First, anthropologists are too dismissive of contemporary and non-anthropological discussions of new tech. That bugs me. Second, anthropologists these days do a shitty job relating what they have learned, about technology and change in other times and places to issues of change and tech today. No one mentioned arcaeological work about tech and change (there's a huge literature here); no one mentioned irrigation systems and their relationship to political systems (water, like information in a fiber cable, flows and can be shut off at the source and re-directed, resulting in dry fields, conflict, and interesting forms of social organization, depending).

Funny: I stumbled on this blog because I was looking around for stuff about collaboration and ethnography for a project on automobility. Didn't expect to see a link to our website! Thanks for that.

_ken_

…