The Digital Condition is an open discussion group, organised by myself and Milan Stürmer, building on last year’s experimental project to inquire about the digitalised experience of the pandemic. For each meeting there will be a short article and a series of questions posed in advance, with the session being an open forum for raising […]
I thought you might be interested in this new podcast series I’ve started. It’s the audio diary of a social theorist during the pandemic, with self-consciously rough thoughts, speculations which haven’t quite reached the status of work in progress. Mostly short thoughts from me but I’ll have conversations with other people as well. It will involve meta-reflections […]
With the imminent demise of cinema, it seems like a good time to share this list of the films I’ve seen since July 2018: Hotel Artemis Generation Wealth Annihilation Under the Tree Ant Man and the Wasp The Escape The Heiresses Mad to be Normal Moneyball BlackKklansman Apostasy Cold War Searching American Animals A Simple […]
I turned off comments almost a year ago when I deleted my Twitter account, in pursuit of a less overwhelming digital existence. However I realised recently this has obliterated the sense I had of people actually reading this blog, as opposed to stumbling across it via the google footprint which has accrued over ten years […]
In his recent book of essays, Will Davies draws a comparison between securitisation and digital platforms. From pg 15-16 of This Is Not Normal: These are just some of the ways in which the credit derivative and the platform have transformed our political world in the twenty-first century. But there is more to it than […]
This extract from Danielle Allen’s superb Why Plato Wrote brought to life an issue which I’ve found myself returning to endlessly over the years. On pg 26 she talks about the Socratic disdain for writing and the capacity for teaching seen to inhere within them. When Socrates says that a written text can be no […]
God! I will pack, and take a train, And get me to England once again! For England’s the one land, I know, Where men with Splendid Hearts may go; And Cambridgeshire, of all England, The shire for Men who Understand; And of THAT district I prefer The lovely hamlet Grantchester. For Cambridge people rarely smile, […]
From this disturbing piece by Richard Seymour: A glance at the crowd shows it to be younger and more heteroclite than one would expect. The heavily armed protests in the US mostly resembled outings of a Duck Dynasty fan club. Granted, in these English displays, there is the inevitable quorate of Nazis, QAnon supporters, flag […]
When time pulls lives apartHold your own When everything is fluid, and when nothing can be known with any certaintyHold your own Hold it ’til you feel it thereAs dark, and dense, and wet as earthAs vast, and bright, and sweet as airWhen all there isIs knowing that you feel what you are feelingHold your […]
I’m not saying right is wrongIt’s up to us to makeThe best of all the thingsThat come our way 😷 #Covid19 😷
If the bad times are coming, let ’em comeLet the death drum break the slumpBefore the once young braves succumbThe fickle flicker of desire expiresIf the bad times are coming let ’em come, let ’em come 😷 #Covid19 😷
From today’s Protocol newsletter: There’s a clear trend here. I’ve talked to a lot of folks recently about the return of blogging, the rise of Substack, and what it means that people are branching out on their own again. Medium clearly understands the underlying goal behind that trend, which is that creators want a place […]
From Timewatch by Barbara Adam pg 15: The multiplicity of awarenesses, choices, memories, considerations as well as the trust in technology and expert systems were all present at the same time. Yet, despite this simultaneity, there was sequential order. Nothing was jumbled. Nothing happened backwards
This thoughtful essay by Richard Seymour offers a great summary of what I’ve written about as fragile movements, as part of a really interesting reflection on why Black Lives Matter hasn’t exhibited the same fragility: In recent years, political movements and trends have come (and sometimes gone) with unprecedented speed. To name just a few […]
We often talk about blogging within higher education as if it’s relatively new, leaving us with the challenge of explaining and making a case for it to colleagues who might be sceptical and unfamiliar. This is a curious state of affairs given that blogs have been around for close to thirty years, even if the […]
From Do-It-Yourself Democracy: The Rise of the Public Engagement Industry by Caroline Lee pg 36-37. Her book illustrates how public engagement professionals have a vested interest in this narrative, offering to facilitate participation in order to address this civic withdrawal: The late 1980s and early 1990s were a time of concern for the decline of […]
Online boot camp, with Dr Ana Canhoto (Brunel University London) and Dr Mark Carrigan (University of Cambridge). With social distancing likely to be the ‘new normal’, confidence and competence in using social media tools for professional purposes is more important than it has ever been. In this month-long, online boot camp, we explore what this […]
Organised by Mark Carrigan and Susan Robertson In a matter of months, the world has changed beyond recognition. Covid-19 has led to an unprecedented reorganisation of everyday life, with half the world’s population subject to lockdown measures at the peak of governmental response to the pandemic. These measures are being eased across the world, with […]
It would be hard to imagine two thinkers with seemingly less in common than Margaret Archer and Slavoj Žižek. However one of the reasons I enjoy the latter’s work, in spite of my many reservations about him, relates to the status of reflexivity within their work. In spite of their different terminology, emphasis and interests I believe […]
