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The Hyphen Labs collective is making brilliant projects at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Check out there work here

Looking at a keynote presentation of Lisa Nakamura at the transmediale 2018 “Call Out, Protest, Speak Back”. She focuses on the importance of critical race and feminist theory for understanding contemporary culture of digital technologies. Interesting use of Audrey Lorde’s quote that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” and how we can’t fix technology with more technology.

Fascinating video on the daily background maintenance and repair that is required to keep the city of Venice “working”. Check out the website of the project Venice Backstage as well.

In South-Africa there has been severe water shortages due to a long drought and bad water management. The following short video gives us a glimpse of the terrible consequences such as police cracking down prohibited water use, such as someone trying to earn some living washing cars.

The shortage has left residents fearing what’s been coined ‘Day Zero’: the moment when the city turns off the taps, and residents are forced to line up for water rations under the watchful eye of armed officials. And as this unsettling short documentary shows, the consequences of the crisis are already severe, with police cracking down on what’s considered unnecessary water use. The increasingly desperate situation has escalated tensions in a region already divided between haves and have-nots, frequently along racial lines

Two important news updates via Tv5Monde’s 7 jours sur la planète emission of 30 March 2019:

• “La Suède, l’autre pays du cyborg”: in Sweden it seems to become more common to have an RFID chip implanted under the skin. So much so that even in the train it seems to slowly be considered normal to use your hand with the implanted chip to scan your ticket.
• “Nestlé accusé d’épuiser la nappe phréatique”: in France some activist groups are campainging against Nestlé for the water the company is extracting from the ground for their bottled water. I can imagine this happening in a lot more places in the world as water becomes more scarce.

In France there has been a change in gender marking in job titles. A large part of previously traditional masculin job titles did not have a feminine form. Via 7 jours sur la planète.

Check out Ian Fischer’s beautiful oil paintings of clouds, via Kottke.org

Mooie inaugerele rede¹ van Prof. Annemarie Mol over “Wat is Kiezen?” waarin ze in een empirisch filosofische manier niet vraagt naar “wat kiezen in wezen is, maar wat het is in enkele van zijn talrijke, gevarieerde verschijningsvormen”. Haar nadruk ligt ook dat technische artefacten nieuwe keuzemogelijkheden schept en verborgen keuzes kunnen bevatten:

Als iemand zich bijvoorbeeld in een situatie bevindt waarin ze individueel moet kiezen voor of tegen deze of gene medische ingreep, dan is het ook goed dat zij zo nauwkeurig mogelijk geïnformeerd wordt. Dat is geen kwestie van persoonlijke smaak en het is evenmin een universele waarde. Deze moraliteit is in de betreffende situatie ingebakken. Hij zit eraan vast, net zoals er aan kiezen een autonoom subject vastzit, en een rekensysteem, en een gestold object van keuze.

I have been getting into the ideas of critical theory with some great podcasts and videos. Stephen West from Philosophize This did an extensive 7 part series on The Frankfurt School, with a large focus on Herbert Marcuse. I especially liked his introductions of Marcuse’s works and the parts on culture industry. I also watched this interview Bryan Magee did with Marcuse in 1977 for his BBC program. In the interview Marcuse gives an overview of the thoughts of the members of the school and his involvement with the New Left movement. The whole discussion with Magee is great as can be expected from him and who also very critical. And lastly I listened to an episode of The Philosophers Zone titled “Are we enlightened?” that came out today by chance. In the short timespan of thirty minutes the podcast provides a fanstatic overview of critical theory and, as the title suggests, focuses on the theory’s roots against enlightement style thinking.

In an article from 1976 I came accross in the book the Social Shaping of Technology¹, Ruth Schwartz Cowan looks at the introduction of technological appliances in the home and their effects on home work. Her analysis shows that the “industrialization of the home” was very different process from what we might suspect: that it would descrease the amount of work needed to be done by housewives. Rather the technologies seems to have shifted the work and contributed to changes in aspects of the work (such as the emotional aspects).

The standard sociological model for the impact of modern technology on family life clearly needs some revision: at least for middle-class nonrural American families in the 20th century, the social changes were not the ones that the standard model predicts. In these families the functions of at least one member, the housewife, have increased rather than decreased; and the dissolution of family life has not in fact occurred.