velcro city tourist board
a blog by Paul Graham Raven
science fiction / social theory / climate futures / infrastructure / utopian narratology / sometimes cats
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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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“Staunch”, as read for radio
Through an agreeably unlikely chain of events that started with a chat at the bar of my favourite pub, one of my stories has been recorded and broadcast on Sheffield Live!, a community radio station. For those of you keeping track, “Staunch” was originally written for Jason Heller’s CyberWorld anthology, and repubbed in Newcon Press’s…
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“Man-made, artificial, mutable” — Dunne (2005), (In)human Factors
Chapter 2: (In)Human Factors (pp. 21-42) from Dunne, A. (2005). Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design. MIT Press. # Paradigm of user-friendly design generates “enslavement […] to the conceptual models, values and systems of thought the machines embody” (p21) “By poeticizing the distance between people and electronic objects, sensitive skepticism must be…
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Face-off
Spent Sunday afternoon walking around Persistence Works on their annual open-studio day; lots of sculptors and silversmiths, some furniture-makers, painters, print-makers, mosaicists. Super building, too; gorgeous raw concrete, great views. Not sure what this thing was all about, if I’m honest (it’s a David Allsopp), but the resemblance was much remarked upon.
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].”