Our Times

Paul Bogard’s 2013 The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light is probably about as a good a survey of the consequences of light pollution as you’re likely to find. Bogard traces the rise of the regime of artificial lighting and its less than benign consequences for both humans and non-humans, from the

the self is no longer a subject but a project . The self is something to be optimised, to be maximised, to be made efficient, cultivated for its capacity for productive output. The worry is that all life activities become viewed as lines on a résumé. Knowingly or otherwise, we risk being constantly governed by the question How is what I’m doing

Schlick also understood that his call to playfulness was not a self-help psychological switch that can be turned on and off. It also requires structural change to do away with work that is ‘mechanical, brutalising, degrading’ or work that serves to ‘produce only trash and empty luxury’. This means that capitalism, which subjects workers to severe

But is there not some truth to claim that reality pales in comparison to the digitally mediated worlds on offer? My most straightforward answer is, of course, no. But viewed from a certain angle, perhaps. As an example, consider the case of someone who has only lived where light pollution obscures all but a few of the brightest stars. Under these