What follows is just a word-sketch of an afternoon visit to Goethehof in Vienna. I have flawed conversational German, have never visited any archive in Vienna (although I would like to) and have access to only a small number of books while I’m staying in the city. But sometimes impressions can be useful in termsContinue reading “Goethehof, Vienna: First Impressions”
Author Archives: DannyB
The train to Red Vienna
The internet never sleeps. Throughout the night, cloud services, DNS servers, satellites, fibre optic networks, submarine cables are full of the relentless energy of packet switching data. In the early morning I wake up after a restless sleep in a cheap hotel room in Zurich. ‘Try the clear Zurich water!’ a sign says on theContinue reading “The train to Red Vienna”
The train to Zurich
The waiting time marches along quite briskly. I walk around St Pancras station, buy some more snacks, a roll, extra water, cheese straws, a large bar of chocolate. The days have become blurred and confused. It’s Thursday but I’m out of synch with myself by 24 hours. It’s still Wednesday somewhere in my head thatContinue reading “The train to Zurich”
Unwrapping a Book
The book is in a white padded envelope. At one end there is a thin red tape and when that’s pulled it rips through the outer shell and the book can be pulled out. There is now a layer of clear plastic bubble wrap. Perhaps it’s that sort of day. I peel away the sellotapeContinue reading “Unwrapping a Book”
Fragmentation and Unity
A fragmentation and unity of machines. Machines in individual locations, factories separated from one another, in competition to produce the means of life. The widespread standard of TCP/IP, proprietary software systems that cannot be integrated, producing replication and barriers to data sharing, oligarchic control of DNS servers, fibre optic networks. The lines of computing codeContinue reading “Fragmentation and Unity”
Karl Marx in Soho, 1851
A dozen sheets of paper, printed with double-spacing. It’s easier to read. It is a collection of streets in Soho, and Dean Street in particular. A list of dates of buildings and their uses, trades and occupations and the details of the 1851 census. At number 28 Dean Street is recorded Charles Mark, his wifeContinue reading “Karl Marx in Soho, 1851”
Waitresses of the world, unite
‘The plan never works out’, my friend the dust cart driver said, and laughed, knowingly. His plan is to return home to Africa and farm maize. But for now, he’s still driving the dust cart as he calls it. ‘But it’s no longer just a truck’, he continues, ‘it’s an office’. And describes the useContinue reading “Waitresses of the world, unite”
Paris & the Modern Workers
Arriving in Paris Paris appears suddenly; as if the train has travelled through a gate. Before we reached the gate, it was a landscape of rolling hills covered with grass and wheat and cheerful bunches of trees and stand alone farmhouses with whitewash walls and red tile roofs. Out in this countryside we flashed pastContinue reading “Paris & the Modern Workers”
The Impossibilities of Money
Paris rain. It gets everywhere. Even deep under the city in the Line 1 Metro there’s rain. On the umbrellas of those who’ve just got into the carriage. It drips onto the floor. The rain is on people’s shoes and hair. It’s on the bronze silk skirt of the young woman with the black hairContinue reading “The Impossibilities of Money”
Gateways
A Bulgarian shopkeeper who gave me a box to recycle paper, a physiotherapist from Kerala who described the history of the Communist Party there, a Rumanian woman on the street who explained she has always worked and paid her taxes and doesn’t care much for the way some people go on about immigrants, an AfricanContinue reading “Gateways”
Commodity Fetishism 