by Leander Kahney, pg 54-56: The idea was to explore a suite of mobile products even further off in the future. Brunner and his team felt confident that the new PowerBook…

  • the joys of being-in-the-zone

    I’ve written in the past about the pleasures of acceleration, how speeding up can prove satisfying because of the opportunities it can present for evading difficult issues that an actor might otherwise find themselves forced to confront. There’s a really interesting section in Addiction By Design pg 54 which speaks to this idea: Speed is…

  • the politics of denying causal power to objects 

    From Addiction By Design, by Natasha Dow Schüll, pg 19: In a strategic response to growing suggestions that gambling machines are to some extent implicated in gambling addiction, the American Gaming Association released a 2010 white paper called “Demystifying Slot Machines.” Echoing the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) famous slogan— “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People”—…

  • a relational theory of addiction 

    From Addiction By Design, by Natasha Dow Schüll, pg 16. I must read Shaffer, as I’ve tried in the past to argue precisely this, using the cumbersome critical realist terminology of ‘two sets of properties and powers’: “The potential for addiction,” writes Howard Shaffer, a prominent academic researcher in the field of gambling addiction, “emerges…

  • manufacturing certainties in response to systemic uncertainties 

    From Addiction By Design, by Natasha Dow Schüll, pg 12: A zone in which time, space, and social identity are suspended in the mechanical rhythm of a repeating process may seem an unpromising object for cultural analysis. Yet such a zone, I argue, can offer a window onto the kinds of contingencies and anxieties that…

  • the one where erving goffman works as a pit boss in vegas

    A fascinating little snippet from Addiction By Design, by Natasha Dow Schüll, pg 10: This tension is at the heart of the cultural diagnosis made by the American sociologist Erving Goffman in 1967 based on his ethnographic study of gambling in Las Vegas, where he worked as a blackjack dealer and was eventually promoted to…

  • the sociology of ‘blotting out’ experience 

    One of the most interesting aspects of Margaret Archer’s work on reflexivity is her interest in how people sometimes seek to ‘blot out’ their experience. Her overarching concern is with the variability of reflexivity, something which I think is hugely important against an intellectual background in which most   thinkers impute a uniform deliberative capacity…

  • price of my asexuality book has dropped to £25

    I was really pleased to discover that the price of the asexuality book I edited with Todd Morrison and Kristina Gupta has dropped to £25 for the Kindle edition. There’s a link here to Amazon. I’m delighted it’s finally affordable and it’s also great to see more reasonably priced Kindle editions of academic books. On the…

  • david willetts rehearsing his speech for an important meeting with google

  • karl marx’s end of year departmental assessment

    I last saw this a couple of years ago but it really struck a nerve given decisions I’ve made over the past year. I want to do everything in my power to avoid being subject to these ridiculous systems:

  • four days left to register for the accelerated academy! deadline nov 20th

    Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life 2nd-4th December 2015, Prague (Vila Lanna) Organised by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences and supported by the Strategy AV21. Register here There is little doubt that science and knowledge production are presently undergoing dramatic and multi-layered transformations accompanied by new imperatives reflecting broader socio-economic and…

  • a sociological podcast about culture

    I’ve just finished the first instalment of what I hope will be a semi-regular podcast about culture for The Sociological Review. For the first one, I spoke to the fabulous Bird la Bird about queer history, invisibility and playing in the archive. I’ll be tweeting from her V&A event this Sunday on the @thesocreview account. See here for…

  • “we know you’re a cheat and you should kill yourself” 2.0

    This great lecture by Frank Pasquale (podcast) references this note, the text of which is the title to this post, sent to Martin Luther King by the FBI. As Pasquale notes, King was under constant surveillance that both facilitated and motivated this horrendous intervention. Can we imagine a data-driven generalisation of this condition and the…

  • it goes boom boom boom

    God, is it on? Is it beyond basic? Does it ice-grill you? Or is every song faceless? Does it have a title? If it didn’t would you name it? Does it babble about nothing like a drunk atheist?

  • the stupidity of auto-correction in the new OS X

    No, Apple, when I’m writing “Filip Vostal” I don’t mean “Flip Postal”. The fact your operating system automatically changes the former to the latter is remarkably stupid. The excellent Rex Troumbley calls this coercive ergonomics and it’s one of those concepts that you see examples of everywhere once you’re acquainted with it.

