A Discussion of Agency Due largely to the influence of Actor Network Theory, a lot has been written in recent years about agency. Much of which I find that I disagree with (Graves-Brown 2013a). At one level, the root of these discussions lies in the neglect of material things in …
“We should be clear that World War I was a war fought in a just cause, that our ancestors thought it would be bad to have a Prussian-dominated Europe, and that is why they fought. ” David Cameron – interview with Mail on Sunday, 18/01/14 Preliminary thoughts on the centenary. …
I just finished reading Stand on Zanzibar (1968) by John Brunner. To save you looking it up, the title comes from the fact that at the time of writing, the World’s population would have fitted, shoulder to shoulder, on the Isle of Wight. By 2010, when the novel is set, …
Me and the DIN plug The DIN plug or connector is another familiar item among my collection of cables, generally in the 5-pin version, although there have been numerous others from 3-9 pins in various configurations. I think my first encounter with these was when, some time in 1971-2, my …
Temporarily moving my home recording studio, I found myself sorting through a mass of tangled cables and leads, some of which I have owned for more than 30 years. This started me thinking again about connectors, of which there are a huge variety, some of which persist and others have …
Is this the World’s narrowest evaluation trench? No. Its a cut I made across our garden for ducting to carry electricity to a new garage. But every time I dig holes in our garden, which has been many times over the last 15 years, I have learned a little more …
It was one of those times when you read something and think, WHAT!! The something in this case being Susan Buck-Morss (1977) The Origin of Negative Dialectics. Just to be clear, this book explores the interrelated of Walter Benjamin and Theodore Adorno as they developed between the 1920s and 40s, …
The future was a beautiful place, once. Remember the full-blown balsa-wood town on public display in the Civic Hall. The ring-bound sketches, artists’ impressions, blueprints of smoked glass and tubular steel, board-game suburbs, modes of transportation like fairground rides or executive toys. Cities like dreams, cantilevered by light. And people …
Ruins in reverse is an exhibition in the Project Space at Tate Modern between 1 March – 24 June 2013. According to the rather nice, free, catalogue for the exhibition: “Ruins in Reverse takes its title from an idea found in Robert Smithson’s 1967 essay A Tour of the Monuments …
Introduction This is an experiment I have considered trying for some time. To measure the speed of light it requires only a)some grated cheese (clearly hard cheeses are to be preferred) and b)a microwave oven. Here I used our old Sharp oven, and a large plate sprinkled withTesco’s mild cheddar. …