OPTIMISM & PESSIMISM: Brock Hinzmann’s CLUSTERS OF PREDICTION
OPTIMISM!
Clean Energy 24/7: Engineers Use Nanotechnology To Harvest Electricity “From Thin Air”
PESSIMISM! Various disruptions around the world, driven by climate change, authoritarian political upheaval, virtual world desires, and other factors, are creating a large population of international migrants and neo diasporas. Which of these groups can we plan ahead to ‘port over’ from other countries?…
FEATURE: An Interview with RUDY RUCKER!
John Shirley interviews…award-winning cyberpunk god, RUDY RUCKER!
May 4, 2023
Rucker! We wanted to know if he had any insights into the future of the shopworn world we all live in. This groundbreaking, sky-piercing author of sf and non-fic; this professor and theorist, this visionary, has been deeply influential in science fiction and other fields. He has emanated significant reverberations into the field of computer science. A mathematician with a doctorate from Rutgers, author of the non–fic classics Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension and Infinity and the Mind, and a former teacher of mathematics at Heidelberg University, Rucker is a scientist as well as a science-fiction author.…
HORIZON SCANNING: The Global Future
Horizon scanning is a method futures researchers use to expand their personal awareness of weak signals of change that are emerging around them every day, of which they were not previously aware. William Gibson is often quoted as saying “the future is already here, but it’s just not evenly distributed.” Less often quoted, he goes on to point out that it (the future) “is arriving constantly, in bits and pieces.” In other words, the future isn’t here full cloth, but the threads are here, from which the future will be woven. Other people have pointed out the human brain is a “prediction machine,” constantly turning out predictions, mostly subconsciously, scanning for threats, food, sex, money, power, and so forth.…