Wow. I don’t know if we’ll do that drive again. It was over 14 hours there because of traffic jams. When it’s already a long trip, a few traffic jams can really mess you up. I have a major gadget report coming your way, but in the meantime, the family history discovery of the year …
Category Archives: Ideas
The point being made. . .
I just finished reading a comprehensive exam answer in which the student refers to Lewis Mumford’s notion of “biotechnics,” which he elaborates at the end of The Myth of the Machine. For Mumford, biotechnics is an attempt to subordinate technological development to the rules of life instead of the rules of math, an attempt as …
The Week of “I Can’t Believe I Get to Work Here”
That was the week inbetween my trip to Chicago and my trip to New York. John Durham Peters was in residence was in residence here and I had much fun with him. Georgina Born came and gave a talk on a Thursday afternoon. I had a great time with my grad students. My undergrad class …
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Belated Baudrillard Anecdote to Serve as an Obit
Fall 1995 was the first time I ever got to teach in my area of substantive expertise — it was an intro to communication studies course. I’d cleverly begun with McLuhan (yes, I know I know) and the “Medium is the Message” essay. The course ended with Baudrillard’s “Requiem for the Media” which is essentially …
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Not Exactly New Text
My essay “Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space” appeared last year in the journal Open. It’s now available for free online, though the formatting is a little off. This is a revised version of the talk I’d been giving for years on the use of Muzak to chase people out of public spaces.
Quote of the Week + More New Book Arrivals
The point of universites for Justi and other cameralists is to make students useful as future tools–servants of the state and upright citizens. If universities had merely the goal to improve citizens’ understanding and widen human knowledge, then one would need no public funding for institutions of such little benefit to the state and common …
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What’s Old is Even Older
Attention cultural studies geeks. I am always fascinated by the degree to which things repeat themselves in academic culture. The 70s mass culture debates restaged those of the 40s and 50s, and on and on. This morning I went looking for an electronic copy of Georg Simmel’s essay on fashion, and I stumbled upon this …