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.
Latest
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
Week 24 / 2024
Welcome back to weeknotes at Worldbuilding Agency!
This week has mostly involved:
* the production of stories for the latest collaborative foresight cycle book from Media Evolution, plus
* a certain amount of admin, and a related amount of hurry-up-and-wait, related to PROJECT TEMPORAL
(Yes, I have grudgingly decided
Week 23 / 2024
Well, here we are again. Operations at Magrathea Futures this week have included co-planning a workshop to be delivered at the end of the month, and the slow, patient rebooting of a focussed reading-for-research practice. More news on these in weeks to come—and also on the
Week 22 / 2024
Well, where did that week go? This is, of course, the question that weeknotes are meant to answer... but the philosophers among you will surely acknowledge (however grudgingly) that no answer can ever be complete.
One Big Thing
This week's big thing was surely two days of workshops
Week 21 / 2024
This has been a difficult week, for reasons I can't quite explain, even to myself. Difficult isn't even the right word, really; it's just been a week in which it's been hard to get any traction.
There's various reasons one
Weeknotes
week 38 / 2026: condensers and collapses
In this instalment: the demise of the deodand; a history of the microphone; and a gloss on civilisational collapse. Plus: the more-than-human in Haraway! The set-pieces in Iain M Banks! And my seeming inability to say no to academic writing opportunities, despite no longer being an academic!
week 37 / 2026: time and motion
In this instalment, we examine the perceived acceleration of time’s passing, tour the tawdry campus of a failed secular techno-guru-cult, and poach processes from a wide range of writers. Plus: Iain Banks, Charlie Stross and the history of space opera!
week 36 / 2026: revise and reassess
In this instalment, three things merit a second look: the impact of three- and two-wheel EVs on oil demand; Francis Fukuyama’s “The End of History?”; and—much as it pains me to admit it—Stewart Brand’s “pace layers” model.
week 35 / 2026: scholars and sandpiles
In this instalment, I try to rescue the baby of Kevin Munger’s vision for a more public-facing form of academic scholarship from the bathwater of handwavey “AI” enthusiasm.
week 34 / 2026: boats and boxes
In this instalment: container shipping is starting to hit its logistical limits, at least on the land, even as it enables some seriously dirty business models. Plus: Byung-Chul Han, and E J Swift’s Clarke Award-winning novel When There Are Wolves Again!
week 33 / 2026: out and about
Attention conservation notice: weeknotes are (sort of) on holiday.
week 32 / 2026: nature and culture
In this episode: we wander into the forests of medieval Europe, return with the underlying imagery of Enlightenment and Romanticist thought, and then feel for their bones beneath the skin of the present.
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