Category: Blog
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Who is the digital revolution for?
The University of Sussex’s SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) are running this event as part of Brighton Digital Festival: Who is the Digital Revolution For?: How can we re-discover our sense of enchantment with digital technology? For many of us, digital technologies have been revolutionary. Yet at the same time, some feel disenchanted with the…
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Talking at Make:Shift
I’ll be taking part in this year’s Crafts Council biennial Make:Shift Innovation Conference. I went to the 2014 event at Ravensbourne in London, which was one of the best conferences I’d ever been to, with inspiring talks, a lively atmosphere, and the sense that you could say hello to anyone there, and be sure to have just…
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Is all technology authoritarian?
The Terminator franchise draws from a deep well of mythology – preying on our fears that humans will be crushed by the technology that we ourselves create. The horrible inevitability of our fate makes it a compelling story. There is a converse myth: that through ever-advancing technological progress, rational man (and we can go down…
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Does digital fabrication technology lower the barriers to making?
(Note: this is part of a series of half-formed thoughts. The usual caveats apply.) The question is left intentionally generic. In practice, the sentiment takes many more specific forms, often unstated, or expressed as a sense of optimism, rather than explicit arguments. Nevertheless, I have talked with many people who are either proponents of digital…
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Making a Temporary Autonomous Zone
Well, my last hunch went a bit long, so here I’m just going to plant a stake in the ground and try to leave it alone. It’s fair to say that many of us dissatisfied with the dominant model for organising society, whether we’re marxists, anarchists, or just artists (I’m only the last of these), are attracted…
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Platforms are the new gatekeepers
This post is one of a series of hunches that explore ideas around Liberatory technology. I am thinking aloud. Caveat emptor. OK, so a strand of any discussion about technology and emancipation has to be about the role of the web in enabling more people to access tools, information, collaborators, distribution and markets, and conversely…
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Talking repair on Restart Radio
This week, I was invited to be a guest on the Restart Project’s radio show on Resonance FM. we talked about the intersection of making and repair cultures, making a spot welder out of a microwave, and a bit of juicy news, “Error 53” (which will be long-forgotten in no time at all…). Restart Radio:…
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Maker Assembly #1: It’s a wrap
Our first Maker Assembly event at the V&A was a great success, by all accounts. We had some nice feedback from participants and speakers; and as a test, it was useful: it felt to me like there is demand for this kind of critical conversation about making, and this is not served well at the…
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Antiuniversity and Deinstitutionalisation
There’s some power in negating what already exists. Even if you reinforce the dominant institutions by accepting their framing and language. Anyway, without wishing to get into that, I’m intrigued by these anti-school systems that are popping up. This quote via Antiuniversity, who are reviving an original idea from – when else – 1968: ‘The…
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Ruskin and the Maker Movement
I’m helping put together a conference later this month at the V&A called Maker Assembly. It’s an attempt to catalyse a more critical reflective discussion about maker culture, and add some more depth to our understanding of what making is about, and how we can do it better. As part of that effort, I interviewed…
Andrew Sleigh 