Velcro City Tourist Board

Author: PGR

  • Represent the world without reproducing it

    … science fiction is fundamentally a metaphorical literature, because it seeks to represent the world without reproducing it. Now the structure of metaphor as such is the knight’s move, my favourite manoeuvre in chess: leading you in a certain metonymic direction, the logically correct A to B to C, and indeed sometimes it leads you…

  • It’s about data and smugness.

    In practice, I don’t know that mainstream economists really care that much about the “ends” side of things. For instance, when they talk about “demand,” they aren’t talking about how many people actually want something or how badly they want it. For these guys, “demand” is the quantity of a commodity that people are willing…

  • Once more unto the breach

  • Dispositionally or structurally retrograde

    … typically as designers, and in broader culture, we’re looking for the right answer. As designers we’re still very solutionist in our thinking; just like righteous activism that pretends to have the right answer, dispositionally, this may be a mistake. The chemistry of this kind of solutionist approach produces its own problems. It is very fragile.…

  • Kitsune/Anubis adventures

    Or: what I did over the weekend; a brief but much-needed respite from the urban in a sun-drenched Hebden Bridge. Thanks to Justin and the Albion Terrace gang for hosting; photo credits to Jay “Dust Sister” Owens.