In the previous edition of Cassandra Voices Eoin Tierney explored the extent to which data is routinely harvested in a variety of ways, some of which we cannot easily control. This extends to hardware used to measure one’s fitness. Fitbit, a company producing a famous activity tracker, is no exception. Data gleaned from these devices, … Read more
We can only imagine how poetry entered human consciousness. I intuit that its emergence was linked to the first use of fire, that most seminal of technologies, whose devouring mysteries transfix us with a spirit that endows our own. I see one among a band awakening from a dream, and entering a trance. She incants … Read more
When I first moved to Dublin, I thought there were a lot of out-of-shape athletes living in the city. I later learned that my misconception was the same as the basis of a joke that had been topical fifteen or twenty years before I got there. The joke was about a politician opening a shopping … Read more
95 While someone exhorts us In song to sing to God, I’ve looked askance and asked, is he Among us here or not? And found that question, off its no-man’s land Uptaken then in hand, Lies with sheep in shade, And takes its rest in space, Beneath a large-leafed chestnut, bright With burning candles, placed … Read more
All our biographies, if they went back far enough, would begin by explaining how our ancestors came to be more or less enslaved, and to what degree we have become free of this inheritance. Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity (London, 1995), p.7 We are facing a world in a state of perpetual conflict, … Read more
I am made endless for your pleasure Again and again emptied and filled A frail vessel ever with fresh life And melodies eternally new Breathed through me As though a little reed flute Cast over the earth And at your hand’s immortal touch My small heart loses all limits of joy To create ineffable utterances … Read more
In and between these lines I will explore aspects of the fascinating and dynamic relationship between music, identity and place. Reflecting on my own musical ventures, as well as turning to secondary sources discussing theoretical concepts on the topic, I will point to various ways in which one’s relation to a place is both reflected in, … Read more
The Internet is a big old scary place, full of dark corners, strange protocols, dodgy individuals, unscrupulous corporations and cynical state-level actors. The tools we use to access the Internet, though often very powerful, remain badly-designed. This is true not only in terms of the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI), but also in … Read more
June 1985: I was at work in my garden shed, when I heard someone talking. I looked out and saw a man with a sub-machine gun. He was guarding the back of the old synagogue, that had become the Irish Jewish museum. President Chaim Hertzog, who was raised in Dublin, was opening it that fine … Read more
One evening, while walking on Derada Hill, a hare sprung from under my feet. I found myself, all of a sudden, on the ground burying my head in the warm form left in the grass, and I asked that primordial form to act as a poultice, to draw out my expensive European education from my … Read more