week 30 / 2026: here and elsewhere
In this episode: contemplating the end of the Western cosmopolitan urge; hanging with the New York neoLuddites; and Silicon Valley’s highly selective readings of science fiction. Plus, G K Chesterton!
prefiguration
week 28 / 2026: flats and boxcars
In this episode: can you make the words come without effort? You might think your LLM is helping, but really it’s a fast track to empty mediocrity. In the meantime, why not get a grip on your curiosity and (re)learn to enjoy reading books the old-fashioned way?
week 23 / 2026: now and then
In this edition of weeknotes: Adam Curtis on the trap of self-hood, USians on their preference for the present over “The Future”, Sherryl Vint on the merging of the two meanings of speculation, and Chris Butler on the necessary friction of the uncertain present...
week 10 / 2026: futures and histories
Reading round-up: defining “interiority” in fiction, and how it works; science fiction (and fantasy) as essentially historical in character; declining “declinism” in the struggle for a new media literacy. Plus a 1993 novel that feels like it was plucked from the fevered nightmares of Elon Musk.
week 8 / 2026: maps and compasses
Reading round-up: wind-powered freight (and how I think about weak signals); how audiences have come to understand the working of worlds; what science fiction has to teach strategists.
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!
unknown pleasures: an interview with Cameron Tonkinwise (part 2)
In the second part of my interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, we discuss Transition Design, prefigurative politics, dramaturgy, narratology, imagination, and... urban cycling as filtered through the philosophy of Georges Bataille?