Save Middlesex Philosophy from Norman Hastings on Vimeo. As many will know, though for reasons I still cannot fully grasp, Middelsex University is closing its philosophy programmes, and with them, the Centre for Modern European Philosophy. This short video takes you to the scene of the crime as it were, and includes interviews with Christian … Continue Reading
The political geography of web censorship desire
An interesting move by Google. No doubt still singed from its adventure in mainland China, the search engine has created a new tool that maps countries whose government has requested or taken legal action to remove content from either YouTube or Google search results, or otherwise have asked for details about its users. For removal … Continue Reading
Making music with pong (and a mouse-guided theremin)
First of all, I know this is a terrible video. I only have myself and my mobile phone to blame. But I wanted to post this anyway. It’s from OpenNight #4, a night of FLOSS inspired electronic music and video from the people of OpenLab, which was held yesterday at the Fleapit in Hackney. The … Continue Reading
Being in the world: coming soon to a theatre near you
This rather enticing trailer is for a film set to premiere in April, looking at how unique human capacities connect to how people find themselves in the world (i.e. in a phenomenological sense). The film is by Tao Ruspoli, a one-time student of Hubert Dreyfus. Amongst other things, this film might just be one of … Continue Reading
Coupland gets inside McLuhan’s head
I, for one, had no idea Canadian author Douglas Coupland was writing a biography of Marshall McLuhan. Medium theory anoraks must have known for months. Well, the biography has arrived, and the Canadian media has entered into one if its wild yet rare fervours of Canadian intellectual commemoration to mark the occasion. The biography sounds … Continue Reading
Manovich: visualization, pattern and the objects of the humanities
If the strongest point of the N. Katherine Hayles’ seminar was her superb framing of the theoretical issues, the strongest aspect of Lev Manovich’s talk was that it seemed to gain more and more momentum as time went on. Which is to also say, Manovich got into the swing of things a tad more slowly. … Continue Reading
University of Sussex, but not as we knew it
A rather different University of Sussex than the one I recounted on my visit in January for an event dedicated to Roger Silverstone (and the naming of a new Silverstone Building on campus). The riot police shown in the clip embody the University’s apparently heavy-handed philosophy around how to respond to student protest. Students were … Continue Reading
Hayles: technogenesis, distributed cognition and hyperattention
I thoroughly enjoyed N. Katherine Hayles’ seminar earlier this afternoon at London Southbank University, as part of a double bill with Lev Manovich. Hayles’ talk was rich, and certainly full of more insights than I can recount here. But a couple of basic and I think very interesting ideas were at the core of the … Continue Reading
N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich double bill in London
Recently I wrote about an enticing forthcoming conference at Swansea University on The Computational Turn, which, alas, I was unable to attend. Well, good news has arrived for us all in London, and indeed, the South East of England. The two keynotes of that conference – N. Katherine Hayles and Lev Manovich – have been … Continue Reading
You can count on coal, if not media
For some reason, I just find the whole idea of mining coal as a stable support for the uncertainties of television production hilarious. Also funny, of course, is the stark contrast implied between the grittiness of mining for coal (going down a mineshaft, the need for canaries as a warning system) and the superficiality of … Continue Reading