"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 ReadingIf we don’t sit with the rough edges of our journey, we forget how we made it. Kevin Gannon, The Tattoed Professor, ‘On being broken, and the kindness of others‘ 1 It’s Friday at the end of a long week of being trivially unwell. Trivially in the not-cancer sense, but disruptively in the whole-family-down-with-it sense, the “Oh, everyone has this, isn’t it dreadful, have you got the cough yet?” sense. Whole days in bed, shivering and sweating. And coughing. Having…
Continue ReadingAmbiguity is always at the centre of an interesting experience because this causes us to question, to wonder why a thing holds our attention. – Bill Henson, Oneiroi How will the professional identity or professionalism of academics be supported, rather than eroded as the University is proletarianised? Richard Hall, ‘On the HE White Paper‘ I can’t pin down when I started to say “professional” so much. Maybe I’m gesturing towards something that might help students think outside of the frame we place around…
Continue ReadingWhat do you stand for? Who are you? How can you know that—and operate from that position of power? bell hooks There are times that it’s hard to know what to say. Things seem to ask for a response, even just a raised hand to say “Here”. But how to start with this world? This week I discovered that the place where I work has a new brand tagline, and this is it: Stands For Purpose (It’s not that bad. My daughter’s primary school…
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