Category: General
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The purpose of studying economics
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” — Joan Robinson [seen at Teh Graun]
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Cyborg folklore and the infrastructural trialectic
Folklore and infrastructure intersecting, with a hint of Haraway, in this interview with the gloriously-named internet folklorist Trevor J Blank: Because technologically-mediated communication is so ubiquitously and integrally rooted into everyday life (for most individuals), the cognitive boundaries between the corporeal and virtual have been blurred. When we send text messages to a friend or family…
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(Dis)Assembling #Stacktivism; poking holes in utopia
Tomorrow (Weds 15th October 2014) sees me boarding a train down to That London, in order to be a talking head at a salon titled (Dis)Assembling #Stacktivism at the Goethe Institute. If you’ve not been following along, #stacktivism is Jay Springett’s invention, and it’s less a manifesto than a call for seeing the world anew, a…
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Sisyphus ponders the season
This morning I laid in late and wrote, prodding at my tablet in the dark. The pink-noise hiss and splatter of cars on the rain-soaked street out front speaks to the season, but nothing says “summer’s over” like half an hour of joyous honking as flight after flight of geese pass over the house, heading…
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Some speculations on speculation
I appeared on a panel about Speculative Design at LonCon3 over the weekend just gone, and one of my fellow panellists, architect and writer Nic Clear, mentioned that he had some misgivings over the use of the word “speculative”. It’s always had two meanings, after all: there’s the imaginative, extrapolative and science fictional sense in…