mundania

Author: rw

  • Ambient Assets

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    rw
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    Money has always been a medium of exchange, a social construction that enable transactions of value. Today, monetary flows seem to increasingly be simultaneously ephemeral and dependent on heavy widespread physical infrastructures. Where is it all located?  Beyond, elsewhere and beneath, infra. But also, all around like an ambience. Ambient economy based on ambient assets fostering…

  • Another 1984

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    The beginning of 2025. One year ago, on January 24, 2024 the Mundania-book was launched. It was 40 years after Apple’s iconic 1984-Commercial was aired during the Super Bowl. Much has happened since 1984. Much has happened since January 2024. Organisations, politics, businesses, and the world has transformed. Below is an excerpt from the Mundania-book…

  • Large Numbers

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    The promises and perils of AI are enmeshed with ideas and processes of number crunching and the massage of huge amounts of data and large numbers. What is the role of large numbers in today’s tech-enmeshed society?What does it mean when numbers extend beyond the horizons of imagination? Is it even possible to locate that…

  • Fields of Unknowing

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    On April 28th 2024 I performed Fields of Unknowing as part of the festival INTONAL2024. During the performance I evoked sounds and stories in The Black Room of Inter Arts Center in Malmö. Here is a video of the performance:

  • Walled Gardens

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    [This is an edited version of a post I wrote 2020 as part of what I called The Mundania Files. Some of this has also been reworked into the Mundania-book, and extended to discuss such things as transparency and what I call brandverses.] Within digital economies around 2020, major companies, such as Amazon Google, Apple,…

  • In-between

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    When technologies seem to vanish, where do they go? Do they hide in-between? This is the proposal in one of the chapters of the Mundania-book. It starts like this: When media and technologies withdraw, they can seem to vanish into thin air. They become ambient, part of the atmosphere. Ethereal. A kind of technology-induced effortless…

  • Vanishing Points

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    Points of interaction and engagement with technologies could as well be vanishing points. Where technologies and systems recede from attention. This is the theme of the chapter Vanishing Points in the Mundania-book. It starts like this: Devices, gadgets and everyday things might be the most obvious tangible entities of Mundania. Present technology. Perceivable and touchable.…

  • Arrival

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    The first chapter of the book Mundania – How and Where Technologies Are Made Ordinary is Arrival. This is how it starts: What if everyday life was approached as a life in Mundania? A realm where more and more complex and incomprehensible technologies become part of the atmosphere. Layer after layer of these technologies is…

  • Mundania – How and Where Technologies are Made Ordinary

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    Since January 2024 the book Mundania – How and Where Technologies are Made Ordinary by Robert Willim is available through Bristol University Press. This is how it is described: Digital services, platforms and arrangements are often promoted as smooth and convenient, smart or intelligent. When introduced, devices can appear utterly fascinating or awkward, even disquieting. Eventually, however,…