NASA caused quite a stir with a recent announcement of their intent to return to the moon and establish a full-time colony there. Continue reading “Small steps before giant leaps - why we should be planning to build orbital colonies before lunar colonies”

Modern communication technologies such as the internet are providing new tools and channels for citizens to use in their interaction with governments - and vice versa. Is it time for citizens and governments alike to accept the changed landscape of politics, and begin opening up the ’source code’ of democracy to closer inspection?

Continue reading “Democracy 2.0 - Opening the Black Boxes of Government”

Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to indulge in a brief spate of patting-my-own-back on a dark wet Friday evening:

Continue reading “Friday Photo Blogging! My finest hour (so far)”

In fifty year’s time, people will look back and laugh at us for a lot of reasons. Apart from the fashions (“d00d, those jeans, like WTF!!!1!1”), what gets the biggest chuckles will surely be the hopelessly outdated concept of representative democracy.

Continue reading “The Demise of the Demagogue”

“Synthetic worlds are big business. And not just for their creators – there are a growing number of people and businesses making a living in the real world by working in simulated ones. Continue reading “The Potential Of Synthetic Worlds”

Cory Doctorow’s latest column for Locus Online discusses the topical hot potato of copyright, in the context of a world where the electronic distribution of entertainment media is becoming increasingly commonplace; his previous piece had a similar remit. The thing that astonished me most about these two columns was this: the utter lack of public reaction to them from the online sf community.

Continue reading “Has science fiction gone future-blind?”

Now, I’m not usually one to boast or crow. Continue reading “It’s an exclusive!”

No, not here, I’m afraid…which is probably a good thing, as I doubt mine host’s ISP would be awfully happy with that sort of bandwidth consumption, let alone the humble little Linux server where VCTB resides. Continue reading “Slashdotted!”

Talking about conscious machines often provokes visions of dark-future scenarios akin to those in the Terminator movies, where humanity is beseiged by robots which were, in a fit of typical human hubris, created in man’s own image. There are researchers trying to build conscious machines today, but their aims and ideas are as far from these science fiction movie nightmares as one could imagine - much more mundane, but at the same time quietly astonishing in their own right. Continue reading “Conscious Machines interview”

Today is, in some ways, a sad day.  Continue reading “End of an era”