  • an accelerated academy reading list

    A work in progress. Feel free to make suggestions! The SLOW University – Work, Time and Well-Being by Maggie O’Neill Should academics adopt an ethic of slowness or ninja-like productivity? In search of scholarly time by Filip Vostal Life in the Accelerated Academy by Mark Carrigan Surviving Life in the Accelerated Academy: Problems and Prospects for…

  • academia is killing my friends

    After spending the week thinking about how Filip Vostal and I could incorporate a function to allow people to post anonymous first person essays on the Accelerated Academy website, I just noticed that the depressing and important site Academia is Killing My Friends has started posting new content again. I’d encourage anyone interested in the…

  • the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some…

  • things I’ve been reading recently #15

    Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance InfoGlut by Mark Andrejevic Gates by Stephen Mane and Paul Andrews The Boy Kings by Katherine Losse The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz

  • expedia and communicative escalation 

    Expedia just emailed me for the sixth time this week, with the majority of the emails containing attention grabbing emojis in the subject lines, in a way I had never seen before:  I’m not sure what happened this week. Does Expedia have a new marketing strategy? Have I been algorithmically marked as a customer they’re…

  • fear of failure and the coding skills bubble

    I just saw this poster in Euston station. See here for background to this post:  

  • a dystopian vision of where the infoglut is leading us 

    This really resonates with my recent speculative thinking on techno-fascism. From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 3646: At its most dystopian, the resulting information landscape is one in which those with access to the database can derive practical, if probabilistic (“post- comprehension”), knowledge about how best to influence populations while members of these population are…

  • further communicative escalation from expedia (yay!)

    They’ve gone from exclamation marks to emojis and smileys in a matter of days:   

  • I only leave the territory, when there’s nothing left to be said

  • digital capitalism and the bestiary of the imagination 

    From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 3148: the deadlock of representation doesn’t simply foreclose the purchase of shared social representations, it simultaneously frees up the field for the proliferation of imagined narratives and counter- narratives. The result is a kind of bestiary of the imaginary: a familiarly disturbing world in which claims once relegated to…

  • the affective basis of techno-fascism?

    From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 2580: As Zizek puts it, the paradox of the decline of symbolic efficiency results in a version of what he calls a resurgent fundamentalism: “what is foreclosed in the symbolic (belief) returns in the Real (of a direct knowledge). A fundamentalist does not believe, he knows directly.” This formulation…

  • digital capitalism, fetishistic disavowal and faux-collectives 

    From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 1384: One start- up sentiment mining application, for example, claims to “understand how the web feels ” via a “vibology meter.” 56 This version of prosopopoeia – attributing an imagined and unified voice to a dispersed and invisible aggregate that cannot speak for itself – enacts the fetishistic disavowal…

  • dealing with ‘detractors’

    An interesting snippet in Infoglut, by Mark Andrejevic, Loc 1404 describes how sentiment analysis is being deployed to deal with ‘detractors’: The goal is not to describe but to affect and effect – to stimulate word of mouth, to promote engagement and, in some cases, to thwart it. One sentiment analysis company, for example, promises,…

  • ten post docs (!) on temporality 

    ht Su Oman. Wish I could apply for this. Shared in the hope others can. ERRANS, in Time ICI Fellowships for 2016-18  The ICI Berlin announces ten post-doctoral fellowships for the Academic Years 2016-18  Conceptions of time and varied modes of temporal experience seem more at odds now than ever. Hamlet’s hunch – that ‘the…

  • your attention please! digital capitalism and communicative escalation  

    I’ve received these two emails from Expedia in a matter of days:    What stands out to me is their use of emojis in subject lines to differentiate  themselves within what can be presumed to be an overcrowded inbox. It seems likely this has been tested, tracking a potential increase in engagement rate when the…

  • more spam directed at international event organisers

    This time trying to sell something rather than asking for money on behalf of presumably fictitious delegates: Hi Mark I hope this email finds you well. Are you in charge of organizing Conference on Power, Acceleration and Metrics in Academic Life? I am not sure if you’re the right person to speak with. I was…

  • are any other event organisers getting emails like this?

