Category: Social Theory
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stop press: technologist spontaneously (re)invents postmodernism
Matt Webb thinks through the map’s mediation of the territory. I don’t mean to whale on Webb here, to be clear, as he’s by far one of the more enlightened and well-intentioned thinkers in that space. But nonetheless this is a salutory reminder that, sociologically and philosophically speaking, the tech world is lagging the leading…
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the reason for this pilgrimage
Clipping this primarily because I suspect it will make an excellent case for thinking about the mirrorscreen idea I was kicking around earlier this week: I visited an elaborate recreation of the Virgin Mary’s appearance in a French grotto in 1858. A narrow footpath led through a forest to a candlelit statue of the Virgin…
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the ubiquitous fictionality of narratives of futurity
Doing that thing where one quotes a famous and respected person saying things one has been saying for years, in the hope that it’ll be more palatable coming from someone famous and respectable. Once again, it’s yer man KSR, of course: All attempts to speak of the future are science fiction stories, and thus bound…
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duckrabbit, figureground, mirrorscreen
In this episode of Excerpts Of Other People’s Output Used For The Aggrandization Of Personal Theories Which Remain Stubbornly Underwritten, I will be quoting a newsletter from Drew Austin, riffing on Kyle Chayka’s “ambient TV” essay; the bolding is my own. Describing other ambient shows like Netflix’s “Chef’s Table,” which combines pleasant food imagery with…
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“A part of the world’s worlding”: Sofia (2000), Container Technologies
Sofia, Z. (2000). Container technologies. Hypatia, 15(2), 181-201. I first read this back in the heady days of 2016 or so, on the direct recommendation of its author; I don’t get to name-drop very often, but Zoe Sofoulis (writing here as Zo Sofia, as she sometimes does) is a good friend, and served as a…