A few years ago I wrote a piece about how Walter Benjamin was a kind of blogger. Assembling bits in his notebooks, he built up detailed cross references and themes. It was more that his working practices seemed to be suited to a medium that was yet to exist. Sometimes styles of working are waiting for their medium to come along, I suppose. And anyway, in many ways a blog is simply a remediation of a notebook.
I was just looking back across the archive of this newsletter. This is the 27th issue of 2020. I originally set it up in 2019, but it was in January this year that I thought I'd try focusing on it a bit more. I quite like it as a medium. It feels very direct and is quite an open space. In January I thought I’d have a go at mixing two different formats, with some newsletters offering links to different sorts of content combined with a little commentary, while other newsletters would pick up on a development or news story and offer a slightly longer analysis of that one thing. That's the dual approach I've stuck to this year. A notebook of sorts, I suppose. Ideas and references mixed together. The difference is that this is a notebook that is sent out rather than shelved.
In terms of timing, the advice is to publish newsletters on a certain schedule (e.g. every Friday) so that readers can get into a routine. But I'm not sure. I quite like the unpredictable and unstructured approach, and letting it have its own schedule. The newsletter feels better and more sustainable when it fits into the rhythms of other work - it slots into the little gaps, here and there. I've been managing about three a month on average. Occasionally it's been four or five. It feels better to just go with the flow and to see what is possible and when.
In the process of doing this I've rediscovered something I liked about blogging: that it encourages discovery. You have too keep an eye out and be attentive so that there is something to write about. That helps with teaching too. Plus blogging has a sense of sharing and curation to it. And so I'm hoping to keep it going, if I can. I hope you will stick with it.
I don't know if others cling to them, but I still use actual notebooks and even have a real diary. There's something about their materiality, however much they are remediated.
I’ve not been able to do much reading or writing recently, so this is one of my shorter postings. But I have been chipping away at a little piece about personalisation that I'll post soon, maybe in the next few days.
Two interviews…
A couple of interviews I've been involved with have been published in the last week or so.
I was interviewed by Harrison Smith for the Media Theory Journal. It covers a range of things including media, data, theory, writing, analytics and ideas. The interview is openly available on their blog now and will also appear in the next issue of the journal.
The other was an interview that I conducted with M. Beatrice Fazi about her recent work on indeterminacy in computation. After reading Beatrice's book I couldn't quite see a way to do it justice in a review, so an interview seemed like a good option. The interview has just been published online first by Theory, Culture & Society. I think it will be included in the Annual Review issue in December. Beatrice's answers seem to add quite a bit to her brilliant book, taking some of the ideas into new areas. I'm surprised more journals don't run interviews in the same way that TCS does. Interviews inject a sense of interaction and community, as well as offering something new in their own right.
All goes…
There are two developments in algorithm studies. Off the back of her important project on Facebook data, here is a piece by Bev Skeggs on algorithms. It looks at the interests behind algorithms.
And in this video Louise Amoore continues her agenda setting work on algorithms by introducing her new five year Algorithmic Society project…
These times…
On the Vitalities lab blog, there is this analysis of time covering the less 6 months of the pandemic. It effectively reflects on how these times feel and how time is felt during them.
Magnifying glass…
Stuart Elden is continuing his detective work on the ideas of Foucault and their origins and development. The four book project is now three quarters complete. Here is the latest update on the completion of the third book in the series.
Where to?
There's a new book just published containing an agenda for sociology and some responses from other authors. For a New Classic Sociology by Alan Caillé and Frédéric Vandenberghe is framed as a kind of debate. It will be interesting to see if this sparks more discussion on sociology's futures. Those debates seem to be smoldering at the moment, waiting to be reignited perhaps.
Data mining…
This detailed piece about the powerful and expanding data company Palantir makes some important observations. These data companies deserve more attention. You don't have to think that they can achieve all they say they can achieve with data to appreciate that they can still be a powerful presence. Even if we don't accept their shiny data imaginary we still need to think about how their use of data will have outcomes and consequences.
Eh aye…
The AI Now research centre has released a report on the regulation of biometrics. Something that clearly needs a regulatory agenda.
The prescription is…
Dave O'Brien is interviewed by the New Books in Critical Theory podcast about his recent co-authored book, written with Orian Brook, Mark Taylor, Culture is Bad for You: Inequality in the Cultural and Creative Industries. This looks like a major intervention in the study of cultural production. A provocative title too.
Really?
And here is an augmented reality vinyl record sleeve.