What we have in academia, in other words, is a microcosm of the economy as a whole: a self-enriching aristocracy, a swelling and increasingly immiserated proletariat, and a shrinking middle class. The same devil’s bargain stabilizes the system: the middle, or at least the upper middle, the tenured professoriate, is allowed to retain its prerogatives—its comfortable compensation packages, its workplace autonomy and its job security—in return for acquiescing to the exploitation of the bottom by the top, and indirectly, the betrayal of the future of the entire enterprise.
More you might like
Erik Wernquist’s Wanderers offers some perspective.
Jason K. Smith’s Beautiful Programming is a great collection of P5.js sketches.
This is an old one, but entirely appropriate, either as a celebration of things done, or as a celebration of what just feels right in times that feel so, so wrong. The Most Satisfying Video in the World, as compiled by Digg editors. Beware that searching for The Most Satisfying Video in the World on YouTube opens a Pandora’s box of endless satisfaction. Do that at your own peril.
Things that never cease to amaze: Demoni by Theodore Ushev, in which vynil records are turned into Zoopraxinoscope discs through the syncing of the camera shutter with the record player’s rotation.
Ushev is the author of the incredible Sleepwalker (trailer) I watched at this year’s Cinanima animation film festival (where Demoni had won an award a few years back): as if Oskar Fishinger’s classic films had art by Joan Miró, but in an effortlessly undated way. Nice.
Noya and Bill Brandt with Self Portrait (Although They Were Watching This Picture Being Made), by David Hockney (1982). A fascinating pience on its own merits, discussed as metaphor in Frank Chimero’s great speech about responsive web design and technological determinism The Web’s Grain. Go read it, now.