I’m sure this must happen to other bloggers, too; over the course of a few days, from completely unrelated sources, a set of posts on a subject of interest to you that isn’t your normal blogging subject will arrive in your RSS reader, as if orchestrated from afar.

But I’m still too woolly-headed with a cold to make some sweeping statements about synchronicity and the Zeitgeist acting in some emergent harmony … not to mention writing anything coherent and interesting about science fiction literature (with two pending book reviews stewing at the back of my brain already).

So instead, you get a round-up post on graffiti.

First up, via Anders Sandberg, comes Graffiti Archaeology - a Flash-based site that examines the accretion and interaction over time of pieces of graffiti in certain locations. Nicely made - I generally loathe Flash sites, but this is the sort of thing it actually does really well.

Next, this is what happens when a professor of psychology and culture starts looking at graffiti with the perspective of an outsider trying to understand a body of work within the context it was made in - Bill Benzon’s series of three posts [link to first in series] at The Valve feature not just images of graffiti, but examinations of the settings and contexts within which they appear. I’ve been fascinated by graffiti culture for years, but I’ve never found myself asking as many questions about it as Benzon. [The image above is clipped from Benzon's article.]

[As with much of what I read at The Valve - a group blog to which the wry and subtle Adam Roberts is a contributor - I can't be entirely sure how serious an article this is (they're way too cunning with their language sometimes) - but joke or not, it's fascinating stuff.]

And finally, Matthew Ingram’s piece at Stylus Magazine examines the history of the band logo, which has conceptual roots in graffiti as well as political activism and typography of a more pedestrian commercial type. Nice to see a couple of obscure bands that I’m a fan of raise their heads in the images included - a VCTB gold star to the person who guesses which two I mean! Answers in the comments field, if you want to play.

In the meantime, I will post something related to science fiction as soon as circumstances permit. Thanks for your patience.

ADHD is a pretty controversial topic at the best of times; throwing the Singularity into the mix only adds to that. Continue reading “ADHD and the Singularity”

Science fiction is often described as being ‘proleptic’ - as a vehicle for prediction of the future, if not reflection of the present, and a lot of debate has been kicking around the blogosphere concerning that definition. Continue reading “Coded commentary: science fiction and contemporary politics”

If you read this site regularly, you’ll know that I do tend to be a bit wide-eyed and ZOMG!!! about new technologies and gadgets. I also describe myself as a futurist, which is a word with a highly contentious set of meanings, but can be broadly described as a person who tries to peer ahead into the coming years to see not only where we are heading as a species, but hopefully what obstacles (or power-ups) lie around the next corner, too. Continue reading “Looking beyond the gadgets”

Is there an age beyond which parenthood is no longer an option? Science is increasingly saying no, although culture has a panoply of different opinions, which are not all as positive. Continue reading “New horizons for motherhood”

Is modern science fiction failing to provide the positive visions of the future that it used to? And if so, is that a bad thing - is SF somehow ‘failing its mission’? Continue reading “Does science fiction have a social function?”

The first to inhabit any new frontier are the pioneers, the early adopters. But it never takes long for the commercial interests to follow suit, seeing opportunity in the form of a space uncluttered by competitors. Continue reading “A new world of opportunities”