Amazon link I finally finished the Latour, about a month after starting it, which is about how long it took me to read his previous book, The Politics of Nature. It’s a hard book to review; the goal of the book is to explain actor-network theory, which Latour co-created based on the social studies of […]
The Art of Conversation
A few months ago, Wes made a comment about my post about good conversations where he linked the idea of flow with what I was looking for in conversation. I’ve been meaning to follow up on that comment for a long time, and tonight’s the night. Conversation is a topic near and dear to my […]
Latour-ian Networking
As mentioned previously, I am currently reading Reassembling the Social, by Bruno Latour. I’m most of the way through now, and hope to finish it off this weekend. The thing that strikes me yet again about reading his work is that it is so elegantly laid out that he draws me in to a completely […]
Sweeney Todd
Bats came to town, so I finally made the time to go see Sweeney Todd on Broadway, with the lovely and talented Patti Lupone. It was pretty awesome. Not as awesome as the the definitive Sweeney Todd version, but I might be slightly biased. One of the amazing things about the production was that there […]
Secondary research
A little while ago, I joined a mailing list for user experience folks who were interested in understanding how various anthropological and sociological theory might impact their work. I haven’t had as much time to devote to it as I would have liked; in particular, I didn’t have time to do the first assignment, which […]
Evaluating quality of construction
This post was triggered by a comment that Jofish made where he made the claim that “Popperian science just *doesn’t* exist”. I understand where he’s coming from (especially in light of that post, where I was describing how our lives are often re-interpreted after the fact), but I believe that Karl Popper’s principle of falsifiability […]
Fractal identity
When I was reading Latour last weekend, I read the following quote: To say ‘culture forbids having kids out of wedlock’ requires, in terms of figuration, exactly as much work as saying ‘my future mother-in-law wants me to marry her daughter.’ (p. 53) Latour goes on to point out that, although it’s obvious that “culture” […]
New York stuff
Things I’ve been doing in New York: A week ago Tuesday, I went to Giant Tuesday Night of Amazing Inventions and Also There Is A Game, a sketch comedy night in the East Village which was really silly but fun. I think the bit I most enjoyed was the Vampire Orientation Seminar, with the five-step […]
Purple Cow, by Seth Godin
Book website After reading Survival Is Not Enough, I figured I would go ahead and pick up another of his books since it was in the office library. This was another very quick read, with one good idea. To wit, Godin suggests that it is no longer good enough to have an outstanding message or […]
Communities of identity
I was talking with a friend over the weekend about his workplace, and he mentioned that one of his coworkers was from MIT, and I asked where they had lived at MIT. He told me which dorm, I said “Oh, so they’re like this!”, and he said “Yup!” We both found it extremely amusing that […]
