December 2022 This month, I mainly wanted to do some kind of end-of-year roundup thing. I actually really like list season, when everybody’s publishing their best-ofs and favorites; I think’s its a useful way to round up the year, reconsider what you’ve seen and heard and read, and maybe catch up on some things you’ve …
Tag: technology
November 2022
I wanted to start this month with a bit of catch-up, posting some things from earlier in the year that I intended to write about earlier but, for one reason or another, never did. First is a pair of articles from the New Yorker: “A Lake in Florida is Suing to Protect Itself,” by Elizabeth …
August 2021
August 2021 A bit late this month, because we were traveling (!), but here are a few recommendations: First, you should watch Summer of Soul if you haven’t yet. I don’t think I have anything particularly new or interesting to say about it, but it is, indeed, extraordinary and absurd that the Harlem Cultural Festival …
May 2021
I’ll start off this month with some music, beginning with this playlist by Jace Clayton, for ArtForum. Jace Clayton is also DJ/Rupture, and he’s probably best known for finding and promoting interesting new music from parts of the world that aren’t the United States or Europe. (I quoted from his book Uproot, about the way that digital culture is changing …
November 11, 2018: Seen and Unseen
I’m going to acknowledge up front that my theme this time may be a little bit tenuous. I’m talking broadly about awareness as much as literal sight, but a number of the things I’ve been thinking about do have to do directly with the visual realm. “On the Nose”, by Chris Ip, describes the work …
March 31, 2018: Behind the Scenes
I’ve just finished teaching a new class about cities, and one of the things that the experience made me think about was how the built environment of urban spaces is the outcome of a long process (or series of processes) that is itself basically invisible. That is to say, you can see what the city …
June 18, 2017: The Ties That Bind
I’m developing a new course right now about cities and power, and as part of that, I’ve started to think of a city as, in part, a built response to its environment. Chicago, for instance, is where it because of water—specifically, the proximity of one river system to another, allowing people and goods to be …
February 26, 2016: Putting It Together
Once, during the summer that I worked in the campus computer store, a chatty customer began talking to me about science fiction books. One he mentioned specifically was The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. This stuck in my mind only because he was impressed that I knew what the word …
Recommendations for July 18, 2016
#agir Recommendations for July 18, 2016 It’s been a while, and I have quite a bit of stuff this time around. I’ll start with a few connected things, and finish up with some random bits. Unintentional Conversation: “Cities Will Have to Be Redesigned to Confuse Invading Robots”, by Geoff Manaugh, “Deep learning is Creating Computer …
Recommendations for February 20, 2016
Playlist: “Dissecting” by CFCF “Urchin” by Arca “Now is Not the Time” by Babe Rainbow “4101” by Roly Porter “Battery” by Fatima Al Qadiri I didn’t post a lot of music here last year. That wasn’t a deliberate decision, just how things worked out; 2015, in fact, was not a big year in music for …