The students were busy this weekend, and I am in Hamburg at the wonderful Hauptsache Frei Festival talking about Digital*Analog. Say Hi if you are around!
Also! Very happy to finally have published “situated drama” in the wonderful Performance zwischen den Zeiten for transcript Verlag (together with Heiko Kirschner):
The combination of experimental forms of storytelling and social theory seems to us like a fruitful if not necessary combination to contribute to the field of research informed arts in which contemporary complex societal issues are presented and discussed adequately.
The starting point of our endeavor is grounded on the assumption that societal processes of change, in particular individualization (Beck/Beck-Gernsheim 1994), digitalization (Castells 2001) and deep mediatization (Couldry/Hepp 2017), leave their traces in almost every aspect of today’s society. Hence, these processes also affect and challenge traditional ways of performance and storytelling.
In other most wonderful academic news, Researchers from Uni Bochum have put a first Version of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten online (via heise.de):
Nach dem Geheimnis seiner beeindruckenden Produktivität befragt, antwortete Luhmann: “Ich denke ja nicht alles allein, sondern das geschieht weitgehend im Zettelkasten” und dass dieser ihn “mehr Zeit als das Bücherschreiben” koste. Die Bücher und Aufsätze erscheinen gleichsam als Kondensate und Manifestationen der im Kasten verzweigten und vernetzten Gedanken und Ideen.
On medium.com Postyn Smith writes about the Gamification of work at Amazon:
A big tech company, like Amazon, would naturally assume that video games (more technology) could be the win-win solution they are looking for. The games help workers “pass the time” or be more “engaged” while also getting more work done. But more tech and gamification are clearly not the answers to our disengaging and endless work. The “FC Games” are not even a Band-Aid for the symptoms wrought by the grueling nature of the task, the endlessness of the work, and confronting what infinity mentally feels like.
And last but not least, an interesting analysis of submarine internet cables and how the big tech giants are buying into the market by Jayne Miller (on the excellently named telegeography.com blog):
Unlike previous submarine cable construction booms, companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are taking a more active role. These companies have such incredible bandwidth demand for their data center traffic, they’re driving projects and route prioritization for new cables.
Until next week, when Tomas will be taking over. Enjoy!