"In shadowy, silent distance grew the iceberg too": universities, technology, work and life
I don’t feel like I’ve been doing a lot of refusing lately. Lee Skallerup Bessette, ‘Refusal‘ 1. It’s 2019, I’m sitting at a thing, and a senior university leader is addressing us with a vision. My attention is drifting, I’m cold and I’ve had too much coffee. The vision seems familiar. And then there it is: “We think the casualisation problem will be solved by AI in about 15 years or so.” It’s like hearing a breaking plate in the…
Continue ReadingMake sure the background is clean and generic, and make sure to remove any family photographs, or anything that might be a distraction. I try not to write much about the place where I work, but this week my employer has produced a video about how to video from home, and I’ve watched it, open-mouthed. As we’re prompted to more thoughtfully stage our houses for teaching and meetings, the illustration of what can go wrong is a blurry woman picking…
Continue ReadingFrom the perspective of capital, what most of us see as tremendous ethical and even existential problems literally don’t count. Jason Hickel, ‘The Nobel Prize for Climate Catastrophe‘, foreignpolicy.com, December 2018 1. This year I’ve been reflecting on the many reasons that I find writing difficult, even when I’m apparently eager to write. I know from conversations I had at OER19 that others feel the same. This sense of being choked is spreading around a community of good writers I…
Continue ReadingIt isn’t like researching and writing so don’t think that I was physically working on it all that time, but thinking about it also occupied the sewing time. Also talking with fellow quilters to get problems solved quicker. Rebecca Albury, email to me 1. I’m steering an underinsured rental car around a parked truck in a back alley in Dublin, and Bon Stewart is peering at two different digital maps, offering advice. Driving in new country is always like this:…
Continue ReadingWhat is required, is quite simple. Professor Michael McDaniel, 2012 1 It’s 2013. I’m in the backroom of a small library in a town in western New South Wales, scrolling through a microfilm newspaper reader, scribbling notes with a pen I’ve found in the bottom of my bag. Next to me, my daughter’s looking through a book of war records. We’re all there, the five of us together, looking for a family history for which we only have two clues….
Continue ReadingDisrupt your industries, if that is what you are in business to do, but do not disrupt the bonds that tie employees, however loose or unspoken they may be. Isabel Berwick, ‘Workplace communities matter–now more than ever“ 1. I’m standing in line, and someone sends me something to read. Distracted and unprepared I open an article about Annie Werner, who was in breast cancer treatment in 2014, like me. But there’s more. She’s an academic like me. Like me, she…
Continue ReadingSitting lets us just, first of all, recognize that we are this massive collection of thoughts and experiences and sensations that are moving at the speed of light and that we never get a chance to just be still and pause and look at them, just for what they are, and then slowly to sort out our own voice from the rest of the thoughts, emotions, the interpretations, the habits, the momentums that are just trying to overwhelm us at…
Continue ReadingI’ve been reared to go down to the well for a bucket of water, bring it back up, fill the black pot. … My baking is done on the hearth fire. I bake my own bread in my pot ovens. Perhaps it is long drawn out. But it’s all I’ve ever known. Margaret Gallagher, 1992, All I’ve Ever Known In 1992, Margaret Gallagher was turning 50. She landed her first job at 46, working as a local historian. Today she’s…
Continue ReadingThat we have found the tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern. It raises questions about our ways of education and about the values that guide our conduct. Solomon Asch, Opinions & Social Pressure, 1955 1. It’s been a week of sitting and thinking as the presentations slide by. University strategic planning is a bit like a lava lamp: ideas rise…
Continue ReadingAll the routine jobs will eventually be replaced. Someone talking on the radio one morning 1 It’s the morning routine. I’m driving to work, and thinking about my job, and all around me are the people doing their jobs as I’m on my way to mine. Right there in the morning traffic, there are two men laying out bollards in a row, because something’s up and today’s the day. And beyond that the freeway and all its stuff that’s only there…
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