Velcro City Tourist Board

Category: Futures

  • subjective and iterative magratheanism / the whys and wherefores of worldbuilding

    It’s always nice to get an insight into the creative process from an expert, and this short bit on worldbuilding by Paul McAuley is exactly that. Worldbuilding as a concept is having a bit of a moment, or so it feels, having jumped out of genre fiction theory and metastasised more widely, following in the…

  • “The We Time”: two papers on transition design

    Hesselgren, M., Eriksson, E., Wangel, J., & Broms, L. (2018, June 28). Exploring Lost and Found in Future Images of EnergyTransitions: Towards a bridging practice of provoking and affirming design. Design Research Society Conference 2018. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.324 Wangel, J., Hesselgren, M., Eriksson, E., Broms, L., Kanulf, G., & Ljunggren, A. (2019). Vitiden: Transforming a policy-orienting scenario…

  • always primed with its own conditions of dissolution and abolishment

    Interesting little essay here from one Duncan Stuart, a new name at Blue Labyrinths, which I will cite at length: [Sylvain] Lazarus takes seriously the work of French historian Marc Bloch, who argues in his 1949 book The Historians Craft, that the past is given and the future contingent. Lazarus demonstrates that for Bloch the…

  • the proneness to imply a certain grade of universality

    Yeah, this: In general, as soon as the speculative language is introduced, it is relatively easy to get people involved and excited about tomorrow’s potential, possibilities, and dangers. Even the ones who are naturally more inclined to focus on short-term challenges seem to be at ease taking a break from the everyday struggle. All in…

  • elements of that necessary magic

    Well, I sure as shit picked a great week to start using the birdsite again, didn’t I? Man, you should have been here for the Game of Thrones' finale. Now *THAT* was a night. — Martin McGrath (@martinmcgrath) January 6, 2021 I don’t have much to say about it all, really—which isn’t to say I…