F/LOSS
It's been a rough year in the land of F/LOSS. So a thought experiment comes to mind: how small would I have to make my computing environment in order to be able to feel personal trust towards the developers making the software I use?
Systemic overwork is a problem that's going to keep growing in knowledge work. As we race to do more in less time, and to perform the appearance of productivity, we lose sight of the essentials.
automation
William Morris (famed 19th century socialist and wallpaper designer) has something to teach us about life after the death of automation and even life after AI.
meta
As academia experiences a crisis and mindest change about the concept of "impact," other ways of contributing to various discourses are increasingly important. This week, I'm thinking about that in the context of writing in public.
There has historically been a gap between the way we see industrial technologies and technologies of the home. As platform logics come to household appliances, that gap becomes more complex.
bookpile
Bookpile is short posts (usually on Fridays) about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley.
participation
Despair, cynicism, and the feeling that we're powerless against inevitable change and upheaval are all real motivation killers. Here are three of my strategies for staying motivated in the face of cynicism.
Critical technoscience, human readable
Bookpile is short posts (usually on Fridays) about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s More Work for Mother, by Ruth Schwartz Cowan.
The humanity and individuality of the web designer becomes more important under automated production. The advent of consumer-facing large language models which spit out on-demand code brings web design squarely into the category of automated production. But I'd rather see an ugly website.
Coping is short posts (normally on Fridays) about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 15, the importance of being near (big) nature.
We make choices of varying degrees in the technologies we use, and the technologies that are used on us. I argue that it's especially important to think about potential harms in technologies which are required or unavoidable.
Coping is short posts (normally on Fridays) about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 14, the importance of specificity in productive dialogue.
If you take a cursory look around, you'll find robots programmed to perform human sports. From the RoboCup football tournament to promotional videos of industrial robot arms playing table tennis, why is the visual language of sport so important in promoting robotics?
Fordism has permeated the way not just industrial manufacturing, but broad aspects of society are managed. And it's not all conveyor belts. What values underlying Fordism shape the way we look at technology and labour today?
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s The Five Dollar Day, by Stephen Meyer III.
It's time to start dreaming again about technology with liberatory potential. The belief, that the outcomes of technological changes to society are inevitable needs to be challenged. Technology is not apolitical, and it's time to build technologies which mirror our values.
Many individuals, groups, and organizations valorize, normalize, and validate being too busy. Buying into the cult of busy, on both an individual and an organizational level, reinforces real problems. It's a systemic problem, but we can also try to subvert it and support each other.
Design for Dreaming showcases post-WWII conspicuous consumption at its most glamorous. What was Design for Dreaming, and how can we understand its relevance 70 years later?
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays (though this time it's a Saturday) about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s Imagination: A Manifesto, a call to action by Ruha Benjamin.