Max Edward Perry
@0404am.bsky.social
150 followers 280 following 38 posts
Social science researcher in Edinburgh. I look at (and try to write about): medical records, databases, bureaucracy, and clinical knowledge.
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0404am.bsky.social
Yeah, it was fun when it meant taking on a pseudo-intellectual critical class drunk on its own importance. It’s less fun when taking that position puts one shoulder to shoulder with marketeers & Netflix execs; facing down anyone considering seriously what it means to make art in contemporary life.
0404am.bsky.social
This is a good and thoughtful essay. Photo booths are a strange thing to have persisted... There is something of the absurd in their invention, and thus, double absurd in their persistence. A romantic machine.
artreview.com/how-we-were-...
3, 2, 1: How We Were Drawn Into the Photo Booth
A century after the first iteration, these public-private cameras have changed the way we think about photographs
artreview.com
0404am.bsky.social
They just haven’t thought about who those guards may end up being.
0404am.bsky.social
This seems absolutely right. Seems to me a total inversion of the “anything goes” of Feyarbend. “Nothing goes without satisfying a guard.”.
0404am.bsky.social
I think, perhaps, my tolerance for scripts quoting Sartre as though it’s esoteric text is abnormally high.
0404am.bsky.social
Last night, I watched Richard Kelly’s The Box. Afterwards, I went to read critical reviews and all of them seemed utterly stupid and wrong. I can understand a critique of that film as pretentious, but as “confused” or “boring” seems totally wrong.
0404am.bsky.social
I watched The Shrouds tonight at the cinema. A strange little film (in a good way). Seems like a real companion to Crimes of the Future.
0404am.bsky.social
I expected this to be stupid, but it's worse than I thought. “Technology has a new target in its crosshairs – and that’s us. That’s our labour.” (hmm.. he's not really thought too much about the character of technology has he?) *few sentences later* "D**r, 48, is a technology theorist." (😬)
0404am.bsky.social
Likewise. I have a lot of *thoughts* in the vague area of your talk, so it’s probably for the best you whipped away.
0404am.bsky.social
I think that’s a kindness (perhaps to both). Metascience seems —to me— to be an articulation/strategic-deployment of a certain totalitarian/positivist science. What’s more, I think there’s a straight line between it and the biology you talked about on Monday.
0404am.bsky.social
A deep well. The Alan Moore fan annotation blogs constitute a utopian vision of the World Wide Web IMO.
0404am.bsky.social
I have been reading Jerusalem for almost exactly a year (with breaks I hasten to add). The Lucy Lips/Ulysses chapter was a good month worth of reading. A remarkable thing. Look forward to reading The Great When.
0404am.bsky.social
That Providence? I loved that series.
0404am.bsky.social
Fantastic, thanks Pritesh. I'll keep you informed.
0404am.bsky.social
Yeah, seems about right; I'm guessing those are based on self-report from trusts? Don't suppose you can link me to a source for the table? Am quite interested to follow some of these numbers backwards (there was an EPR productivity claim recently that I'm also curious about!).
0404am.bsky.social
Could I ask what “the standard” is in this chart? Digital Maturity assessment? Self report on functionality? Determination made from vendor/version?
0404am.bsky.social
Giving this another “bump” as the deadline is on Friday. Happy to chat to anyone who wants to know more. I’m, tentatively, very excited for it…
0404am.bsky.social
FAO those interested in databases. We/I have an open call for a workshop running in June. More details here:
dare.ed.ac.uk/events/2025/...
Poster for “a social science of databases” workshop. Date: 17-18th June, Location: University of Edinburgh.
0404am.bsky.social
Thanks for sharing Nicola! 🎈
0404am.bsky.social
I recommend using “PDFgear” to read PDFs. It is —IMO— excellent; very light touch and has useful annotation tools should you care to use them.
0404am.bsky.social
FAO those interested in databases. We/I have an open call for a workshop running in June. More details here:
dare.ed.ac.uk/events/2025/...
Poster for “a social science of databases” workshop. Date: 17-18th June, Location: University of Edinburgh.
0404am.bsky.social
This paper from the esrly 90s had, at least, some engagement with the real process of reading and how to transpose that to screen. This type of consideration seems (to me) to have completely bifurcated to: “data” and “UX”.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Reading the medical record. I. Analysis of physician's ways of reading the medical record
Physicians were interviewed about their routines in everyday use of the medical record. From the interviews, we conclude that the medical record is a …
www.sciencedirect.com
0404am.bsky.social
I suppose I’m thinking of the ways that PDFs are considered problems to be “decoded” into structured data. As always, I’m thinking about paper medical records; how meaning was often conveyed in where something was written, how heavy the pen stroke was, style and thickness of the page etc. etc.
0404am.bsky.social
This is excellent. I’ve been thinking a lot about how database folk talk about “unstructured” and “free text” info (derisively). Stupidly, I have hardly ever thought/talked about layout and typography in these contexts.
0404am.bsky.social
Hits on two vital aspects of ML technologies:(i) they do not 'think' about their utterances; any cognition/computation is ambivalent to the images/texts that it renders. (ii) Their danger lies precisely in the outsourcing of critical engagement with the world to a standardised machine of automation.