Social Acceleration

This blog is dormant for the time being. It is good to see that it generated some interest and continues to get a steady trickle of views. Most people visiting will be interested in the seven p...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2013/11/so-long.html

Farewell 2011...  The park was closed in order to deny protesters access to the parliament buildings within The relatively insignificant Barcelona stock exchange became a target of pro...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/12/farewell-to-2011.html

This is an extract from Daniel Chandler's excellent online and published introduction to semiotics, "A Beginner's guide to Semiotics" . In 1972 NASA sent into deep space an interstellar probe c...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/12/from-beginners-guide-to-semiotics-by.html

“Like so many people these days we live in the suburbs and Dave needs the car for business” “It’s a whole new way of life. Now I’m free to go anywhere, do anything, see anybody, anyti...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/09/touching-innocence-of-1950s.html

For a number of years I've been trying to get to grips with the notion of growth. This started as an attempt to understand why it is that economies have to grow. The framing criteria of the 'he...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/08/dynamic-of-growth-and-social.html

Vale la pena difundir esta pelicula asombrosa de lo que ocurio el 15 de junio fuera del parlamento Catalan. Nos recurda de la anxiedad que tienen las autoridades para prevenir la formación de un...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/06/who-was-responsible-for-violence.html

Seeing as so much time has elapsed since my last posting under the title of “Globalization, Time-Space Compression and Symbolic Exchange”, I think it’s as well to provide a brief reminde...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/06/globalisation-space-time-compression.html

In a posting a few days ago I mentioned the ambiguity of standing with thousands of other people on the outside of a thin police cordon all looking in on the events unfolding in the square. Ma...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/05/impersonal-transparency.html

This film explains the idea of "odious debt", which is to say debt that has been incurred by a population without their knowledge, not in their interests and with the complicity of the lender. It...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/05/odious-debt.html

Where was I when Plaça Catalunya was taken back from the police and (bizarrely) the waste disposal trucks? Among the thousands of people who broke through the police lines to join the protesters...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/05/where-was-i-when-placa-catalunya-was.html

Over the past couple of weeks something truly impressive has taken place across Spain. The central squares of the major cities have been occupied en-mass by a diverse cross section of peopl...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/05/spanish-spring.html

Today Iceland held their referendum on whether to accept liability for the debts of a private bank. This is hugely significant as it represents the alternative to the narrative that has been repe...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/04/so-whats-happening-in-iceland.html

The Business podcast: Broken economic models and the role of emotion in finance | Business | guardia... http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/audio... Roman Frydman, David Tuckett and Philli...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-models-stuff-about-economics-and.html

A revolution against neoliberalism? - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/03/revolution-against-neoliberalism.html

I was going to leave some kind of an ironic comment about how the financial markets were none too happy about the revolutions sweeping the Middle East- it seems, however, my glibness would be mis...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/02/chinese-workers-making-egyptian.html

What do you call those great tracts of land that cling to the suburbs; too uninhabited and barren to be urban and insufficiently picturesque and pristine to be countryside? EDGELANDS .

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/02/edgelands.html

A kind of interesting discussion programme on Al Jazeera about the role of social networks in facilitating revolution. The most interesting thing is just seeing people sitting round in a familiar...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/02/blog-post.html

Apparently Tunisia and Egypt are not the only countries in which the population has kicked out its politicians and are in the process of drafting a new constitution. Icelanders, faced with the pr...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/02/iceland-is-answer.html

David Harvey talking about "The Enigma of Capital". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E11peQC0XXU&feature=player_embedded#!

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/01/david-harvey-talking-about-enigma-of.html

I guess the farmer would be the interests of global capital and the sheepdog the apparatus of state security.

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/01/conspiracy-theories.html

It's hard not to like an article that contains the line, "The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/01/its-hard-not-to-like-article-that.html

A great documentary on La 2 last night about programmed obsolescence. If you suspected that stuff about lightbulbs was the paranoid imaginings of conspiracy theorists- check this out. Lightbulbs...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2011/01/programmed-obsolesence.html

Decentering of the subject (From Firat and Venkatesh Postmodernity: The Age of Marketing; 1993) The modernist project placed the human being at the center, as the subject-that is, as the a...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2010/12/we-dont-choose-stuff-we-buy-stuff-we.html

Amid the heartwarming scenes that have accompanied the rescue of the Chilean miners over the past couple of days, I couldn't help but be reminded of Baudrillard's stubborn refusal to countenance...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2010/10/churlish-reflections-on-heartwarming.html

I'm going to put the cycle of posts "Globalisation, space-time compression and symbolic exchange" on the back burner for the time being. This is for two reasons; first because the extended piece ...

http://socialacceleration.blogspot.com/2010/10/change-of-course.html