SEASON TWO - 10 JULY 2024

Progression to Analog

exploring a more human everyday

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Progression to Analog Podcast with Caitlin Begg

Progression to Analogue Podcast with Caitlin Begg

About the Podcast

In Progression to Analog, Caitlin Begg, founder of Authentic Social and sociological researcher, speaks with practitioners and academics across Europe about ways to explore a more human everyday amidst technological modernity. Progression to Analog aims for listeners to emerge from each episode with practical strategies for a more human-centered and technologically balanced personal and professional life as well as with a nuanced comprehension of the underlying structures shaping the broader aspects of technological modernity.

About Caitlin Begg

Caitlin Begg is the founder of Authentic Social and a sociological researcher, focused on conversation, sociotechnical systems, human-computer interaction, and AI. She founded Authentic Social in 2016 after writing her undergraduate Harvard sociology honors thesis on virtual impressions and digital communication's effect on social interaction. About Authentic Social Authentic Social (offices in New York and Amsterdam) brings an education-forward approach to sociotechnical systems strategy.

Caitlin presents her research around the U.S. and ​Europe, recently at the Responsible Artificial ​Intelligence Forum in Munich, re:publica in Berlin, ​Tech Open Air, and more. Her professional and phi​lanthropic efforts have been featured in Forbe​s, The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, i Paper​, Masha​b​le UK, and more.


In her free time, some of Caitlin​’s other interests include film photography, dérives, ​vintage collecting (including out-of-print technology ​and history of the internet magazines), rowing, and ​editing Wikipedia. Since 5 September 2022 and ​without exception, Caitlin has begun each day ​reading nonfiction before any cell phone ​o​r computer use. ​


caitlinbegg.com

caitli​n​@authentic.social


About Authentic Social

Authentic Social (offices in New York and Amsterdam) brings an education-forward approach to sociotechnical systems strategy.


The transformation of everyday life toward a more human daily existence filled with unmediated experiences begins with a


PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.


To rid daily life of the temporal discontinuities which techno-capitalism and the neoliberal regime have normalized, we must deconstruct everyday life and our "phone brain" era.


To move with our bodies, it begins with constructing situations in which we can free our minds from the chokehold of pseudo-cyclical time and return spontaneity and creativity to daily life.


The body is a movement,

the mind is not a machine...


we must nourish it with unmediated experiences and a


PROGRESSION TO ANALOG.

From "Everyday Conversation: The Effect of Asynchronous Communication and Hypercommunication on Daily Interaction and Sociotechnical Systems", which I have presented at major academic conferences around the United States and Europe as part of my ongoing independent sociological research following my 2016 undergraduate Harvard sociology thesis, "Virtual Impressions: The Effect of Digital Communication on Millennial Social Interaction" (see more in resume).

Since September 5, 2022, I read every morning (without exception) before going on my phone. This looks different each day - some mornings an hour or so of reading, on crazy days sometimes just a page or two. This often involves a lot of margin scribbles. Every time I read I date the page, and note where I am and the general time of day.


As a result of this habit, I decreased my screen time by over 65%.


The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem



See below for some of my favorite non-fiction and critical theory reads from the past few years. I have also sourced advertisements from over seven decades of out-of-print technology magazines, tracing the route of the deliberate manipulation of consumers to accept technological determinism as an everyday reality. (See the next section for some examples - the first four are scans, the next photographs are more low-quality photos of the frames in current exhibit.)

BOOKS AND ONLINE ARTICLES (3x more since last updated this list)


