The singularity is a speculative notion referring to the point at which exponential innovation generates a fundamental transformation of human civilisation. As Murray Shanahan puts it in on loc 78 of his book The Technological Singularity: In physics, a singularity is a point in space or time, such as the […]
In a fascinating account of the private space programs of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, Christian Davenport explains how the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) has its origins in the geopolitics of the Cold War. From pg 59: Eisenhower entered the room at 10: 31 a.m., and decided to get […]
*Call for Papers – (In)Equalities and Social (In)Visibilities in the Digital Age – Journal Interações* The influence of new technologies in public and private spheres of society, rather than a reformulation, has given rise to a new social field and directly interferes with how we perceive the world, relate to […]
Contributors are invited to submit abstracts (about 200 words) toward our new edited collection *Twitter: Global Perspectives, Uses and Criticisms* to be published by Nova Science (New York). We are interested in new research and perspectives on, as well as criticisms of *Twitter communication*. Topics being covered (though not limited […]
In this week’s CPGJ platform capitalism reading group, we turn towards education for the first time with a paper by José van Dijck and Thomas Poell looking at the influence of social media platforms on education, particularly within schools. Much of the literature has addressed social media as tools, with varying […]
Notes for week 1 of the CPGJ Platform Capitalism reading group. The notes below relate to Evgeny Morozov’s lecture below: The question of ‘who owns digital capitalism?’ was posed for the conference but it was one which Morozov felt uncomfortable with because it implied a separation between ‘digital capitalism’ and […]
Notes for an upcoming talk: not yet proof read! By the time I sat down to write this talk, I began to regret the title which I’d given it. To speak of an ‘academic identity’ makes it sounds as if this is a singular thing undergoing change in a unified […]
Very excited to be one of the keynotes for this: 6th Annual CPERI Workshop, 29-30 July 2018 Institute for Social Futures, Lancaster University, UK We cordially invite submissions to the 6th workshop on the Changing Political Economy of Research & Innovation (CPERI), following previous events at Lancaster (2012), Toronto (2013), San […]
Accelerated Academy #4 Academic Timescapes: Perspectives, Reflections, ResponsibilitiesMay 24-25, Villa Lanna, Prague, Czech Academy of Sciences After meetings in Prague, Warwick and Leiden, the fourth Accelerated Academy conference calls for a more nuanced perspective in order to advance our understanding of academic temporalities as experienced, understood, controlled, managed, imagined and […]
What are learned societies for? This is how Jennifer Platt answers this question on loc 119 of her history of the British Sociological Association: Learned societies such as the BSA are a vital part of the social structure of academic life; not every eligible person belongs to one, but nonetheless […]
How does what we eat shape how we are seen? Cultural sociologists have long accepted the role which culinary consumption plays in reproducing status hierarchies. However the meal of breakfast and the role of devices have been conspicuously absent from these debates, leaving us with a misleading view of how […]
Earlier today at the British Academy’s Social Listening event, Paul Crayston used this extract from Edmund Burke to illustrate a point about the tendency of social media users to mistake the noise they make within their own milieux for the activity taking place on the platform as a whole. Because […]
Thu 16 November 2017, 18:30 – 20:00 GMT Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge Professor Helen Margetts, director of the prestigious Oxford Internet Institute, presents her personal, positive vision – and then leads discussion – on how the UK’s social media can be a force for greater equality in the year 2027. […]
I just returned from a Remembrance Day service, pondering the relationship between acceleration and the profane after finding the array of people walking past and through the service deeply irritating. It occurred to me that what marks out such a space as sacred, distinguished from the normal flow on everyday […]
The first of what seems likely to be many books about the June 2017 general election was released earlier this week. Betting the House, by Tim Ross and Tom McTague, tells the story of the election through contrasting accounts of the Conservative and Labour campaigns. There’s much more detail about the […]
Some tweets about this blog post worry me because it appears as if people think this is my analysis. It’s not. These are my notes on the excellent paper below which I’d strongly recommend reading in full. This thought-provoking article by Malcolm Williams, Luke Sloan and Charlotte Brookfield offers a new […]
This is a fascinating exchange between Owen Jones and Alastair Campbell, bringing to life many of the themes I’ve been preoccupied with in the last few months. I agree with Owen’s claim that Campbell’s world view is in crisis. The promise of the modernisers rested on a basic electoral proposition: triangulation […]
In today’s Guardian, Neal Lawson offers a cautious reading of Corbyn’s Labour, accepting the ascendancy of the left within the party but urging it to look outwards. I’m sympathetic to many of the substantive points Lawson makes in the article but there’s a rich vein of problematic assumption running through […]
