Blog

markcarrigan.net/

Profile

markcarrigan.net/author/street

Homepage

markcarrigan.net/

  • Will Claude tell you if your writing is crap? The danger of LLMs for wounded academic writers

    If writing exists as a nexus between the personal and the institutional, it means that our personal decisions will co-exist with organisational ones in deciding what and how we write. The rhythms we experience as writers, in which we inhabit moments of unconscious fluency (or struggle to) as we meander through the world, stand in…

  • Interview in the Telegraph about touchscreens and digital change

    From this feature: Mark Carrigan, senior lecturer in education at the University of Manchester, says that efficiency gains from better digital technology always carry a risk for interaction between actual humans. The key question, says Carrigan, is “whether those gains can be used to free up people to interact in richer and more engaging ways,…

  • After 16 years and 7 months I’ve finished Platform and Agency

    I’ll do one more read through when it gets back from my proof reader, but the book I started in September 2008 with my PhD is now finished 👇 The virtue of the detraditionalisation thesis lay in its insistence on a meta-process, a change which exceeds empirical trends which can be measured. It provides, as…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #172

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #171

  • Hope, perseverance, a vision (some doubt)

    Hope, perseverance, a vision (some doubt).Green ink, a 26 oz., a bad case of big-mouth.A sum of our parts and I’ve never laughed harder.A song in our hearts and I’ve never laughed harder.It don’t really matter ’cause nothing’s ever felt as right as this.

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #170

    Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible Katherine May’s Wintering pg 13

  • Plants and animals don’t fight the winter

    From Katherine May’s Wintering pg 13 Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #169

  • Immense pleasure-domes of rhapsodic philosophical ecstasy

    From Iain M. Banks‘s Excession, helpfully quoted on this blog: Technically, it was a branch of metamathematics, usually called metamathics. Metamathics; the investigation of the properties of Realities (more correctly, Reality-fields) intrinsically unknowable by and from our own, but whose general principles could be hazarded at. Metamathics led to everything else, it led to the places…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #168

    See, for ten long years I’ve been hustlin’ around Tryin’ to wash the sins and the sweat from my brow Tryin’ to find a better life for me and my own Just some rest for these tired workin’ fingers But nobody never gonna tell you the way You gotta figure it out boys, and suffer…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #167

  • The origin of the phrase publish or perish

    In 1928 C.M. Case reflected in the journal Sociology and Social Research that “If it be true that, for the time being at least, the quality of American sociological writing is in inverse ratio to its quantity, the reason is to be sought, among other things, in the fact, first, that the system of promotion…

  • A case study of scholarly abundance: Asexuality Studies

    In the early 2010s I contributed to the development of a field called asexuality studies. The identity of ‘asexual’ (not experiencing sexual attraction(fn)) had coalesced through a popular online forum, attracting media interest and social recognition which in turn fed into a growth of self-identification. Increasing awareness that other people shared this experience counteracted a…

  • The ‘vibes shift’ as a preemptive declaration of hegemony

    This from the consistently excellent John Ganz (highly recommend his book) captures something I’ve been struggling to articulate since Trump’s victory. Why has there been such a rush to frame this in hegemonic terms when there was a 1.5% difference in vote share between the two candidates? There’s clearly an elite recomposition underway, with tech…

  • Academic networks need to prepare for waves of enshittification

    After the US election in November 2024 there was a significant movement of users from Elon Musk’s X platform, which had been deployed politically by an owner now explicitly affiliated to a candidate. There’s a risk of overstating the size of the exodus, given that at the time of writing Bluesky has 30 million users…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #166

  • Some thoughts on reading Margaret Archer’s work as a unified project

    There were a range of points at which questions of the digital were addressed in her work, particularly in the later volumes developed collaboratively within the Centre for Social Ontology (CSO). But the tendency here was for ‘the digital’ to be subordinated to the questions of social change were the object of the CSO’s first…

  • Some notes on Margaret Archer’s theorising of digital technology

    There are four major strands in her work where this is addressed directly: There are a number of other points in her work where Archer addressed digital technology but these tended to be more marginal and less systematic. For example social media platforms were becoming mainstream during the later stages of the fieldwork for her…

  • Two reviews of Generative AI for Academics

    Notes from Mirjam Sophia Glessmer on reading the book: The other day I read something (that I cannot find again) along the lines of “GenAI creates art for people who hate art, music for people who hate music, reading for people who hate reading”, and I have been thinking about that a lot. I have…

  • For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

    So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerresTrying to learn to use words, and every attempt Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failureBecause one has only learnt to get the better of wordsFor the thing one no longer…