  1. *Balkin, Jack M. and Zittrain, Jonathan. 2016. “A Grand Bargain to Make Tech Companies Trustworthy.” The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/information-fiduciary/502346/).
  2. *Baudrillard, Jean. 2012. The Ecstasy of Communication. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e). Originally published 1987.
  3. **Baudrillard, Jean. 2011. Passwords. Verso Books. Originally published 2000.
  4. **Baudrillard, Jean and Robin N. 2022. Simulacra & Simulation. Fourth Edition - NYABF Exclusive ed. Crisis Editions. Originally published 1981.
  5. **Baudrillard, Jean. 2020. The System of Objects. Verso Books. Originally published 1968.
  6. *Bennett, Jessica. 2014. “Bubbles Carry a Lot of Weight.” The New York Times(https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/fashion/texting-anxiety-caused-by-little-bubbles.html)
  7. **Berardi, Franco. 2018. Breathing - Chaos and Poetry. MIT Press.
  8. **Carpenter, Tim. 2022. To Photograph Is to Learn How to Die. The Ice Plant.
  9. Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The Shallows: How the Internet Is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember. London: Atlantic.
  10. Cotton, Ethel. 1969. The Art of Conversation. London: Conversation Studies, a division of Markus-Campbell Company, Educational Publishers.
  11. Coulon, Alain. 1995. Ethnomethodology. Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications.
  12. **Debord, Guy. 1983. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, MI: Black & Red. Originally published 1967.
  13. **Debord, Guy. 2011. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Verso Books. Originally published 1988.
  14. Debord, Guy. 1988. Commentaires sur la Société du Spectacle. Éditions Gérard Lebovici. 1988.
  15. Durkheim, Emile. 1952. Suicide. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Originally published 1897.
  16. Ellul, Jacques. 2021. The Technological Society. Vintage.
  17. Fine, Debra. 2005. The Fine Art of Small Talk. Hachette Books.
  18. Focault, Michel. 1977. Discipline & Punish - The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books. Originally published 1975.
  19. *Frankfurt, Harry G. 2005. On Bullshit. Princeton University Press.
  20. Freitas, Donna. 2013. The End of Sex: How Hookup Culture is Leaving a Generation Unhappy, Sexually, Unfulfilled, and Confused about Intimacy. New York: Perseus Group.
  21. Gallagher, Bernard J. 2002. The Sociology of Mental Illness. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  22. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. The Agony of Eros. MIT Press.
  23. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Burnout Society. Stanford Briefs.
  24. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2020. The Disappearance of Rituals. Polity Books.
  25. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. In the Swarm. MIT Press.
  26. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2021. Infocracy - Digitalization and the Crisis of Democracy. Polity Books.
  27. *Han, Byung-Chul. 2021. The Palliative Society. Polity Books. Originally published 2020.
  28. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. Psychopolitics. Verso Books.
  29. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. Saving Beauty. John Wiley & Sons.
  30. **Han, Byung-Chul. 2015. The Transparency Society. Stanford Briefs.
  31. Heidegger, Martin. 1993. Basic Writings: Revised and Expanded Edition. HarperSanFrancisco.
  32. *Hemmens, Alastair and Gabriel Zacarias. 2020. The Situationist International. Pluto Press (UK).
  33. Heritage, John. 2008. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
  34. **Hernandez Motaghy, Mark Anthony. 2022. Rehearsing Solidarity - Learning from Mutual Aid. Thick Press.
  35. **Jurgenson, Nathan. 2019. The Social Photo. Verso Books.
  36. Klosterman, Chuck. 2022. The Nineties: A Book. New York: Penguin Press.
  37. **Koren, Leonard. 2008. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. Imperfect Publishing.
  38. Lefèbvre Henri. 2014. Critique of Everyday Life the One-Volume Edition. London: Verso. First published 1961-1981.
  39. *Lorusso, Silvio. 2019. Entreprecariat - Everyone is an Entrepreneur. Nobody is Safe. ONOMATOPEE (Eindhoven, NL).
  40. *Morris, James. 1986. Art of Conversation. Simon and Schuster.
  41. **McLuhan, Marshall. 1967. The Medium Is the Massage. Bantam Books.
  42. Papanek, Victor. 2022. The Green Imperative: Ecology and Ethics in Design and Architecture. Thames & Hudson. Originally published 1995.
  43. **Tarnoff, Ben. 2022. Internet for the People. Verso Books
  44. *Tiqqun. 2020. The Cybernetic Hypothesis. MIT Press.
  45. Tolmie, Peter and Mark Rouncefield. 2016. Ethnomethodology at Play. Routledge.
  46. Tolmie, Peter and Mark Rouncefield. 2016. Ethnomethodology at Work. Routledge.
  47. Turkle, Sherry. 2017. Alone Together. Basic Books.
  48. **Turkle, Sherry. 2015. Reclaiming Conversation. Penguin.
  49. *Vaneigem, Raoul and Donald Nicholson-Smith. 1983. The Revolution of Everyday Life. Rebel Press. Originally published in 1967.
  50. Vaneigem, Raoul. 1967. Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations. Gallimard.
  51. Vanhoe, Reinaart. 2016. Also-Space, From Hot to Something Else: How Indonesian Art Initiatives Have Reinvented Networking. ONOMATOPEE (Eindhoven, NL).
  52. **Walsh, Joanna. 2022. Girl Online. Verso Books.
  53. Wiener, Norbert. 1988. The Human Use Of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society. Da Capo Press.
  54. *Yanagi, Soetsu. 2019. The Beauty of Everyday Things. Penguin UK.
  55. Yu-cheng, L. Making the world observable and accountable: An ethnomethodological inquiry into the distinction between illustration and exhaustion. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 9, 296 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01314-1
  56. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2008. The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It. Yale University Press.
  57. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2022. “How to Fix Twitter and Facebook.” The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/elon-musk-twitter-takeover-mark-zuckerberg/661219/).
  58. *Zittrain, Jonathan. 2021. “The Internet Is Rotting.” The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2021/06/the-internet-is-a-collective-hallucination/619320/).


