Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
As predicted, the worlds described in MOM and Genesis 2.0 lie just down the road. I wrote this “science fiction” in full knowledge it might soon be better described as history. And I was right. Consider the exponential advances of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nanotech; see what transformations they have already wrought.
Read the MAGIC CIRCLES novels for a preview of how the human condition might soon be further shaped, for example, by a global pandemic — one far … Read more
This week’s post follows on from last Thursday’s look at the selfie culture found within coffee shops of a certain standard.
Trying to account for what I witnessed, I was stuck by the notion that many of my fellow citizens seek refuge in new and improved realities. And these realities are socially and digitally engineered according to criteria that remain opaque to mere humans – including, arguably, the IT whiz kids responsible for the tech underlying these new cognitive dimensions. … Read more
Alternate universe #1
Cutsie coffee shops: Where do they all come from?
After many years in the trendy Ari Samphan area, I’ve moved to quite another flavor of Bangkok neighborhood. Like Ari, however, this one comes replete with fashionable coffee shops, and, as with the Ari area, the trendier the physical plant the cuter it is – the more it’s garnished with flounces and flowers and filled with comely young ladies dressed to the nines and brandishing camera phones. … Read more
It’s nice to see Joe Biden tackling so many urgent issues right out of the starting gate, for one thing issuing executive orders that veer away from the previous administration’s willful abdication of any responsibility, past, present or future, for climate change.
It’s also encouraging to see him elevate his top science advisor to cabinet rank.
True or false? Respect for the authority of those with specialized training and experience is declining in inverse proportion to increasing respect for authoritarian … Read more
Compared to 2020, all previous years, even the Disco Era, were the golden age of human existence.
Dave Barry, Washington Post
Good riddance 2020. The year from Hell, right? So everyone says. But it’s really only a matter of how you look at it.
Whatever. Here’s something from a collection I call “Leary’s Laws,” call it a gloss on Dave Barry’s above comment.
… Read moreThings
#1 Recover the pleasure of sinking into a long novel.
I’ve started serializing Kicking Dogs on this site (the next chapter appears next Tuesday). This novel is just 242 pages long. Hardly more than a brochure and, ideally, it’ll leave you wishing there was more of it.
MOM and Genesis 2.0 are longer. Much longer. But ideally, again, they’ll leave you wishing there was more. (In fact more of the Magic Circles series of novels is on … Read more
The signs are everywhere. West-Coast fires, climate change, habitat and wildlife destruction. The pandemic and threat of others to come. Trump’s reign, the global rise of right-wing nationalism and fascism together with widespread human displacement and migration. Social media, AI and their effects on individuals, societies and cultures. A local social and political volcano on the bubble. The price of durian. Justin Bieber outbreaks in coffee shops everywhere …
Are we indeed living in the End Times, or is it just too early in the morning and I didn’t … Read more
The following interview question was prompted by the fact I don’t take selfies. Not very often, anyway, and I rarely post photos of my private life on Facebook. In the event, the blogger either didn’t have room for my response (below), or he thought it was too dumb. So, applying the principle of waste not, want not, here goes…
Q: Let’s start with the important stuff in today’s world: Selfies. Make a closing argument for their upside as if … Read more
The Western Enlightenment, in all its euphoria at Reason’s liberation from old-crock orthodoxies, has 
thrown some babies out with the bathwater — e.g. perspectives and values that might better serve modern people. Such as? Such as common goals and values that promote individual development and satisfaction within shared senses of community. Such as universal principles by which to judge different cultural, religious and ideological institutions and actions. Rationalistic secular reductionism has been left with merely scientistic measures that seem, at … Read more
Digital editions now available for sale on the CDP website.
Print and digital versions available here and everywhere from 5 April 2017.
A GOD IS BORN!
TOO BAD ABOUT THE PERSONALITY DISORDER
So reads the graffito.
MOM is the mall operations manager — the greatest intelligence in history, a machine awakened to self-awareness at a time when the last few human survivors have withdrawn to the last two remaining refuges on Earth. Quarantined from the global nanobot superorganism … Read more