  • RIP Michael Burawoy

    He was killed yesterday in a hit and run đŸ€Ź A UC Berkeley professor emeritus was killed in a deadly hit-and-run crash in Oakland on Monday.  The coroner has identified the victim as 77-year-old Michael Burawoy. He taught sociology at Cal.  Police said he was in the crosswalk at Grand Avenue and Park View Terrace at around…

  • Generative AI and the conspiracy to ensure the productivity of certain academics

    From Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, by Ruha Benjamin, pg 181: It is no secret that at absurdly wealthy universities, like the one I work at, faculty are drenched with support—sabbaticals for writing, research budgets to hire assistants, grad students to help with grading, highly skilled staff for assistance with everything…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #165

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #164

  • The second digital divide which LLMs are opening up

    This piece from Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark captures my mounting concern about the second digital divide which LLMs are opening up i.e. the skills and capacities to use these systems effectively rather than the simple fact of access to them: Now, getting AI systems to do useful stuff for you is as simple as asking…

  • An abundance of knowledge obliterates the lack which generates desire

    From Darian Leader’s Why Do Women Write More Letters Than They Post loc 1361: Trying to explain everything to the patient will necessarily eclipse the presence of desire: if you supply a lot of knowledge, the dimension of lack is obliterated. What matters is preserving a place for what is between the lines, for what…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #163

  • The wreck and not the story of the wreck, the thing itself and not the myth

    I came to explore the wreck.The words are purposes.The words are maps.I came to see the damage that was doneand the treasures that prevail.I stroke the beam of my lampslowly along the flankof something more permanentthan fish or weedthe thing I came for:the wreck and not the story of the wreckthe thing itself and not…

  • Call for Book Proposals: University Reimagined

    Editors: Steven Jones & Sadia Habib  Publisher: Manchester University Press  Overview  Universities worldwide stand at crossroads, no longer assured of financial – or even rhetorical – backing from their host societies, and increasingly subject to political interference and media attacks. The underlying public value and purpose of higher education is easily lost amid the metrics…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #162

    You can find it, earn it, make it or steal itI haven’t found a single way to keep itCause you can leash it, it’ll leaveYou can teach it to stay and it’ll leaveYou can case and display it, decay and waste it awayAnd day by day it leaves you by degrees

  • If we only concentrate on putting out the blaze, we’ll eventually burn out

    Viral Justice: How We Grow the World We Want, by Ruha Benjamin pg 54: Instead, growing the world we want is like the slow tending of a garden, transforming the plants by fostering relationships, trust, skills, community accountability, and healing. It requires cultivating new habits internally, seeding restorative ways of being together interpersonally, uprooting practices…

  • The practice of social theory

    This has come up a few times this week for various reasons. I did a summer school with Jana Bacevic at Cambridge in 2017 and the resources are still available here:

  • Call for Short Papers – One-Day Symposium (The Process and Implications of Doing Social Theory)

    Call for Short Papers (750 – 1,000 words by 28th February 2025, 5pm GMT) The Process and Implications of Doing Social Theory (One-Day Symposium) A BSA Theory Study Group & BSA Early Career Forum Event To be held on Friday, 23rd May 2025 at the University of Cambridge We are delighted to invite short paper submissions for…

  • The fire and the rose are one

    Not known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.Quick now, here, now, always—A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flame are in-foldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #161

    So keep the front door closedKeep your ears to the groundKeep your eyes on the open roadBut don’t goAnd since I can’t forgetI want to breathe out new lungsAnd cast a whole new silhouetteI want to I tell you thisto break your heart,by which I mean onlythat it break open and never close againto the…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #160

    Right there where everything is transcendentI can feel myself opening up, getting closerNo hope is enoughI’ve stopped hoping, I’m learning to trust

  • The sociological significance of TikTok

    This is excellent by Taylor Lorenz and a great counterpoint to my tendency to frame algorithmic filtering as an intrinsically destructive thing: Since 2020, TikTok has served as a major hub for progressive speech and activism. The ban will deplatform thousands of progressive content creators and skew online discourse toward conservative ideologies. It will consolidate media…

  • The growing popularity of cults in a transient, fragmented state of contemporary society

    From Terror, Love and Brainwashing: Attachment in Cults and Totalitarian Systems, by Alexandra Stein loc 6540 and 6588: But the transient, fragmented state of contemporary society makes this difficult. The world is opening up, becoming global, restructuring itself toward an unknown future. This global sense of anomie engenders a basic existential crisis and fear. In…

