Category: Futures
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Snapshots from a workshop
Fast times at Sarum College, Salisbury. Thanks to DSTL for hosting.
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Against the asymptote
Joi Ito: “For Singularity to have a positive outcome requires a belief that, given enough power, the system will somehow figure out how to regulate itself. The final outcome would be so complex that while we humans couldn’t understand it now, “it” would understand and “solve” itself. Some believe in something that looks a bit…
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Justifications for critical utopianism
A strident argument for critical utopian discourse (and against technotopian solutionism) from David F Ruccio at Real-World Economics Review [via SyntheticZero]: [This] doesn’t mean utopia is irrelevant to the problem of climate change. On the contrary. The dystopian consequences of current trends clearly invite a utopian response. But it needs to be of a different…
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Red Planet Blues
A fine piece of speculative journalism from the redoubtable Geoff Manaugh: crime and policing on the off-world colonies. Full of chewy gems and story-starters, alongside the existential stuff that proponents of such neocolonial projects either ignore or lack the imagination to consider: In the precarious Martian environment, where so much depends on the efficient, seamless…
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BAU infrastructure futures
Residents of Lebanon have three basic options: buy a generator subscription, own your own generator, or splurge for what’s known as an uninterruptible power supply. When you move into an apartment, you will most often connect with the local generator owner who will set up a subscription for 5 amps, 10 amps, 15 amps, or…