Harman dishes a does of reality, here.
Tag: The Semaphore Line
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Creepy cartography
A whirlwind introduction to the world of digital mapping technologies over at The Guardian today. Lots of predictable quotes, here are some of a selection;
‘The transition to print gave far more people access to maps. The transition to ubiquitous digital mapping accelerates and extends that development – but it is also transforming the roles that maps play in our lives.’ Jerry Brotton (academic) on the speed of technological change.
‘Before [Google Maps launched], we were on that old Mapquest thing – that was just an interface for loading a static map, really. But then Google… comes along, and suddenly you feel like you’re in this seamless interactive environment.’ David Heyman (map company founder) on interactivity.
‘The map is mapping us…[and] I am quite suspicious and cynical about products that appear to be innocent and neutral, but that are actually vacuuming up all kinds of behavioural and attitudinal data.’ Martin Dodge (academic) on data ethics.
‘People should be free of the worry of some hi-tech peeping tom technology violating one’s privacy when in your own home.’ Chuck Schumer (Senator) on digital privacy.
‘Every map… is someone’s way of getting you to look at the world his or her way.’ Lucy Fellowes (curator) on maps as political tools.
Scroll down the article to see ‘how technology is making us mentally flabby‘ (ha).
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Long live postcolonial theory!
Eyal Weizman’s talk at Society and Space’s 30th anniversary lecture on his long-running Forensic Architecture project below. The project website is here. There’s some really fantastic resources in there, some tangible ‘postcolonial’ elements without the burden it brings. Mengele’s Skull (Sternberg Press) is a forthcoming title co-authored by Thomas Keenan and Weizman, and a short description is available here too.
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Postcolonial theory is dead! Long live postcolonial theory?
Clive Barnett, over at his blog Pop Theory, puts to bed some of the concerns I had at the time (and have since mulled over) with my UG dissertation on postcolonialism (direct link here). Almost as soon as I’d finished it, bound it and received my final mark I was over that tricky Saidian/Gregorian alliance.
I still think those working in the broad field of postcolonial studies have a lot to offer, and I do believe textual-historical analyses of colonial media deserve continued attention, just the Saidian discourse of Orientalism has become stagnant. Those pesky non-reppers at Bristol did a lot to shift the focus, at least in Human Geography.
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Some notes for Assange, Galloway et al.
They might want to have a quick skim read of David Allen Green’s post on the ‘legal myths’ of Assange’s extradition case, over at the New Statesman. Assange has nobody but himself (and presumably his instructed legal team) to blame for such a cowardly, and moreover, public, misuse of extraterritorial diplomatic immunity.
Sam Hind 