    I seem to be getting increasing amounts of stuff like this: : RE: INTEREST TO PARTICIPATE IN YOUR COMING 2015 CONFERENCE EVENT…. REQUEST FOR ADVICE, INVOICE AND INVITATION LETTERS FOR ADMINISTRATIVE PURPOSES GENTLE REMINDER VERY URGENT On 27 October 2015 11:06:33 -08:00, Joseph Babadi-Johns wrote: On 9 October 2015 09:26:52 -07:00, Joseph Babadi-Johns <joseph.johns@opad.eu> wrote:…

  • distinct digital-advertising landscapes are increasingly drawn on socioeconomic lines

    Useful account of the role of ‘lead generators’ in generating ‘distinct digital-advertising landscapes’ with significant socio-economic ramifications. The filter bubble isn’t just a matter of cultural constraint: As the big piles of data online continue to grow, these issues will become more pronounced. Information filters that control what version of the Internet a person sees…

  • the ‘soft coup’ currently taking place in portugal 

    A really interesting article about the current political turmoil taking place in Portugal and its implications for democracy within Europe: If this “soft coup” stands, taxes, interest rates, public ownership, investments, and economic strategies to control inflation and unemployment—long the battleground for conflicting ideologies—will no longer be issues to be decided democratically. Unelected bodies, like…

  • the ‘religion’ of digital elites 

    There’s a really fascinating article on Tech Crunch describing the political views of start-up founders in Silicon Valley. It makes the point that there’s a communitarian streak, albeit a very strange one, underpinning the politics of digital elites. To describe them as libertarian misses the ideological specificity of a cohesive current of opinion that has…

  • from corporation to social movement: the future of lobbying in the sharing economy 

    After so narrowly defeating the San Francisco ballot calling for restrictions on short term letting, Airbnb intend to step up their mobilisation of hosts and users to help defeat legislative obsticles to their expansion: But when Airbnb’s executives look out at the world, they don’t see a fragmented puzzle of local politics and planning codes.…

  • a working group to create a realist sociology of flourishing

    Trying to decide whether I should apply for this myself but sharing it here on the assumption that it will be of interest to many of those who read my theory posts: Human Flourishing, Social Solidarity, and Critical Realism Working Group 2016 – 2017 Organizers: William (Beau) Weston (Van Winkle Professor of Sociology, Centre College), Brandon Vaidyanathan…

  • what would techno-fascist public space be like?

    I imagine it would be an only slightly more extreme version of what’s being sought for the garden bridge in London: Visitors to the garden bridge in London will be tracked by their mobile phone signals and supervised by staff with powers to take people’s names and addresses and confiscate and destroy banned items, including…

  • using the national gallery for public order policing

    My friend Holly Falconer and I stumbled across this when walking through Trafalger Square on Thursday night: So sinister.#millionmasks @mark_carrigan pic.twitter.com/sKYq4kFkCX — Holly Falconer (@holly_falconer) November 5, 2015 I don’t recall ever seeing the Met do this before. Is it a new tactic?

  • the irresistible temptation for algorithmic function creep 

    From Infoglut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 622: From the perspective of the statistician, the step from target marketing to terrorism- tracking is all but non- existent. As McCue puts it, “The same tools and techniques that are used to determine credit risk, discover fraud, and identify which consumers are likely to switch cell- phone providers…

  • big data and the politics of austerity 

    From Infoglut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 607. The context to digital innovation in public services:  What emerges is a kind of actuarial model of crime: one that lends itself to aggregate considerations regarding how best to allocate resources under conditions of scarcity – a set of concerns that fits neatly with the conjunction of generalized…

  • the big data divide 

    From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 464: The dystopian version of information glut anticipates a world in which control over the tremendous amount of information generated by interactive devices is concentrated in the hands of the few who use it to sort, manage, and manipulate. Those without access to the database are left with the…

  • the micro-sociology of algorithmic authority 

    From InfoGlut, by Mark Andrejevic, loc 601: The fictional portrayals envision a contradictory world in which individual actions can be predicted with certainty and effectively thwarted. They weave oracular fantasies about perfect foresight. Predictive analytics, by contrast, posits a world in which probabilities can be measured and resources allocated accordingly. Because forecasts are probabilistic, they…

  • the perverse statism of those seeking to create a market in higher education

    An excellent, though rather depressing, analysis of the TEF on Wonk HE: There is a remarkable contradiction in all of this. The government is proposing a substantial apparatus of scrutiny, surveillance, intervention and interpolation, which will occupy untold hours of academic staff time. It involves delegating new powers to the minister and to BIS and…