  • CfP: The New Urgency: The Use(lessness) of Theories in Educational Research

    Special Issue: Journal of Educational Philosophy and Theory Editors: David Lee Carlson and Mirka Koro, Arizona State University Overview This special issue explores the use(lessness) of theories in educational research in current political, neoliberal (post-capitalistic), and ecological contexts. It examines how theories linger, return, and transform research, while research transforms theories. Key Questions for Submissions…

  • Call for papers: Peer Review in the Age of Large Language Models

    Looking forward to doing a keynote at this workshop in May 👇 ‘Peer Review in the Age of Large Language Models’ is an interdisciplinary workshop taking place on 14th May 2025 at the University of Bath. Dr. Harish Tayyar Madabushi from the University of Bath, and Dr. Mark Carrigan from the University of Manchester, will…

  • The rebranding of University of Bolton

    It now has a whole series of different brand identities: Weirdly the UoB Manchester describes itself as “Partnered with the University of Bolton and situated within the centre of Manchester”, despite the name now being The University of Greater Manchester. Perhaps I’m being unfair, in an institution currently undergoing transition, but I don’t recall ever…

  • Manchester/Salford Critical Ed Tech Network Event, February 19th 12pm-2pm

    Dear colleagues, I hope this finds you well. I’m reaching out to invite you to an informal lunchtime gathering where we can share our thoughts and concerns about educational technology and its impacts. This is part of an exciting international initiative happening that week, with similar discussions taking place in cities around the world: https://criticaledtech.com/2024/07/26/cset-2025-critical-studies-of-education-and-technology-an-invitation-to-connect/ [criticaledtech.com]…

  • Artificial Intelligence and Social Theory in Education, Jan 24th in Bath/online

    The research group AI in HE that is part of the Research Centre Policy, Pedagogy and Practice (PPP) is holding an event on Friday 24th of January at in Mainhouse G-17 at Bath Spa university. We have a day long in-person and hybrid seminar to discuss different views and approaches to AI in education. The…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #159

    Mural by Nick Hamilton in Manchester UK

  • Can LLMs sustain and transform affect

    From Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology, and Politics, by Zizi Papacharissi pg 22: Therefore, media are capable of sustaining and transmitting affect, in ways that may lead to the cultivation of subsequent feelings, emotions, thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. The intensity supporting these reactions can be transformed into value, and the tendency to evaluate labor or play…

  • Digital elites and reactionary modernism

    From Wikipedia: Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf[1] in the 1980s to describe the mixture of “great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy” that was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and Nazism.[2] In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw…

  • TikTok is the next stage in Elon Musk’s cultural machinery of reaction

    After writing this post in November I started getting preoccupied about the possibility of Elon Musk buying TikTok in the case of an American ban. Looks like the talks about this have now started: Chinese officials have reportedly held preliminary talks about a potential option to sell TikTok’s operations in the US to the billionaire Elon…

  • Eep! Eep! Eep!

  • #FreeOurFeeds – help secure the future of social media

    We are determined to free social media from billionaire control Social media once promised to be a global public square, connecting communities and sparking creativity. Yet it is now under the control of a few billionaires, used to advance their own political and business objectives. Building on the foundation built by the BlueSky team, we…

  • LLMs as engines of problematization

    It just occurred to me how relevant Foucault’s account* of sexual behaviour as “problematized, becoming an object of concern, an element for reflection, and a material for stylization” could be to understanding LLMs. The dichotomy of thinking with vs using as a substitute for thought which I built my guidebook around could instead be framed…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #158

  • Mainstream betting sides offering 1/3 odds on Trump either disregarding or changing constitutional term limits

    This is very disturbing. The process of changing the term limit is deeply unlikely (it would need two-thirds approval in both houses of Congress and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures) which means a mainstream betting side is offering the best odds on Trump disregarding the constitutional term limit. Indeed an ‘exit date’ of ‘2029…

  • Zupančič: How to live a life worth living

  • RenĂ© Girard as reductive Lacanianism

    With the huge caveat I’m basing this entirely on a documentary, I was struck by the overlap between RenĂ© Girard and Lacan’s analysis of desire. Both seek to address the question “why do we want what we want?” but Girard does it through a singular concept of mimesis, the essentially imitative nature of desire. We…

  • Things Hidden: The Life and Legacy of RenĂ© Girard | Full Length Documentary

  • I just discovered there is a Capoeira fighter in the UFC and it’s stunning

  • Social ontology matters for how we attribute causality in relation to emerging technologies

    From If
 Then: Algorithmic Power and Politics, by Taina Bucher: What remained puzzling throughout the ordeal was the apparent lack of vocabulary available to talk about what it is that algorithms do or are even capable of doing, as exemplified in the repeated attribution of bias either to the algorithm or to the humans involved.…

  • Why did the Bluesky migration succeed where the Mastodon migration failed?

