Author Archive

Dr Joss Hands (Newcastle University)

Joss Hands is Reader in Critical Theory at Newcastle University and author of @ is for Activism (2011) and Gadget Consciousness (2019), both with Pluto Press. He recently edited a special issue of Javnost: The Public on ‘Pandemic Publics’ (2022).

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I have had a laminated image pinned, stuck, or otherwise attached to various office walls for many years, since 2003 indeed, as I’ve moved between roles and institutions this has been one constant. The image is from the cover of Mute Magazine, Issue 26. It is a line drawing depicting a desk, on it a Macintosh PowerBook G4, Apple’s then state of the art portable computer – around it are drawn scenes from the global anti-capitalist struggles of the period. There is a picture of Sub-Commandant Marcos of the Mexican Zapatistas, in iconic balaclava, smoking a pipe and looking away into the mid-distance. There is another picture of workers in a field of GM crops, and one of a high-tech …