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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Cool your head
Another day, another minor mention of immortalism in the mainstream media; this one’s rare in that it mentions the really important element of the business model of Alcor and other such cryogenics “service providers”: The majority of patients choose to take out life insurance policies naming Alcor or the Cryonics Institute as their beneficiary. Read that again. Let the implications…
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Neither good nor bad, and never neutral
The network is neither good, nor bad, and never neutral; instead, the repetition of national politics in virtual space reminds us that our digital lives take place in the context of history and society, subject to the same powers and pressures as our physical lives. The network can be occupied, controlled, forbidden and attacked in…
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Our lives are linked to land and water
Last weekend I was a guest at Brown University, Providence, appearing as a panelist at Jo Guldi’s Land & Water conference, a conclave of academics and activists with a mutual interest in the historical forces mediating our access to the environment and its resources. There should be more material to come at the link above, including session…
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The power of narrative
… narrative is the specific form taken by a written history to counter the permanence of vision. […] Narrative asserts the the power of men [sic] to be born, develop, and die, the tendency of institutions to change, the likelihood that modernity and contemporaneity will finally overtake “classical” civilisations; above all, it asserts that the…
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On the road again: upcoming appearances
My career as a musician never really got anywhere, but that doesn’t mean I don’t end up touring…
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].”