The great divide

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The future is hackable

Non-fictionDeepfakes point to a future that is simultaneously euphoric and apocalyptic: philosophers have positioned them as ‘an epistemic threat to democracy’, journalists have called them ‘the place where truth goes to die’, futurists have portrayed them as the digital harbinger of a mass ‘reality apathy’ in which even video will be a lie.

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Conferral

Non-fictionBeneath my fantasy of a regular wage is the puerile hunch that if I stay in academia, I can regain some of the nervy possibility I held as an undergraduate student. It was at university that I first met people whose days were preoccupied with thinking, reading and writing, revelatory mostly because they were compensated for these activities with bourgeois trappings and validation. With hindsight, I can recognise that my straining so doggedly to become the kind of person who succeeded according to the university’s metrics mainly taught me what bell hooks says is the primary lesson of college – namely, ‘obedience to authority’.

New shoes

FictionThis is where I work: the kind of sneaker store that stocks shoes with the names of famous American rappers or athletes. The kind of sneaker store with plywood everywhere and hip-hop and young staff who look like customers except for their fluoro lanyards. Tomorrow a famous American basketballer will drop his new line of shoes. At our morning catch-up, Corrine reads out a list of names. It’s the staff who have pre-paid for the shoes. I am on the list, and Jules and Ruby are too. Corrine reminds us that this is a ‘privilege’ for staff.

Habitat

PoetryIt was early. I recognised my fate in the bathroom mirror. Behind which he slept deep into the morning...

Notes from the ’80s

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