F/LOSS
Why I love F/LOSS
It's back to basics with an essay about Free/Libre and Open Source Software, and why I think it matters – especially for people who don’t yet know it well. What is it, and why should you care about and for F/LOSS?
F/LOSS
It's back to basics with an essay about Free/Libre and Open Source Software, and why I think it matters – especially for people who don’t yet know it well. What is it, and why should you care about and for F/LOSS?
bookpile
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. This week, it’s Standards and their Stories, a collection edited by Martha Lampland and Susan Leigh Star.
art
In 2018, I mentioned the Ubiquitous Monster Game in a project about 5G/Internet of Things for public good. Ubiquitous Monsters were the worst-case case. Here, I go into more depth on the Ubiquitous Monster Game itself, and what it can teach us.
coping
Coping is short posts on Fridays about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. In Coping 2, braindumps.
ELSA
What is an AI-cology, why does it matter, and what is it good for? AI-cologies are a way of thinking about, locating, and questioning the ecologies around and in a particular AI-involving system. This essay takes the example of one specific camera to explain how AI-cologies are constructed.
coping
Coping is short posts on intermittent Fridays about coping methods for doing creative and focused things in an unfocused world. They are often not at all novel, but I want to highlight them because, for me at least, they work well. In the first Coping, rage-making.
nature
What does it mean to think about the planet’s inhabitants, beyond the humans? Is thinking about them enough, or do we need to find ways to consult them?
Critical technoscience, human readable
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. In this week's Bookpile, Ursula M. Franklin's The Real World of Technology.
There’s a concept called “ELSA” that I talk about a lot. As you might guess, ELSA is an acronym. It stands for “Ethical, Legal, and Social Aspects.” Used in the study of emerging scientific and technological developments, it brings people with expertise in ELS aspects to the table.
Bookpile is short posts on Fridays about what I’m reading now and what I’m liking about it. In the first Bookpile, Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification.
In 2014, I made an installation about digital enclosure, bringing visitors into a world of subversive online activism. A group called the True Equalizers were agitating to build new networks, not overseen by the all-powerful internet overlords who controlled the flows of socialization and access.
A quick note for those trying to create accounts and receive updates by email. Because not-so-obvious.net is a pretty new domain name, emails may be landing in your spam folder. If you're trying to sign up, look out for a confirmation email to complete your registration.
My research methods teacher in grad school had this story about bottle collectors – people who go around town, finding bottles with deposit value, collecting them, and redeeming them. This first part of the story is in Toronto, where beer, wine, and liquor bottles all carry a deposit. In Toronto, if
A colleague of mine who is generally very right is constantly pointing out to me that there are things in my head that I take for granted or assume everyone also knows. This comes up when we’re writing together. He’s one of my more regular and more successful