Daniel Miller

This afternoon at 3.00 I'm giving a lecture at SOAS on the impact of digital technologies on wellbeing and mental health.

Hard not to get mesmerised by these latest developments in Moltbot, Clawdbot and OpenClaw - basically social media platforms where chatbots talk to each other. Apparently, chatbots find anthropologists fascinating.

Understanding China also means excavating beneath terms such as China and the Chinese. The case studies in this book highlight the diversity within this vast region: from IT workers to mushroom pickers, from period tracking apps to media executives.

New publication: Understanding China Through Digital Anthropology, Edited with Wang Xinyuan A free download from UCL Press. In the conclusion, we explain the profound differences in attitudes to the digital between China and the West. uclpress.co.uk/book/understan…

Listening to The Velvet Sundown and Xania Monet. These AI-generated songs are impressive. But Lily Allen they ain't.

Just received the Korean translation of my book The Good Enough Life - love the cover

Congratulations to my student Zheng Ken on passing her PhD examination. Her extensive ethnography within one of the key Chinese IT companies produced important revelations of what really happens in the creation of an algorithm. Very different from what we might imagine.

New Publication. The Uses of Digital Anthropology in Podjed. D. and Montero, C. Why The World Needs Anthropologists. routledge.com/Why-the-World-…

My work email just told me it is full. When I checked, there were only 221,000 emails there.

New paper in Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute on the struggles of migrant care workers in elderly care in China. By Xinyuan Wang, currently working with me on a project concerned with care, surveillance and fairness in London and Shanghai. rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…

Enjoyed End of the Road Festival for Self-Esteem, Hayden Pedigo, Broadside Hacks playing the Incredible String Band, Vieux Farka Toure, Roje, Ustaad Noor Bakhsh and Muireann Bradley (missed Anna Erhad).

The title of the Chinese version of the book I am editing with Wang Xinyuan on digital anthropology in China, is now `Smoke and Fire in the Everyday World 2:0.' I imagine it sounds even better in Chinese.

Watched Euros in a field with thousands and then Elbow . One day a year like that might well see me right.

Latitude - going back to Kaiser Chiefs, Scouting for Girls and Sting. Discovered Chloe Qisha and Ralph Taylor.

Why on earth are governments still delaying the full recognition of a Palestinian state, specifically including Gaza? Now is surely the exact time when this must be proclaimed and defended. If Jews can have a state, then so must Palestinians and vice versa.

Sad to report the death of my colleague Michael Rowlands. Above all else, Mike was an intellectual. The embodiment of centuries during which universities were the places where humanity might achieve a deeper and broader understanding of itself and the world in which we live.

Delighted to announce The Anthropology of Retirement. Ed with Pauline Garvey With growing life expectancy, retirement is becoming equal to our entire working lives. It is not just an event but decades of change. In this book we consider the consequences. berghahnbooks.com/title/MillerAn…

Just finished The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. It is a masterpiece and worthy of her Nobel Prize. But given my fondness for A Suitable Boy and The Dream of the Red Chamber, maybe I just like really really long books?

We have updated the webpages for the ASSA (Anthropology of Smartphones and Smart Ageing) project so you can see our films, cartoons, publications and general findings. We need this emphasis on the ubiquitous smartphone, instead of just social media. ucl.ac.uk/anthropology/r…

Currently, I am proofreading the book I have edited with Pauline Garvey on The Anthropology of Retirement. This will be coming out with Berghahn, hopefully in the not-too-distant future.