Malware production through bricolage and scalar threats
We are well into the era of advanced, generation 2.0 types of malware. Adware, ransomware, cryptocurrency miners and others use social…
What is up with the balaclavas guys?
Lovely discussion with students in my not-quite criminology classes about imagery of crime using Europol’s SOCTA 2017. The report crisply…
The illicit gift and the offer you cannot refuse
The Gift by Marcel Mauss is one of the most profound essays in sociology and anthropology. Mauss was interested in…
The real steal
In what sense is crime a coherent action category? There is the positivist sense that there is a state defined…
Once more into the uncanny valley my friends, once more
Our first autonomous robot arrived in the house last week. It is a wee fellow, hugging the ground as if…
The bedroom code – domesticating digital crime
Street encounters and digital encounters are hybrids. Trying to understand them separately will trip the ethnographer up (Lane, 2018). Lane…
Social media’s inverted layer
… the heat is on the bottom level It has been a norm that in the UK we expect public…
Institutions don’t exist
… in the abstract and also not literally in the concrete It’s a delusion of a certain type of policy…
Digital sparseness and digital innovation in South Africa
Much of what I’m writing about here I owe to the insights and research of my colleagues Alex Wafer, Kirstin…
Crimes of forgiveness
Forgiveness is good for the soul. Debt forgiveness is the juice that keeps the economy fresh. If all debts were…