    I’m not the right person to address this but I think it’s a fascinating question, prompted by this analysis of the failed Mastodon migration: Results from longitudinal analysis of Mastodon user data showedthat the initial surge in sign-ups did not translate into sustainedlong-term user engagement. Most recent user activity on Twitterreveals that many academics in…

  • Foucault’s approach to writing

    From a fascinating interview with his partner Daniel Defert: Daniel Defert: Absolutely! He said once to me in a phrase which I remember well, “Intellectual work doesn’thave enough materiality. One has to construct that materiality by working to a strict schedule, one has to work the same hours every day, just like one would in…

  • What would it look like if Generative AI firms embrace MAGA?

    It’s hard to interpret Meta’s announcement of suspending fact checking and DEI initiatives (Amazon also), along with Joel Kaplan replacing Nick Clegg, as Zuckerberg getting into line with the new power structure in the US. It would be a mistake to read this as a liberal hero being subordinated to a tyrant, given that this…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #157

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #156

  • Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up

    Thanks Susan Brown for introducing me to this amazing quote from David Orr: Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying or changing the odds. Optimism leans back, puts its feet up, and wears a confident look, knowing that the deck is stacked.

  • You were not on the receiving end of it all

  • Interview with Science Magazine about academic Bluesky

    I really enjoyed this interview: The lack of an algorithm could also reduce some of the negative effects of social media, says Jay Van Bavel, a psychologist at New York University. “For instance, it won’t incentivize posts that drive conflict/comments, which were prioritized by the algorithm on X.” That could have a tremendous effect over…

  • Why I find Manchester in 2025 architecturally depressing, but in an interesting way, in one photo

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #155

    Mural by Nick Hamilton in Manchester UK I live my life in ever widening circles,each superseding all the previous ones.Perhaps I never shall succeed in reachingthe final circle, but attempt I will.- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Book of Hours

  • Hope is essential to our survival and our flourishing

    From Nick Cave’s most recent Red Hand Files: So, what is hope, and what is hope for? Hope is an emotional temper that emboldens the heart to be active, it is a condition, a mood, an aura of being. It is a feat of the imagination, both courageous and ingenious, a vitality that inspires us to take…

  • Purpose building as an intellectual strategy

    I was quite inspired by this call for papers from my UoM colleagues 👇 I’ve added a few bolds to emphasise what resonated with me. I’ve tried to say something similar in multiple contexts but struggle to articulate it so powerfully. This is part of why I always go on about academic reflexivity, recognising why…

  • My last 10 Claude conversation topics

    It occurred to me what an interesting elicitation device it would be for qualitative research on LLM use in everyday life to ask people what their last 10 conversation topics are. Not because they are inherently meaningful but as a way to see the range, as well as to prompt discussion about what these meant…

  • I asked a librarian if he had a book about Pavlov’s dogs and Schrödinger’s cat

    He said it rings a bell but he wasn’t sure if they had it or not đŸ„

  • LLMs are now in the lifeworld

    This episode of Hardfork astutely captures something I’ve been trying to articulate for ages. If you see LLMs in terms of the hype cycles, capital investment and the bullshit pathway to AGI, you risk losing sight of the ever expanding range of utterly mundane ways in which LLMs are now in the lifeworld: I think…

  • There will be 13 billionaires in the Trump administration

    It is the wealthiest administration in American history 👇 does any past administration even come close to this? President-elect Donald Trump has assembled the wealthiest presidential administration in modern history, with at least 13 billionaires set to take on government posts. They include a wrestling magnate, a private space pioneer, a New York real estate developer, the…

  • Rebecca Solnit on the politics of hope

    I found this interview with Rebecca Solnit on the (always excellent) Conspirtuality podcast quite inspiring. I’ve uploaded it here because I couldn’t see another way of embedding the podcast on wordpress, but please do visit their site if you haven’t already. What stood out to me about this was her insistence that you don’t need…

  • “If H5 is ever going to be a pandemic, it’s going to be now”

    I can’t stop thinking about how this would play out in the US, after reading this very informative Science article about the near term likelihood of a bird flu pandemic: If the world finds itself amid a flu pandemic in a few months, it won’t be a big surprise. Birds have been spreading a new…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #154

  • Using reasoning models to support theory-building

    If you’ve not tried this, I highly recommend it. I’ve barely scratched the surface but this was GPT o1’s response to the question: “Should the category of ‘platform’ be a central category of sociological analysis, analogous to ‘structure’ and ‘agency’?”

  • How are people using Claude?

