Author: Adam Fish

Atmospheric Commons

By Adam Fish | October 12, 2019

ATMOSPHERIC COMMONS This text was jointly composed by the AIR group: Hanna Husberg, Agata Marzecova, Liu Xin, Taru Elfving, Nerea Calvillo, Adam Fish & Nicolas Maigret as part of the Field_Notes BioArt Society Residency, Lapland, September 2019. It features a set of cards we conceived and that were designed by disnovation.org Air is inherently multiple. Mingling and mixing, air carries particulate matter, allergens, pollution, viruses, messages and signals. Connecting bodies, places and things at interscalar levels, air couples humans and {+}

In Hot Water: Public Bathing in Native America, Iceland, Finland, and Japan

By Adam Fish | October 5, 2019

I’ve been in a lot of hot water. I have been beaten by sharp leaves and acorn-laced oak branches in Kyrgyzstan, abused by a drunk masseuse in a Cypriot hammam, enjoyed the toxic pots of geothermal effluvia in Iceland, shattered lake ice in Finland for a cold dip, and experienced the shame and freedom of semi-public nudity in Japan. Growing up in Idaho we would get a used dome tent from the charity shop, slice a circle out of its {+}

Networking Nature: Tracking Terra, Sensing the Sea, Atmo-structures

By Adam Fish | July 10, 2019

Lately, when I have the pleasure of walking in the stacks of a regal, well-stocked, old library, and am in a devious mood, I imagine I am an alien roaming the halls of some temple of speciesism. I roll my eyes and mutter, “wow, another book by a human about a human’s perspective on something.” My alien observation describes all of human art, invention, science, and literature. More humans talking about humans and human’s views on other. Trapped in all-too-human {+}

Sokal Squared is Satire

By Adam Fish | October 12, 2018

It is a joke. I agree that the Sokal Squared project is ambitious in its scope to the point of being mean-spirited. Their findings are easy fodder for alt-right assholes. One wonders about their stated beneficent motivation despite a report somewhere claiming that two of the three authors self-identify as the type of left-wing liberal who in other contexts would celebrate the identity politics challenged by the very project. They are trying for reform–they are from Portland for fucks sake–or {+}

Interview: John Postill on his new book The Rise of the Nerds

By Adam Fish | October 10, 2018

I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. John Postill about his new book, The Rise of Nerd Politics (Pluto Press). This new book, The Rise of Nerd Politics (Pluto Press), is analytically rich and wrestles with the problem of defining and categorizing this transnational field of politically-active technologists. You unify your techpol nerds in terms of the acronym “clamp” which includes those interested in the application of computing, law, art, media, politics. I think you go a great job of {+}

On Permissionless Innovation

By Adam Fish | July 11, 2018

Many libertarians in Silicon Valley are advocates for permissionless innovation. They eschew waiting around for permission from a nanny state. They are impatient and see themselves above the law. On the one hand you can understand this. They have a good idea, a good product and they want to roll it out, people want to use, it may create jobs, for instance with Grab in Indonesia, which has created 10,000 of jobs in delivery. This approach makes sense perhaps for {+}

Drone Capitalism

By Adam Fish | June 23, 2018

In recent article, Drone Capitalism, author Michael Richardson makes a number of expected and acceptable oversights in recent scholarship on UAVs. I tend to be rough with it but I do indeed like a lot of it. Here are my thoughts—unsolicited and polemical. I’ve just finished 6 months of working with drone activists around the world and am on my arrogant high-horse. Its all meant in the spirit of support and collaboration. Seeing the drone through a critique of capitalism, {+}

Drones and Witnessing the Anthropocene

By Adam Fish | June 14, 2018

Drones sense from afar and see from a distance. They go where people can go but won’t because of cost to life or capital. Piloting precariously above coral reefs, palm oil plantations, and primary forests is not safe with a helicopter nor cost-effective. So we use drones; risk is transferred from human bodies to technology and capital costs. In these efforts, we are able to witness-from afar, with capital but little bodily risk—earth and human entanglements. In many instances this witnessing {+}

Drone Justice

By Adam Fish | June 7, 2018

There is a lot of propaganda around drones being “disruptive” technologies. I have been empirically testing the disruptive potentials of drone practices through many diverse contexts throughout the world. Between 2015 to just a few days ago I’ve been conducting participatory and ethnographic fieldwork with drone operators, inventors, entrepreneurs, fanatics, artists, and activists in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Australia, the US—including Los Angeles and Native America—and the North Atlantic—Iceland, Scotland, Denmark, and the UK trying to see how this flying Turing {+}

What flying a drone above the Agung volcano in Bali teaches us about the computerisation of the earth

By Adam Fish | November 30, 2017

For the 100,000 or so people who had to leave their homes last month, and the equal numbers of travellers stuck on, or unable to get to Bali—the eruption of the Agung volcano has been devastating. But this has been a fascinating time for a scholar like myself who investigates the use of drones—unmanned and unwomanned aerial vehicles—in social justice, environmental activism, and crisis preparedness. Amazon drone delivery is developing in the UK, drone blood delivery is happening in Rwanda, {+}