Imperfect world

In this episode, Christopher Hobson continues his dialogue with Pete Chambers. 

The starting point for this conversation is Naomi Klein’s thought-provoking new book, Doppelganger. Using frames of mirrors, shadows and others, Klein manages to capture something about the deeply weird and warped relations that now prevail between online and the real / ‘real’ world. This serves as a prompt for a wide ranging discussion about how to und...

In this episode, Chris and Pete welcome Laleh Khalili, the Al-Qasimi Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, for a conversation about her work on the considering the forgotten space of the sea. She has explored these themes most fully in her 2021 book, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. 

The structure of the episode is the first 30 minutes is a discussion between Peter Chambers...

In this episode, Christopher Hobson continues his dialogue with Pete Chambers. 

The starting point for this conversation is the extreme summer the Northern Hemisphere has been experiencing. From there, the discussion moves from how we are individually and collectively (mis)understanding climate change, some of the consequences that come from the responses we are pursuing - notably the emphasis on electric vehicles - as well as the ...

In this episode, Christopher Hobson continues his dialogue with Pete Chambers, an Australian scholar based at RMIT University. Building on previous conversations, this exchange circles around some big themes related to the forgotten materiality of our world, the difficulties of late capitalism, the fragility and resilience of our supply chains, the energy inputs that fuel all of these activities, and much more. 

This is the first e...

In this episode, Christopher Hobson continues his dialogue with Australian scholar and writer, PC. The conversation explores how to understand the current moment in reference to institutional entropy, questioning whether polycrisis and other conceptual frames might help us comprehend the changes we are experiencing, and considering parallels and thinkers from fin de siècle Europe.

For more information, visit imperfectnotes.substack...

In this final episode of the first season of 'Imperfect World', Christopher Hobson speaks again with PC, a scholar and writer based in Melbourne.

Building on their discussion in episode 2, Hobson and PC think about the problem of the world no longer being made to fit humans, and specifically the consequences of our world effectively becoming too fast for us. The conversation revolves around a number of big themes related to narrati...

Christopher Hobson speaks with Andrew Pickering, a leading historian of science, known for his sociological studies of scientific practices and knowledge production in books such as Constructing Quarks: A Sociological History of Particle Physics, The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency and Science, and The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future.

In his work, Pickering considers different ways of acting with the world, what he ca...

Christopher Hobson speaks with Elke Schwarz, a scholar working on the political and ethical implications of digital technologies and autonomous systems. Recently, she has been returning to the insights of Günther Anders, a 20th century thinker who foreshadowed the dangers that come with untethered technological development. Applying Anders' thinking to the present moment, Schwarz reflects that, ‘with contemporary AI, the rift betwe...

Christopher Hobson speaks with Sun-ha Hong, a scholar critically analysing the claims of big data. Hong’s work fits within the framing of this series, given his emphasis on the considerable imperfections present in data and the way it is used, along with the dangers that come from taking it as objective truth about how the world really ‘is’. Rather, he points to a much more tawdry but intuitively plausible state of affairs, whereby...

Christopher Hobson speaks with Gabriele de Seta, a scholar working on machine vision, digital media and related technologies in China. The conversation develops around his piece on the Chinese term ‘black technology’ (heikeji 黑科技) which has become a buzzword in China for describing the most advanced kind of technologies. We talk about the emergence and meaning of the term, doing so in relation to some of de Seta’s other work on dig...

Christopher Hobson speaks with L.M. Sacasas, who has become a leading voice in examining the ethical, social and cultural consequences of technologies. His prior blog, The Frailest Thing, and current Substack newsletter, The Convivial Society, offer a wealth of insight, encouraging a greater awareness of the ways that technologies shape the conditions within which we live and act.

In this rich and broad ranging conversation, Hobson...

Christopher Hobson speaks with Claire Benn, a philosopher who explores how our growing reliance on digital technologies are impacting our moral landscape, and the ethical challenges that come from a world shaped by machines.

In this conversation, Claire points to the importance of thinking about how humans think, feel and act, and considering whether machines might reason and act in quite different ways. We consider the benefits th...

Christopher Hobson speaks with PC, a scholar and writer based in Melbourne, who has recently started a substack called, Living together, somehow.

The conversation commences with PC's reflections on the experience of tailgating, which are used as a way of thinking about how certain technologies shape our engagement with each other and the world. From that, the discussion traverses through considering how different cultures can lead ...

In this episode, Christopher Hobson speaks with David Cayley, who spent much of his career producing long-form radio programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

As part of this work, Cayley recorded a series of interviews with Ivan Illich, whose thinking on the way that technologies are reshaping people, as well as his acute critiques of major societal institutions, have been rediscovered in recent years. In 2021, Cayley pu...

This is a brief introduction to ‘Imperfect World’, hosted by Christopher Hobson, a scholar and writer based in Japan. It builds on the writings found on his substack newsletter, 'Imperfect Notes on an Imperfect World'.

To begin with, this conversation series will focus broadly on thinking about the relationship between society and technology. We need to examine more carefully how digital technologies are reshaping our lives, the wa...