  • Centre for Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Seminars

    This looks interesting: Hello all, This is to mention both the start of a new research group at the University of Birmingham, called the Centre for Contemporary Philosophy of Technology, and the first event, which is a talk by Ross Abbinnett (details below). An official launch event is planned for the Spring.  ‘The Politics of…

  • how the digital elites do festivals 

    From Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance, loc 5351: Musk had made a number of art cars over the years at Burning Man, including an electric one shaped like a rocket. In 2011, he also received a lot of grief from the Wall Street Journal for having a high- end camp. “Elon Musk, chief executive of…

  • did bill gates predict the smart phone?

    From Gates, by Stephen Manes and Paul Andrews, loc 10748: At a February 1993 lecture at the University of Washington, Gates took the “Information at Your Fingertips” concept a step farther by describing a wallet PC that would include everything from a global positioning system to a wireless data transceiver and would serve as key,…

  • The Collective Subject as Enemy: The Public between Legal Fiction and Political Potentiality

    Wish I could make this! Will follow up the references at a later date: Please join us for the next in the Warwick Sociology Seminar Series on Wednesday 11th November at 5pm in room S0.11, Social Sciences Building. “The Collective Subject as Enemy: The Public between Legal Fiction and Political Potentiality” Dr Nina Power, University…

  • cfp: social media: connected cultures (via @hl_robertson)

    Social Media: Connected Cultures Call for Participation 2016 The Social Media Project: 1st Global Conference Sunday 8th May – Tuesday 10th May 2016 Prague, Czech Republic This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary project seeks to start a dialogue about the global impact, development, role and functions of social media in the life of individuals, groups and nations.…

  • the chronopolitics of commitment in higher education

    This is well intentioned but ultimately hugely problematic: Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation

  • southpark on the self-appointed digital elite of yelp

  • digital escapology: the consultancy growth sector of the 2020s?

    I spent this afternoon trying to regain access to a Twitter account for which I had lost the associated e-mail address. In their infinite wisdom, Twitter have now decreed that an e-mail address may be necessary to access an account, over and above the traditional requirement for a username and password. This becomes a problem…

  • post-capitalism: envisaging a shared future

  • international journal of social research methodology: ask the editors @ijsrm! december 1st at 11am

    In my capacity as social media associate editor of the International Journal of Social Research Methodology, I’m arranging an ask the editors session on Twitter. It will take place on Tuesday 1st December, 11.00—12.00. We’ll definitely have Ros Edwards and Christina Hughes. We’ll possibly have Malcolm Williams participating as well. We’ll use the hashtag #IJSRM for the…

  • call for contributions: the politics of data

    I’m curating a series on the politics of data for the LSE Impact Blog. Would you like to contribute? Get in touch if so. Here’s an overview of the project: Our latest series delves into the politics of data. Data has become an increasingly complex force, influencing more and more aspects of social life. This series…

  • The good old days

    If Queen Boadicea is long dead and gone Still then the spirit In her children’s children’s children It lives on If you’ve lost your faith in love and music Oh the end won’t be long Because if it’s gone for you then I too may lose it And that would be wrong You know I’ve…

  • Manchester Social Movements Conference – Call for Papers

    I went to this for the first time this year and it was excellent: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS CONFERENCE  – CALL FOR PAPERS From 1995 to 2015, Manchester Metropolitan University hosted a series of very successful annual international conferences on ‘ALTERNATIVE FUTURES and POPULAR PROTEST’. We’re very happy to announce that the Twenty First AF&PP Conference will…

  • call for papers: IPP2016 “the platform society” (via @claudiakincaid)

    Location: Thursday 22 – Friday 23 September 2016, University of Oxford. Convenors: Helen Margetts (OII), Vili Lehdonvirta (OII), Jonathan Bright (OII), David Sutcliffe (OII), Andrea Calderaro (EUI / ECPR). Abstract deadline: 14 March 2016. Contact: policyandinternet@oii.ox.ac.uk This conference is convened by the Oxford Internet Institute for the OII-edited academic journalPolicy and Internet, in collaboration with the European Consortium of Political…

