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a blog by Paul Graham Raven

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

science found it hard to converse with the rest of society

Nice to see a typically long LRB review of Latour’s last two books, but Harding makes a bit of a blunder here, perhaps due to his not having been party to decades of STS discourse: There was a hint in We Have Never Been Modern that science found it hard to converse with the rest…
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Climate Change 🙜 Criticism 🙜 Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory

8 Dec 2022
the theology of capital

The primary product sold by all management consultants – both software developers and strategic organisers – is the theology of capital. This holds that workers are expendable. They can be replaced by machines, or by harder-working employees grateful they weren’t let go in the last round of redundancies. Managers are necessary to the functioning of…
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General 🙜 Politics 🙜 Social Theory

7 Dec 2022
intellectual fracking / notes toward the declaration of the Butlerian jihad

Friend-of-the-show Jay Springett talks a lot about “cultural fracking”, and is back on that beat this weekend. I’m feeling it; the big cultural events I’ve seen discussed this morning in the various feeds I follow have included another Star Wars prequel, another Indiana Jones movie, a “dark” Pinocchio remake. (Lest you think I’m pretending not…
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Criticism 🙜 Futures 🙜 Philosophy 🙜 Social Theory 🙜 Technology 🙜 Writing

4 Dec 2022
bashing the wordbashers

Another one of those moments when I find myself very much in the same camp as Alan Jacobs, who is here responding to a THORT LORD bit on the future of writing in a world where AI is a thing. Part of my reaction might well be due to the THORT LORD in question, because…
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Futures 🙜 Science Fiction 🙜 Writing

2 Dec 2022
a true metaphysics of our time

Everything that was ever sold and created in human history is now interpreted in terms of physical wellbeing. That is fascinating because it is a true metaphysics of our time. It is a metaphysic in a sense that our own body is a meta-object to us. I am not talking about this metaverse. The metaverse…
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Philosophy

1 Dec 2022

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.