As an ethnographer of porn, I entered the field with some hard limits and never crossed them. I never ended up doing anything I regretted, but the pressure to push myself and my boundaries was palatable that evening.
Ep. #41: Mediocrity, Confusing Cake, Public Accountability & Gift Reciprocity: This month on TFS
Simon (0:48) kicks off this panel by asking us about mediocrity. He reflects on his fieldwork in Iran, where he observed – particularly in the education sphere - that there was a very small difference between being ‘perfect’ and being a ‘failure’. “In Australia we…have this kind of uncomfortable-ness, I think, with excellence and the … Continue reading Ep. #41: Mediocrity, Confusing Cake, Public Accountability & Gift Reciprocity: This month on TFS
Paying back or paying forward: What does it mean to give?
I was lucky to have Mexican friends to put me up, ferry me around, shower me with food and attention, without asking for a thing in return. It wasn’t long, however, before their hospitality began to overwhelm me. I felt compelled to return the generosity in whatever meagre way I could – and hamstrung by my inability to do so.
Ep. #40 Robot Reflections: Inger Mewburn on researching researchers & welcoming our robot overlords
“Machine learning is a broad area of study, and that’s one thing you don’t see from a distance, is how broad it is. We like to do what we call human-in-the-loop type of machine learning, which is a co-creation of something. So, what we’re using is the machine to, sort of, both capture our knowledge … Continue reading Ep. #40 Robot Reflections: Inger Mewburn on researching researchers & welcoming our robot overlords