This essay looks at two conflicts which emerged in my reading of We, Zamyatin’s dystopia and a precursor of 1984 and Brave New World. First, I examine the tension between contentment and freedom, a dilemma which quickly emerges upon entering Zamyatin’s nightmarish paradise of OneState. I then look at the question of the slavishly rationalist OneState…
The free and open source software (F/OSS) movement has influenced wider understanding of intellectual property rights by propagating three core sets of norms and practices: 1. The privileging of authorship over ownership, and the embrace of collective authorship. 2. The transformation of property law from an absolute imposition into a set of hackable rules which…
In this essay I argue that Bourdieu’s thesis in Distinction* generally favours the role of structure over agency in determining taste. However, within that framework opportunities for agency do exist. Such agency is particularly available to those rich in cultural capital, enabled by their distance from necessity. Outside the dominant classes opportunities for agency still…
This is an extract from a mini-ethnography I did of an East London household of three young people, focusing on their use of technology. One of the recurring practices observed in the household was the retention of gadgets with overlapping functionality, sometimes to the point of redundancy. Older, disused, and broken hardware is held in storage…
Interpreting Baudrillard has always been tricky. He himself was critical of artists who incorporated his theories into their work. The nature of these theories, particularly simulation and simulacra, is such that to reproduce them seems to betray the spirit of the text. This is not a defect, but rather a distinctive irony that occurs in…