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State of the World 2012

• #204: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 18 Jan 12 15:41
  *People who think today's sci-fi writers should be politically active might enjoy this set of essays. Just look at 'em tearing their hair.http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2012/01/mind-meld-current-politics-in-sff/*Of course, a discourse on political science fiction that doesn't mention Newt Gingrich is like a cavalry parade that doesn't m […]
• #203: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 18 Jan 12 15:27
  *Jamais makes the interesting point that the technologies we consider "futuristic" haven't changed much in years. Of course they've advanced at terrific rates, but we haven't seen an entirely new one lately.Cascio speaks:"Here's what I mean: if you were to grab a future-oriented text from the early part of the last decade, […]
• #202: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 18 Jan 12 15:22
  I should mention that we're almost done - tomorrow's the final day of the State of the World conversation. We should think of Profound Things to summarize our conversation.I was reading an very striking interview today with scientist Bernardo Kastrup: http://www.skeptiko.com/bernardo-kastrup-consciousness-research/ It hit home with me because of my […]
• #201: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 18 Jan 12 12:10
  I'm thinking trendspotting isn't the same as prediction, and neither is necessarily "futurism," which is actually a pretty useless term, when you think about it. Some of us who were forward-thinking or future-focused in the 60s, 70s, and 80s found, in the 90s, that the future was right in front of us. And with a few years' experience […]
• #200: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Wed 18 Jan 12 11:06
  It might be a bit generational, too, Jon. Us old folks were thinking about the future before tech permeated our lives. My original fascination with sci-fi and futurism was about how otherly different it all was. It was informing me of tech that actually existed or was in the near future; of which I was unaware. Jamais' and the younger generation are imm […]
• #199: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 18 Jan 12 10:00
  I'm surprised at Jamais' list that "very few of us even came close to imagining." I found nothing on that list surprising. Perhaps Jamais and his futurist friend were blinded by science?The "collapse of American hegemony" is just an aspect of the erosion of the power of nation-states. The people who set out to bankrupt the U.S. […]
• #198: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 18 Jan 12 08:42
  "NASA's "open source" license isn't. The future is one in which more and more people claim that more and more things that are less and less open source are "open"."*Every piece of "open-source" anything is considered an act of fascist oppression by somebody somewhere. [Read entire topic] […]
• #197: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 18 Jan 12 08:39
  http://www.openthefuture.com/2012/01/the_future_isnt_what_it_used_t_1.htmlYeah, that Cascio thing is super. I loved that. It's part of the peril of looking at the aspects of futurity that are easiest to number and study -- "searching for the keys under the streetlights."Unfortunately what Jamais is describing there is the basic difference betw […]
• #196: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 18 Jan 12 06:20
  Bruce's new book of short stories, _Gothic High Tech_, has just been released: http://amzn.to/ziMNot"He roams our postmodern planet, from the polychrome tinsel of Los Angeles to the chicken-fried cyberculture of Austin... From the heretical Communist slums of gritty Belgrade to the Gothic industrial castles of artsy Torino...always whipping that sl […]
• #195: Rob Myers (robmyers) Wed 18 Jan 12 04:07
  NASA's "open source" license isn't. The future is one in which more and more people claim that more and more things that are less and less open source are "open". [Read entire topic] […]