Posts - Page 5

I’m not one of those people who constantly has their head buried in a book — one of those at heightened risk of falling down a manhole because they are reading while walking instead of looking in front of them. A part of the reason is that I tend to gravitate towards denser books — the type of book that feels Important, and that might prompt impressed nods when I bring it up to my philosopher friends. This is a bad habit. It means that I just end up doing something else that isn’t reading. One of my resolutions for the new year is to read for enjoyment rather than for some imagined book CV. In that spirit, I wanted to write up a list of some of the reads I enjoyed the most this year.

My project fediverse.space is an interactive map of the fediverse. The fediverse, or “federated universe”, is the set of social media servers, hosted by individuals across the globe, forming a libre and more democratic alternative to traditional social media.

In the age of social media, identity is becoming increasingly fluid and fragmented: with greater access to information comes more exposure to new perspectives and personalities, and for every side of our selves, there is a channel to express it and an audience at the ready. This explosion of identities fits neatly into the logic of consumer capitalism: more identities means more markets. Thus, identity fluidity – a concept that has liberatory potential – ends up reinforcing existing capitalist structures. Søren Kierkegaard, as one of the early experts on identity, presents a useful lens to explore this contradiction.