Skip to content

Velcro City Tourist Board

About
Contact
Consulting
Mastodon

Search

Tag: magic

Indistinguishable from magic? Extractivism, the infrastructural metasystem, and the obfuscation of consequences

This is a video-paper I prepared for a virtual conference called Extraction: Tracing the Veins, running this week under the aegis of the Political Ecology Research Center at Massey University, NZ and Wageningen Univeristy, NL. My paper is a part of the Technology & Infrastructure panel, and if you think mine sounds of any interest…

July 3, 2020
some kind of code for consumerism at its most insidious

I’ve got a little girl who’s seven, and she lives in a world that’s all potentially magic. Within her imagination, the possibility of supernatural things sits alongside school and real things. There’s no distinction. At the same time she’s kind of assaulted by magic. What she watches on TV, the magic there is some kind…

June 21, 2020
technologies that place me in a seemingly Promethean position: regardless power, regardless freedom and the desire for excession

More newsletter cribbing, this time from the redoubtable L M Sacasas. Like so much material being produced at the moment, this piece is mostly about the pandemic, and specifically the USian response (or lack thereof); but there’s stuff in here that has broader application, and some themes which VCTB veterans will recognise as favourites of…

May 26, 2020
archaeology of prestidigitatory production

A short Doug Rushkoff riff that chimes with my extended infrastructure-as-stage-magic metaphor: The industrialist’s dream was to replace [workers] entirely — with machines. The consumers of early factory goods loved the idea that no human hands were involved in their creation. They marveled at the seamless machined edges and perfectly spaced stitches of Industrial Age…

March 26, 2020
a duplicitous priesthood’s superior knowledge of the technology of light and shadow

Insightful piece on superhero narratives, magic and transhumanism by Iwan Rhys Morus over at Aeon a few weeks back; collides a bunch of my own long-running obsessions in exciting ways. For instance, technology’s deliberate appropriation of the mask of (stage) magic: During the 19th century, the relationship between technology and divinity took a new turn.…

March 17, 2020

Archives by category:

Academic paper reviews (1) Academic Publications (7) Accessions (109) Appearances (13) Art (62) Book Reviews (6) Caturdays (12) Climate Change (56) Criticism (78) Design (1) DissertationDiary (4) Essays (2) Futures (180) General (473) Infrastructural Theory (91) Interviews (3) Movies (17) Music (39) Philosophy (113) PLANRITNINGEN (2) Poetry (12) Politics (122) Reading Journal (60) Readymades (1) Science Fiction (112) Social Theory (143) Sociology (75) Technology (128) The Magrathea Protocol (5) Visual Journal (1) Weak Signals (15) Worldbuilding (36) Writing (116)

Velcro City Tourist Board

Search