I’m working on a précis of my dissertation. I also wrote an addendum which focuses on the benefits of this research to Critical Data Studies, my major field. Here’s what I have so far: On the purpose of my dissertation: I am a scholar in the field of Critical Data Studies (or CDS). My project […]
The latest edition of SPECTRA is now available online: https://spectrajournal.org/14/volume/7/issue/1/ SPECTRA is a peer-reviewed journal of critical, eclectic scholarship that crosses disciplinary bounds. 7.1 includes articles on algorithms and phenomenology, the changing concept of “failure” in neoliberal work environments, and state power after Max Weber. There is also an interview with political theorist Michael Shapiro […]
I’ll be speaking at six conferences this spring. These talks are all based on my dissertation. In chronological order: 1. ASPECT Graduate Conference, 21-23 March. Talk title: “Algorithmic Determinacy and Interpretative Psychedelic Science.” Date/time of presentation: 22 March, 11AM-12:45PM 2. Theorizing the Web, 12-13 April. Talk title: “The Electric Kool Aid Turing Test: Psychedelics, Phenomenology […]
My review of McKenzie Wark’s General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century is available at this link.
I’ve been thinking about the rise of immersive experience as a commodity, i.e. virtual reality, music festivals, interactive theater, Meow Wolf, and the psychedelic renaissance. Maybe because psychedelic drug use has always been accompanied by a rhetoric of experience and immersion. This is from Byung Chul Han’s book Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of […]
My favorite essay from the k-punk book is online! (Exclamation point because it’s so good!) http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/005622.html A brief, dumb interpretation: goth exhibitionism denies interiority to the nth degree. Goth is interchangeable with signs and machines — it’s pure surface, sign value exchange and spectacle. Goth is an aesthetics based on the rejection of false illumination. […]
I will be at the Western Political Science Association Conference in San Diego, 18-20 April 2019. Here’s the abstract for my talk: Machine Learning and the Algorithmic Cancellation of the Future In this paper I explore the impact of machine learning algorithms on the data they process. I make a two-part argument. First, that the […]
Hi from Germany. Frankfurt is unseasonably warm, hotter than New York right now. It feels like Southern Virginia at the time I left. I was in Berlin and Poland (Sczcecin) last weekend. It was not much colder in either city. Trying not to think about climate change feels like trying not to be human. Even […]
One week after arriving. The worst piece of advice I got for Germany is that language isn’t a problem because everyone speaks English. You hear it all the time in the states. It’s not true. The second worst is that people are reserved. That’s also false. I don’t understand them, of course, so I wish […]
Yesterday: five hours slicing through apocalyptic gales with my car, listening to Tom Zé and Bill Hicks comedy, around 8PM landed in Baltimore for the Students for Sensible Drug Policy Conference. Coming up: The 22nd-25th of March: Doing Interdisciplinarity, the 2018 ASPECT Conference at Virginia Tech. I will be giving a talk titled “Psychedelic Research and Data Positivism.” […]