MAGAZINE ARTICLES AND ADVERTISMENTS

(PREVIEW - INDEXED THOUSANDS SO FAR ACROSS NIINE DECADES


  1. Panorama. February 1980; first issue. “Help I’m a Prisoner of my Video Recorder”.
  2. Creative Computing. August 1980; volume 6, number 8. “Join the Apple Infantry”.
  3. Personal Computing. September 1980. “Cover art”.
  4. Byte. October 1980; volume 5, number 10. “Cover art”.
  5. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “The brains of men and machines”.
  6. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “In control”.
  7. Byte. November 1980; volume 5, number 11. “Permanent relief”.
  8. OMNI. November 1988. “Brains for sale!”
  9. Newsweek. August 8, 1994. “The birth of the internet”.
  10. Yahoo! Internet Life. February 1999. “Cover art: Love (and Sex) Online)”.
  11. Time. February 17, 2014. “The first time I swiped”.
  12. Time. January 28, 2019. “How to fix social media before it’s too late”.

WHY CAN LIFE BE SO DEEPLY UNFULFILLING? SOME OF THIS ENNUI MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO THE DEARTH OF CREATIVITY AND SPONTANEITY IN EVERYDAY LIFE. WE MUST MOVE AGAINST THE SUBVERSIVE FORCES THAT STRIP EVERYDAY LIFE OF ITS JOY. TO RECLAIM OUR BODIES, MOVE TO A FOCUS ON LIVED EXPERIENCE VERSUS MEDIATED REALITIES. ENGAGE IN SPIRITED DISCUSSION WITHOUT PRESUPPOSED NOTIONS; CONVERSATIONAL DÉRIVES. WE MUST SEEK TO DEVELOP THE SELF AND OUR RELATIONSHIPS OUTSIDE THE CHOKEHOLD OF TECHNOCAPITALISM.

I currently have a “PROGRESSION TO ANALOG” exhibit on display in my lower Manhattan apartment. I covered the walls with over 572 film photographs of everyday life.


Since September 2022, I have spent countless weeks shooting film of the everyday, everything from the banalities and beauty in daily meals an unmade bed to the spectacular. Subconsciously and consciously inspired by exhibits like The Stedelijk's "Everyday, Someday and Other Stories" and The MoMA's "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound" (see below).

One of the bookshelves in my lower Manhattan apartment with my working analog phone

Get in touch

caitlin@everydayconversation.com

Research

Learn more about Caitlin Begg's independent sociological research at

everydayconversation.com.

Social

In Blue Logo Vector
Flat Fill Twitter Icon
Black Instagram Logo