a requiem for "The Future"
What is the object of the verb "to future"? What is its subject? And what are the implications of the answers to those two questions?
Latest
feeling out the format
Less a round-up of the last week on Worldbuilding Agency, and more an exploration of what such round-ups will likely look like, on weeks when things have actually happened.
week 29 / 2024
This week: ethnography-in-reverse as an analogy for narrative prototyping... and the infrastructurality of the scroll-wheel?
Week 28 / 2024
This week: the power of moving from mere analogy to full metaphor... and why sometimes one needs to simply start.
Week 27 / 2024
This week: why it's good to end a workshop when there's still energy in the room... and why it's good (for me, at least) to act the fool somewhat.
Week 26 / 2024
This weeknotes will be brief, as the whole week has been spent on site in Bergen, Norway, doing workshops for PROJECT TEMPORAL.
And I guess you get to learn at the same time as me that there will be weeks like this, when the weeknotes simply state that you spent
Week 25 / 2024
Greetings from midsommar, a day which—as far as I can tell—matters more to most Swedes than Christmas. As a long-time fan of sunshine and warmth, I can dig it... though I'll pass on the pickled herring, thanks.
This week has been dominated by finishing the first-draft
News
schedule adjustment notice
Hello, worldbuilders!
Just a quick note to let you know: it occurred to me this morning that my spending a bunch of time compiling weeknotes which don't get emailed to you, only to then spend a shorter amount of time two days later writing a short note alerting
hot in the city 2nite
Hello worldbuilders! It's 28°C in Malmö this afternoon, and it's reliably been around that temperature in the afternoon for close to a week now.
I quite like hot weather, really, but a lot of other folk are less keen—and I dare say I'
call it in, take it off
Hello, worldbuilders! It's been quiet here this last week, because around this time on the Sunday previous I started thinking "hmm, I don't feel so great", and by the evening I was feeling (as we Brits say) like death warmed over.
Hell knows what
less magic, more traffic
Hello, worldbuilders! It feels a lot like the roundabout just hasn't stopped spinning over the week just gone—and next week it's The Conference, which means the metaphorical carny will be reaching out his hairy hand to give it another good shove... which means there'
pass the vol-au-vents
Hello, worldbuilders! And welcome to those of you who've signed up in the last few days. Glad you could come—take a chair, get yourself a drink. How are things?
We've got no Actual Announcement this week; I would announce again that I've giving
the circus comes to town
Hello, worldbuilders! This is your weekly newsthingy... and we're gonna start with An Actual Announcement.
Talk and workshop: The Conference, Malmö, Mon 26th August 2024
I will be giving a talk entitled Wisdom for worldbuilders: fictions, futures, fandoms on the morning of Mon 26th August.
Said talk is
null but not void
Hello, worldbuilders! What's been happening at Worldbuilding Agency this week?
No essay or interview
Um, yeah—bit of an absence at the middle of the week, wasn't there? Sorry about that.
There's an interview in the pipe, but it's awaiting approval from
Weeknotes
week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things
I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked...
week 35 / 2025: radio daze
Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance?
week 34 / 2025: the machine stops
When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade-flavoured parable in place of the more considered content that you'd have written if you'd not lost the time to dealing with the lemons.
week 33 / 2025: how much is too much?
Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise?
week 32 / 2025: conspiracy culture
There's nothing like looking at the disposable popular culture of three decades previous for reminding you that there's nothing new under the sun, and that history moves in waves rather than an arc.
week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity
What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me...
week 30 / 2025: in defence of magickal thinking
Divination and foresight are a deal less different than some practitioners in either camp would have you believe—both address questions of strategy through the sensemaking process of storytelling. Perhaps you'd like a free trial by way of demonstration? Then roll up, roll up, and step this way...