Author: Neil Mather

Listened to
I like the use of the phrase ‘social industry’. I think it’s a good framing to use rather than social media. It brings to the fore the co-optation by industry of what Ton calls social software, turning it into an industry.

In the Novara interview, Seymour talks about how when using social media (controlled by social industry) you are in some ways interacting more with a machine than with other people. Likes, retweets, etc, are part of this machinery. These have become industrial abstractions of actual social relations.

Analagous in some ways I feel to how Taylorism abstracted the movements of skilled labourers into smaller and smaller discrete motions, which could then be mechanised and repeated monotonously without skill or craft.

Digital time-and-motion men have abstracted social interactions into meaningless facsimiles of real interaction, real desire or affection.

Better a social craft than a social industry I think. Small tech and social software can be part of a that I think, but re-repurposing or even breaking some of the frames that industry co-opted and mechanised.

Writing a blog post, or a considered reply to someone else’s, takes more time and emotional craft than a like. But it’s more rewarding overall. It’s hopefully less alienating.

Really want to go deep into the political history of the textile industry, any good book recommendations? It’s incredible and horrible lesson from history. Manchester is wrapped up in it.

Like before the industrial revolution, people had spinning wheels and hand looms in their homes. The industrial revolution brought in spinning frames, power looms, centralisation, mass production and a whole shitload of exploitation around the globe to go along with it. Why? Where’s that tendency come from?

So there’s a lot of bad in the ol’ YouTube comments, no doubt, but sometimes you know you stumble across a video where someone has revealed something deeply personal and tender in the comments that the music means to them, and lots of people leave incredibly supportive responses. That’s lovely to see. I feel like you don’t see a lot of genuine warmth on the Internet and it’s nice to know the medium doesn’t strip it out altogether.
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Uh oh.. an outbreak of PHP warnings.. prognosis not good.

On a positive, at OggCamp some associated with @theastralship was very into geodesic domes. I think the spirit lives on in many forms!