PoliTech was created by and run by Dr. Lior Colclough, a then-PhD candidate (now alumnus) of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin specializing in Digital Literacies and Literature. They started the blog to experiment with addressing a non-academic and non-technologically savvy audience in an accessible, laid-back way to present some Cool Shit on the cultural and political impact of technology from their own research. The blog was discontinued in early 2020 due to the author just being too damn busy during the COVID-19 pandemic and also just not particularly liking the quality of the writing. The last few entries published in summer 2024 were initially drafts of “reviews” of apps that no longer exist and were published, largely unfinished, entirely to document the existence of these apps in a public place.
Some of the technologies described on this blog — namely, the “filter bubble bursting apps” — ended up being case studies in their dissertation. However, while the information archived regarding these (as of 2021) now-deleted apps served to provide examples in the dissertation, none of the material was self-plagiarized as obviously the writing on this blog wasn’t intended for an academic audience. While in the event of publication of a future article or book, some material on the blog may be deleted in order to avoid conflicts with a publisher in the event of a book deal, as of 2024, there is no plan to delete the blog despite the writing being fairly amateurish. It is possible the author might return to causal blogging at some point in the future.
The author’s current website is hosted at lacolclough.net.
PoliTech 