Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Futures

  • who are you trying to impress? McDonald’s Hopeland and skiffy diasporae

    It’s yer man ADH, who else? “Space is dead”, sez he: The moon landing happened because capitalism and American empire actually had a rival. These forces had to prove they could outrace, outplan, and outspend communism and Soviet empire. It was probably the biggest PR campaign of all time, if you don’t count our bloated…

  • a mixture of Vatican clergy and the Wizard of Oz: on hype, strategy, and postmodernity

    Don’t tell my mother I said this*, but as time goes by I’ve really come to appreciate the value of paying attention to the experience of old hands. Exhibit A comes with what I will gladly concede is a hefty slice of self-aggrandisement. Rodney Brooks has been working with robots and autonomous vehicles for almost…

  • workshoppin’

    In uptown Malmö today, at the first of a sequence of six collaborative foresight workshops being run by local collective Media Evolution. I’m not here as a participant, however; rather, I’m here as a writer first and foremost. ME’s foresight cycles produce a book as their final output, and I’ll be writing a good chunk…

  • leaving spaces for her readers to fill: Diana Wynne Jones as worldbuilder

    I have talked a fair bit recently about building futures (and ways of futuring) that are open, and it looks like I’m going to be talking about it a lot more in times to come. It’s an idea that I’m very committed to, but I’m also aware that it comes very much from the creative…

  • a tool, not a rule: thoughts on technique and worldbuilding

    a tool, not a rule: thoughts on technique and worldbuilding

    I’m off the the Netherlands next week, to give a couple of talks and run a workshop based on (among other things) the Magrathea Protocol essay. One of these events is public, so if you’re in or near Utrecht on Thursday 21st September (3pm to 5pm), why not come along and ask me awkward questions?…