The Backyard Futurist

Mobile phone use has become ubiquitous (fig. 1), especially among the young and wealthy with more than five billion uses worldwide (Pew Research, 2019). Smartphones herald the arrival of convergence bringing together the formally ‘separate business of media, telecommunications, and computing/information technology into interdependent services’ via digital networks (Cinque, 2012, p,14).  The speed of change in technology has garnered much discussion as to the social-political and economic effects … Read More

If you struggled with this then check out my introduction to gamification. Most fortune 500 companies now use gamification in attempts to engage audiences. However, experts claim eighty per cent of business will get it wrong because they fail to consider their audience’s motivations and instead act out of coercive self-interest (cited in Burke, 2014 p. 9). However, what gamification shows us is that it is possible for … Read More

An Internet of Humanity IoH to resist Surveillance Capitalism There’s the Internet of things IoT but what about the Internet of Humanity IoH? Introduction While self-tracking with the rise of the IoT is contributing to many pro-social benefits for public health, these practices are also transforming notions of the public and private self and raising substantial ethical issues in the age surveillance capitalism. Self-tracking in the Quantified Self … Read More

The health of the public sphere as a gauge to the possibilities and limitations of internet activism in the networked society Activism today is dominated by networks and global forms of organisation made possible through today’s digitally hyperconnected world. The ground-breaking work of Manual Castells (2007, 1999, 2016, 2017) has articulated a utopian vision of a network society emerging in the transition from the industrial age to the … Read More

A girl called Delphia in a study In a bright and happy bedroom, Delphia, a primary school girl is sprinkled small fragments of bio-material into a petri dish. She watched the tiny fractals, made intelligent by a Wi-Fi connection, autonomously self-organize into various new tiny species of gadgets.  The box revealed the toy was one of those Occupy Internet-of-Things starter colonies that parents routinely provided their children. The … Read More

My recent experiences with gamification. 1) Connecting with the Community I started collaborating and gamifying the experience early on the #alm201 hashtag by introducing myself via video and then continued to contribute and respond to other students’ efforts. I responded to the layered quests Adam (our unit coordinator) set, and by liking, commenting, awarding gifs, follows and comments to the other students in the group I was rewarding … Read More

The role celebrities play in promoting cosmopolitan values over communitarian tribalism was highlighted in the recent presidential inauguration of Donald Trump which was shunned by many A-list celebrities. This was contrasted with the widespread support for anti-Trump rallies like Alec Baldwin’s. Trump’s communitarian, tribal and divisive America first campaign strategy which was an affront to outsiders didn’t vibe well with many celebrities cosmopolitan sensibilities. This othering of outsiders … Read More

This is my undergraduate video and exegesis attempt at understanding celebrity culture and authenticity. Also, see the follow-up article The Democratising Potential of Celebrity and Cosmopolitan Solidarity My video (below) opens with scenes from the French dystopian short film Logorama (2009) which is a critique on “the loss of real authenticity” in a world which is dominated by self-branded, celebrity-styled individuals. Banet-Weiser (2012 p. 3) describes Logarama reflecting … Read More

While rampant, unsustainable, growth-oriented capitalism has become the underlying code that is driving digital divides we can take hope in the open source, sharing community as a way forward. The colonial interests of capitalism are, using new extractive technologies and platforms, sabotaging community bonds, and increasing digital divides but I look to show here through narrative, argument, interviews, and digital media experts that there is an alternative way. … Read More

This week I was set the task to write about time management in about 300 words. Taking the macro lens to the problem given the recent education I had been given on the topic by a couple of my favourite scholars I looked at the issue of the apparent lack of time we all seem to suffer from as one caused by inequality. And it is this same … Read More