Category: Social Theory
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meandering toward a (trans)media ecology of futures
I realised just the other day that I’d somehow managed not to do a serious wrap-up–or even an unserious and/or cursory wrap-up—on the Futures Brought to Life symposium in Vienna that I attended back in May. I’m not going to do one now, either*, but I thought I might at the very least point at…
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as if there was necessarily just one transition
Graeber and Wengrove again, referring to archaeological evidence from the soi disant ‘Fertile Crescent’: If the situation in just one cradle of early farming was that complicated, then surely it no longer makes sense to ask, ‘what were the social implications of the transition to farming?’ — as if there was necessarily just one transition,…
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accumulations (three different ones)
So much chewy material in this genuine monster of an Evgeny Morozov essay at New Left Review. Absorbing it fully would likely take a number of re-reads, not to mention a greater familiarity with the literatures and debates he’s navigating here; as such, to the only precis I can offer is Morozov’s own, from near…
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haunted by (hopeful) futures
The great pleasure of following Adam Roberts’s blogging—once you’ve gotten past the minor frustration of finding that he’s upped sticks and moved to another domain and/or platform for whatever he’s currently driven to write about—is watching him try out ideas, throw together a hypothesis, then start poking it to see if it holds up. Latest…
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we’re all gnostics now
At tQ, scathing words from Darran Anderson on the ongoing rehabilitation of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber: … there is no group anywhere on the political spectrum that is not gnostic now. By which I mean, that every single position from furthest left to ‘moderate’ centre to furthest right believes they are the…