Synthetic video and voice experiment revisiting a post from November 2013 titled “Feeling free in flight” and continuing the theme of the cyborg.More
Experts versus algorithms
I reflect on the evolving perception of algorithms since my 2013 post. Initially seen positively, algorithms are now criticized for exacerbating biases on social media. Some argue that expertise involves more than performance metrics, highlighting the importance of context, accountability, and collective reasoning in decision-making, which algorithms cannot replicate. References Daniel Kahneman.More
The “intellectual cyborg”
The post discusses the cyborg concept, emphasizing our dependence on technology, while critiquing posthumanism and its implications.More
Metafiction and metaphor
Most fictional writing makes generous use of figurative language: hyperbole (exaggeration), anthropomorphism, simile. This much is obvious. As a reminder, here’s a fragment of imaginative writing from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities: “The slender stilts that rise from the ground at a great distance from one another and are lost above the clouds support the city.…More
The threat
“You told me you would start writing now you have time on your hands. You have plenty to write about since you came out of confinement.” I took that as a threat. If I didn’t give an account I could end up inside again. Then it dawned. My inquisitor was writing everything down. “Do you…More
Metafiction and melancholy
A metafiction typically reflects on the writing process of the author as the work is being written. Either fictional characters assume the role of the author of the piece, or actual authors weave themselves into the story and reflect on their own processes. Metafiction is an appropriate genre with which to explore melancholy. Scholars have…More
Pastimes revisited
I’m looking back at some of my blog posts from 2013. The posts canvas the topics: gaming culture, time management, design transitions, and online inference. As it happens, they each circle around the subject of evidence. Evidence is material for narrative, delay, aesthetic judgement, and inference. Let’s Play introduces the sociability of play, including video gaming…More
A tissue of citations
I’ve just completed an essay for a special edition of Architectural Theory Review in honour of my friend and former colleague Adrian Snodgrass, who passed away last year. Adrian introduced me to structuralism, semiotics and hermeneutics. In part of that essay I reference the writing of the literary theorist and cultural semiologist Roland Barthes (1915-1980).…More
How to explain art
Here is an audio of a sequence of blog posts I published in 2013. Some were written while on a trip back to Australia after an absence of 16 years. These reflections of a traveller later informed my books Mood and Mobility, Network Nature, and Derrida for Architects. My current challenge is to see what…More
Not everyone isn’t unhappy
I’ve just emerged from an interaction with ChatGPT reviving the following posts from 2013. I was interested in my early attempt to explain what we now think of as “confirmation bias.” The example I led with was of people arguing that nature settings can instil a positive mood. Scholars and everyday observers tend to select…More