week 48 / 2024
Kneeling on the tiled floor, offering thanks and libations to the gods of ablutions—pray wash away the sin of impatience with WEEKNOTES! This week, many new projects are named, and the egg prepares to enter the incubator.
Latest
week 47 / 2024
Dunking a bog-brush into Putin's brain-pan, ranting about robots and Philip K Dick—sure, they *claim* it's WEEKNOTES, but that's just what they want you to think, maaaan!
This week, renovation approaches completion, and slavery is a concretised metaphor.
week 46 / 2024
Elbow-deep in your wardrobe, shaking the silverfish out of your winter jackets and coats—turn up your collar and face the WEEKNOTES! This week, shops have been worked, and solarities speculated upon.
think local, act global : an interview with Andrew Dana Hudson (part 2)
The second part of a long interview with solarpunk bannerman Andrew Dana Hudson. What was the Lucas Plan? What's worldbuilding good for? And where is my f*cking socially-provided jetpack? All these questions, and more, are answered within...
week 45 / 2024
Wandering the forest with a hatchet, carrying home a log poached from the royal game reserve—nay, forsooth, my liege, these were never your WEEKNOTES! This week, expectations were lowered, and thus overfulfilled.
week 44 / 2024
Facing the inevitable, like Don Corleone in a roomful of turn-coat lieutenants—certo non mi hai tradito per WEEKNOTES? This week, expectations are downrated, and essays are architecture.
case study: a practice-based perspective on participatory prototyping
How can a practice-based perspective inform a participatory prototyping project? This case study looks at the example of climate adaptation in an urban context.
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 44 / 2025: hermit walks the dunes
I'm running a three-day course on fiction-for-futures in January! In-person, on-site, and strictly limited to no more than ten participants...
week 43 / 2025: l'esprit de l'ascenseur
Marketing 101 advises that you hone your elevator pitch. I'm increasingly convinced that simplifying problems this way just makes them worse in the long run.
week 42 / 2025: reinventing the wheel
What’s the value of worldbuilding around the questions of a green transition, when participants could be spending their time developing products and services instead? I have answers!
week 41 / 2025: stuck in the middle with you
In which I channel my inner Inigo Montoya in an attempt to explain why talking about "technology" robs us of the sense of our own agency...
week 40 / 2025: the same river twice
This week, it seems I'm flagrantly mishandling Heraclitus to make a case for horizon-scanning...
week 39 / 2025: staying with various troubles
Utopias and dystopias are equally open to interpretation, as are all narratives of futurity. That's why, for me, the name of the game is to portray the messiness of hopes and fears alongside each other...
week 38 / 2025: player of games
I’m waxing philosophical this week, as I consider the potential utility of the “dark forest” theory of the internet to foresight. So please exercise your (potentially illusory) free will and click on through to follow along...