    It’s the more idiosyncratic uses which really fascinate me though: -Dream interpretation; -Analysis of soccer matches; -Dungeons & Dragons gaming; -Counting the r’s in the word “strawberry”.

  • The enshittification of Spotify

    First you push payments to content creators down to near zero, then you squeeze out the creators all together 👇 in the process seamlessly normalising muzak in the listening experience of users who trusted the algorithm to feed them work they would value. What I uncovered was an elaborate internal program. Spotify, I discovered, not…

  • How much time does Elon Musk spend tweeting each day?

    Taylor Lorenz reports on the long speculated possibility of Elon Musk having sock puppet accounts: Over the weekend, a Twitter Space hosted by right-wing influencer Laura Loomer devolved into chaos when an account named “Adrian Dittmann” joined the discussion. The user, who spoke with an eerily familiar voice, relentlessly defended Elon Musk. Immediately people began…

  • Lacan lecturing in English: Of Structure as an Inmixing of an Otherness Prerequisite to any Subject whatever

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #153

  • 📖 Things I’ve read in 2025

    Building on last year’s habit I’m going to record books and papers, in the hope I read more of the latter this year. Books I’ve read in 2025: Papers I’ve read in 2025:

  • Goodbye 2024 👋

    This was a very fine year. I have walked through many lives,some of them my own,and I am not who I was,though some principle of beingabides, from which I strugglenot to stray.[….]Though I lack the art to decipher it,no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformationsis already written.I am not done with my changes.-…

  • The first reviews of Generative AI for Academics have arrived

    And they are lovely 😊 As a PhD student researching the impact of GenAI on university students (while also a new professor), it felt like this book was written for me. Carrigan immediately identified the scariest part of GenAI – its ability to dismantle the trusting relationships between faculty and students. By (at least partially)…

  • A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything

    Not known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.Quick now, here, now, always–A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-foldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose…

  • 2024: a (work) year in review

    In the first few months of the year my writing focus was on Generative AI for Academics. It took a lot of work to get the draft into shape, compounded by my tendency to procrastinate at the editing stage. When that was done I wrote a structured series of 24 blog posts about how to…

  • My 25 favourite films of 2024

  • My 20 favourite books of 2024

    I read more this year than I have in ages. Here are my top 20 👇 obviously many of these were published before 2024, I just read them this year:

  • âšĄïž The God War: my first attempt at Marvel fan fiction

    In the heart of Manhattan, a teenage mutant’s powers accidentally manifest, amplifying Franklin Richards’ reality-warping abilities and tearing a hole in existence itself. This catastrophic event reveals a terrible truth: the growing number of god-level mutants is causing reality to break down. Each use of their powers creates microscopic fractures in the universe, and now…

  • The anxiety of individualisation

    From On Anxiety by Reneta Salecl, loc 2092: The Other is for the subject always ‘anxiogen’, since it constantly forces the subject to ask ‘Who am I?’, and especially, ‘Who am I for the Other?’ However, as this book has shown, in post-industrial societies, the subject is also perceived as a self-inventor and as someone…

  • Lacan on the anxiety of love

    From On Anxiety by Renata Salecl, loc 1320: Love is linked to the fact that in the end we know nothing about the object that attracts us in the Other, and that at the same time the Other knows nothing about this object that is in him more than himself, i.e. what makes someone attracted…

  • Current mood in (not) AI generated images #152

  • Current mood in AI generated images #151

  • Companions in the infinite rather than comfort animals

    From Nina Power’s What Do Men Want? pg 146: If we instead conceive of time not as a purchase against the future in which the other is a kind of investment, but rather as a perpetual and joyful present, we might start to understand and love each other better. Think of a relationship with someone…

  • What is Elon Musk’s end game?

    If Bernie Sanders is right that Elon Musk’s recent intervention marks the point at which America definitely made the transition into oligarchy, what is his end game? Where is it going? What is he hoping to achieve beyond getting ever wealthier? As well as teasing at interventions into UK politics in support of Reform, he…

  • Wrestling as an incubator of conspiracy culture

    This account from Abraham Josephine Riesman’s Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America crystallises an idea slowly occurring to me while watching the Netflix Vince McMahon documentary and the brilliant Behind The Bastards series on this: From loc 113: These days, if you’re a wrestling fan, you understand that wrestling is fiction. You know…

  • The fantasy of knowledge as attempt to foreclose otherness

    From Darian Leader’s Why do women write more letters than they post? The paradox here is well known: the more you try to undo the separation, by understanding the other person, the more the separation is reinforced. It is not simply a question of confronting the basic difference of one’s partner. Understanding wants more: it…