Velcro City Tourist Board

velcro city tourist board

a blog by Paul Graham Raven

science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats

  • charismatic megaprojects / Infrastructure fictions elsewhere

    I recently republished the text and slides of my 2013 talk “An introduction to Infrastructure Fiction” here on VCTB (under the Essays heading, which isn’t entirely accurate, but better than nothing for now). I was reminded of this (and thus prompted to remind you) by yesterday encountering a post at good ol’ Metafilter which mentioned

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  • One last week

    Time flies when you’ve a dozen dozen things to get done. I’m currently sat amidst the chaos of the early stages of packing my possessions up for the move to Sweden. This time next week, a bunch of removals people will turn up and load most of it into a large van, and take it

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  • 08FEB20 / Caturday

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  • protocols > platforms

    I used to read Techdirt, and Mike Masnick in particular, with genuine reverence when Futurismic was still a running concern. He was tech-critical long before it was fashionable to be so, but from a position that challenged my own thinking quite a bit, and still does: in short, Masnick’s about as close to First Amendment

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  • contra Maslow

    I really should have guessed, but I never did know that Ol’ Man Maslow was a management consultant. Sam Haselby at Aeon: Why was corporate America drawn to [Maslow’s] hierarchy of needs? They liked it because it offered both a grand narrative and master explanation for human psychology in a changing society and a practical

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Who is Paul Graham Raven?

“… who, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with [his] voice, thanks to the god in [him].”

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.