  • call for contributions to the @sociowarwick centre for women and gender blog 

    An initiative from the Centre for Women and Gender in Sociology at Warwick, where the centre for social ontology is also based: A reminder that we are now accepting submissions to the CSWG blog. This academic focussed blog aims to promote the work of academics and students conducting research around topics relating to women and…

  • call for contributions: digital sociology and the future of the discipline

    In recent years Digital Sociology has emerged as an increasingly prominent trend within the discipline at an international level. But it remains unclear precisely what this tendency represents, provoking enthusiasm and skepticism in equal measure. In this special section for The Sociological Review’s website, we invite short blog posts (1500 words or less) addressing digital sociology and the questions…

  • seminar on digital action repertoires 

    Really wish I could make this. It’s the first time I’ve heard of this concept and I immediately find it extremely appealing:   

  • critical realism book launch, 8th december 

      

  • the sociologists outside of academia group tenth anniversary meeting

    Probably of interest to some of the people who read this blog: There´s a week to go until the SOA 10th anniversary meeting in London on 9 November (flyer attached). So if you´d like to join us for what should be great day, please book at http://portal.britsoc.co.uk/public/event/eventBooking.aspx?id=EVT10441 Our speaker will be SOA founder member Keith…

  • the manchester ethnography network seminar series

    These look fantastic. I’ve just this week been thinking that I need to start engaging with ethnographies of organisational life for the new book. But I had no idea where to start beyond the minute amount of tech literature like this I’m familiar with. But now I stumble across exactly what I was looking for,…

  • the restructuring of the humanities

    I just saw a reference to the Environmental Humanities. In recent years, I’ve begun to encounter the Medical Humanities and Digital Humanities with great frequency as part of my normal working life. I assume there are other X Humanities which I haven’t encountered yet. As someone fascinated by the tendency towards X Studies and the proliferation of Turns within the social sciences, I’d…

  • the intensification of work and the notion of work/life balance

    An interesting blog post by Nick Osbaldiston, reflecting on a study they undertook into the working lives of academics. The original focus was quantitative, with some of the findings detailed in the post: • Academics in our study (n=155) reported working on average 9 hours per day • However, Full-Time Ongoing Academics reported an average…

  • a film about (a)sexuality I was in

    Produced by Sam Broadley. It was fun! It provoked one of my now periodic bouts of “wow, I’d forgotten how totally fascinating sexuality is”. I really must go back to sexuality studies at some point.

  • why the metrolink is a bit crap

    One of the things I looked forward to most about moving back to Manchester was the quality of the public transport. I grew up with the Metrolink and rarely used the Bus. Subsequently living in London left me with a sense of how convenient and reliable a bus network could be. So it was a…

  • mark zuckerberg’s philosophy of techno-fascism

    From The Boy Kings, by Katherine Losse, pg 201. Losse was asked to write blog posts about Mark Zuckerberg’s philosophy, something which he outlined to her in general terms: “It means that the best thing to do now, if you want to change the world, is to start a company. It’s the best model for…

  • loyalty to the facebook mission 

    From The Boy Kings, by Katherine Losse, pg 200: Most employees I talked with seemed not to be particularly bothered by the company’s decision to forcibly adjust people’s expectations of privacy, preferring instead to focus on the light and almost childlike- sounding goals of sharing and connecting people. “She just doesn’t get it,” a user…

  • transparency and opacity in digital capitalism

    One final snippet from The Boy Kings, by Katherine Losse, that I can’t resist posting. It seems that Mark Zuckerberg has a secret back room in his private Facebook office, allowing him to retreat into opacity while sustaining the glass fronted and open plan layout of the corporate offices: Mark’s office sat adjacent to our…

  • the gift economy of the digital elite 

    From The Boy Kings, by Katherine Losse, pg 194: The floor around Sheryl’s desk was piled with the endless gifts that she received from business contacts in lofty positions at Fortune 500 companies. People sent her Louboutin heels and Frette candles the diameter of dinner plates, which she unpacked while on speakerphone with some CEO…

  • the emergency as a tool of labour discipline 

    From The Boy Kings, by Katherine Losse, pg 191. It’s interesting to compare accounts of working life in social media companies to those of early tech giants like Microsoft. What were once exceptional states, in which people devoted themselves 24/7 to work in order to ensure the success of a product launch, now come to…