What was I thinking!

Past writings, diaries, letters, course notes, publications and blog posts reveal what I was thinking 10 to 20 years ago and beyond—or do they? To read them now is to be reminded how much any authored text is steeped in the artifices of language, culture, and circumstance. There is no direct access to an original…More

Beyond attention

I’m still reviewing my blog posts from 2013. In keeping with the unstructured nature of blogging, I didn’t plan sequences of posts to follow particular themes. However, a thread does emerge from this sequence of six posts — that of attention. Soft fascination (138) introduces the theory that sustained concentration on a task induces “attention…More

Geometry and affect

I’m reprising some older blog posts from 2013 that consider vertigo, oblivion, melancholy, the motion of swings, and the emotional experience of urban spaces. Later on I drew this material together in my book Mood and Mobility (2016). With assistance from ChatGPT I’ve updated the sentiments of these posts under the rubric of geometry. I also attach…More

Am I in AI?

I’m a member of the Author’s Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). They collect money for “secondary uses” of publications – such as photocopies, digital reproduction and educational recordings. These rights bring in only small amounts of money, so authors don’t usually take the effort to collect them. Nor do they know how to do this.…More

Easy reading

I am reviewing my early blog posts Richard on the Holodeck and Shallow reading from February 2013. In the first post I noted that some people see literature (e.g. a novel by Charlotte Bronte) as a substitute for living the lives of the characters. In Hamlet on the Holodeck Janet Murray seems to suggest that…More

AI does history

I’m revisiting older blog posts. I’m up to the one titled “Loose ends,” which reflects on the nature of origin stories in the age of the Internet. The post from 2013, mentioned horsemeat detected in hamburgers, Derrida on the desire for beginnings, and Freud on red threads in naval ropes. I have recently traced a…More

Faroese chain dancing

I’m just back from a short break in the Faroe Islands. One evening I was standing in the reception area of our hotel when I heard the faint sound overhead of robust voices in unison accompanied by the slow rhythm of what seemed like feet stamping on the floor. The next day we were at…More

Vintage futures

I’m continuing the theme from the last post of looking back and looking forward. To that end I am reviewing the next set of posts authored in 2012. I start with the romance with digital technologies as they were then. When I wrote Vitruvius does steampunk in 2012, I was interested in how steampunk revelled in retro-futurism:…More

A digital time capsule

I’m looking back at old blog posts and publications. In 2012 I was also looking back to older studies, e.g. to 1994. See the 2012 post: “What’s a modem?” I’m indebted to ChatGPT for suggesting that the 2012 post served as a “time capsule.” In that post I revisited our 1994 study of computer-mediated communication…More

ChatGPT as trickster

As I continue to trawl through earlier blog posts I see that one of my 2012 posts followed a one week sojourn in Iceland. Iceland’s traditional narratives and mythologies draw on the activities of a pantheon of heroes, one of whom is the trickster god Loki. In that post, and subsequent publications, I referenced Lewis…More