Velcro City Tourist Board – Page 150 – science fiction / social theory / infrastructural change / utopian narratology

21 Mar 2020

an almighty crash in the heart of the form

Lovable Marxist granddad David Harvey, getting in there early on neoliberalism’s final Wile E Coyote moment: … contemporary capitalist economies are 70 or even 80 percent driven by consumerism. Consumer confidence and sentiment has over the past forty years become the key to the mobilization of effective demand and capital has become increasingly demand- and…

[… read the whole post.]

Politics 🙜 Social Theory

20 Mar 2020

no ists for this ism

Interesting squib here from Matt “Xenogothic” Colquhoun, highlighting a section of a Reddit of a discussion on accelerationism, and his description of the absurdity of identifying as an accelerationist: As far as I see it, there’s no such thing as “being an accelerationist” because there’s nothing I can do to impact the process of acceleration.…

[… read the whole post.]

Politics 🙜 Social Theory

19 Mar 2020

the self-isolation of solutionism

Via Chairman Bruce comes news that various ongoing driverless car experiments are quietly leaving town while everyone’s busy worrying about other things. If such solutionisms are even a temporary casualty of the pandemic, then we’ve already found a silver lining to this particular cloud… as Sterling notes, it’s likely that the circumstances are providing a…

[… read the whole post.]

Futures 🙜 Technology

19 Mar 2020

Corona vibes, Malmö

[… read the whole post.]

General

18 Mar 2020

stay rooted

an almighty crash in the heart of the form

no ists for this ism

the self-isolation of solutionism

Corona vibes, Malmö

Who is Paul Graham Raven?

Paul is consulting writer, researcher, theorist and foresight practitioner, as well as an author and critic of science fiction literature. More details can be found on the About page of this blog.