Velcro City Tourist Board

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a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

  • Systematized instrumental rationality

    So AI and capitalism are merely two offshoots of something more basic, let՚s call it systematized instrumental rationality, and are now starting to reconverge. Maybe capitalism with AI is going to be far more powerful and dangerous than earlier forms – that՚s certainly a possibility. My only suggestion is that instead of viewing superempowered AIs

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  • Consider the possibility

    I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit hanging around the online communities of the kind of people we are worried about reaching here, and I am here to tell you: They are using their critical thinking skills. They are fully literate in concepts like bias and in the importance of interrogating sources. They

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  • UBIquitous

    Glad to see the debate on UBI is starting to get beyond the surface gosh-wow. From a bit at Teh Graun: In their incendiary book Inventing the Future, the authors Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek argue for UBI but link it to three other demands: collectively controlled automation, a reduction in the working week, and

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  • A threshold phenomenon

    This whole fake news phenomenon is hugely important and historically significant. At the moment I’m completely captivated by the strength of an analogy between the Gutenberg era and the internet era, this rhythmic force coming out of the connection between them. Radical reality destruction went on with the emergence of [the] printing press. In Europe

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  • The interface and the illusion of control

    Most obviously, in using [smartphones] to navigate, we become reliant on access to the network to accomplish ordinary goals. In giving ourselves over to a way of knowing the world that relies completely on real-time access, we find ourselves at the mercy of something more contingent, more fallible and far more complicated than any paper

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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.