Biophilia or videophilia?

Anyone writing about the future has to try and become conscious of their prejudices when evaluating weak data. I’ve stumbled slightly over one of mine when writing about biodiversity and enjoyment of wildlife. The strongest argument that we need to relate to lots of other creatures is Ed Wilson’s biophilia hypothesis. I’ve always been suspicious [...]

Leave it to Gaia? No thanks…

A less than enthusiastic response to the Royal Society report on geoengineering in the Guardian this morning from Gaian guru Jim Lovelock. He reckons it is a bad idea, because understanding of earth systems is so poor and we do not know what undesired effects it might have – the standard blanket objection in other [...]

engineering the future

Revising older chapters of a draft throws up a few discernible shifts in ongoing discussion. One is the detail and – as far as is possible with largely absent data – rigour of examinations of geoengineering (AKA hacking the planet) as a response to climate change.
Two recent reports – from the Institute of Mechanical Engineers [...]

Near future fiction

Still revising book text solidly, but holiday reading ranged a little wider so…
One of the great things about literature is that as soon as you frame a generalisation it seems to spawn counter-examples. I’ve been tempted to buy into the assertion – which has been made by a few different people now – that there [...]