OPTIMISM/PESSIMISM: The Next 50 Years: Why I’m Optimistic Because Everything Will Be Terrible
John Shirley
A while back I did a TEDx talk on the next fifty years. The following contains edited selections of my talk–and some updates.
Two singularities? It’s a contradiction in terms — two singularities. But there are two, there’s the fanciful technological singularity of the imagination, and there is the tech singularity that’s more likely to actually come about. The false singularity, supposed to come between 2030 and 2045, is almost a supernatural event in the minds of many people. With its dream of technologically achieved eternal life, it has the reek of religious mythology; the unconscious fear of mortality.…
FEATURE: 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.…
FLASH FORWARD: Interview: Chris Nelder
John Shirley interrogates Chris Nelder about the future of Energy. Brock Hinzmann served as consultant on these questions.
Chris Nelder is the creator and host of the Energy Transition Show podcast, and a full-time digital nomad. Chris has written about energy transition for nearly two decades. He is the author of two books on energy and investing, as well as more than 200 articles on energy in publications such as Nature, Scientific American, Slate, The Atlantic, Quartz, Financial Times, Greentech Media and SmartPlanet. Prior to taking the podcast on the road full time, he headed the EV-grid Integration team for five years in the Mobility practice at RMI in Boulder, Colorado.…