Tristes Tropiques: Revisited
When I first encountered Lévi-Strauss in graduate school, I thought the title of his monumental work sounded strange. At that time, I spoke absolutely no Portuguese but…
Tag: philosophy
Universality of Truth
Now this is an article that is going to upset a lot of people but at the same time it will cause a lot of people to reflect…
19. Freedoms and liberties in anthropological perspective
This is nineteenth post in the Freedom technologists series. Republished from St Andrews Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies. The Centre is pleased to announce a forthcoming conference on Liberties…
The Facebook Experiment: Cow-Sociology, Redux
Once having arrived at a set (or sets) of defensible moral positions, social psychologists should better be able to educate those outside the field concerning appropriate ethical criteria…
#Instalife: How Instagram redefines the meaning and practice of photography
Instagram is a social, mobile photography app. They have 100 million monthly active users, and 40 million Instagram photos are posted per day. Purchased by the leviathan of…
The Politics and Power of Internet Infrastructure, Pt. 3
Please see also Part 1 and Part 2. PART 3: NGOs AND DIGITAL RIGHTS In the last section I considered the roles of business and governments in protecting…
The Politics and Power of Internet Infrastructure Pt. 2
Please see the first part of this project here. PART 2: NETWORK NEUTRALITY In my last post I described the centralized control of the Internet’s backbone by only…
The Politics and Power of Internet Infrastructure
We traditionally understand the world to be controlled primarily by technologies of violence and destruction. Who controls these technologies and how they are regulated are arguably the most…
New Media Practices and the 2012 Presidential Elections
The past few posts I have written all belong to a collection of case studies about new media practices and the 2012 elections. I want to collect them…
#Ivoted: Documenting the Vote in the 2012 Elections
In the lengthy and involved media spectacle surrounding the 2012 elections, the day of reckoning is of course voting day. Traditionally, media messaging switches from heated horse-race coverage…
Live-tweeting democracy: the fantasy of representation
Twitter and the 2012 Elections: Media Practice and Politics Whereas Facebook is a platform that treats politics as more or less taboo, Twitter’s network is made up substantially…
Practices of political news production and consumption on Facebook’s news feed
Since its beginning, the Internet’s potential to disseminate information broadly and easily has been hailed as a great democratizing force. Today, this idealist vision has somewhat deteriorated,…
#Mockthevote: A Case Study in Democratic Media Practice
Media practice and the 2012 elections: Theorizing new models of democratic participation This case study is named after a hashtag that was trending on Twitter during the three presidential…
Cracks in Everything
Philosophy is dead. At least, it is according to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who believes the discipline hasn’t kept up with modern developments in science to the extent…