Thoughts of progress past

Now the main text of the book is complete (yay), I may do smaller posts here more often – and some larger ones, too.
For now, I just reviewed David Knight’s nice new book on 19th Century science, The Making of Modern Science (Polity) – forthcoming in Times Higher Ed – and among many other things [...]

optimism in depth

Just discovered that this enterprising chap is writing a book about the future which I’m relieved to note won’t be out until 2011…  and blogging the while.
I would just add his notes on his journeyings for research to the blogroll, but worth highlighting here too as there is lots of interesting stuff to read along [...]

Today’s Sterling thought…

Another Bruce Sterling quote (just can’t stop reading the guy…) which is too nice not to pass on
Some black swans are beautiful
um, think that one gets tagged under optimism, unlike his last
context in the interview here, full of similarly pithy remarks which he seems to just toss off effortlessly in conversation. Me, I have to [...]

optimism (light relief)

In case anyone who stumbles in here does not read Charlie Stross’s interweb outpourings (a reliable source of entertainment and stimulation) I can’t resist relaying news from him last June – OK I only catch up with him occasionally, prompted on this occasion by Richard Jones at soft machine.
Anyhow, he pointed toward a wonderfully fuzzy [...]

so that’s OK then?

“In cold fact, a financial crisis is one of the kindest and mildest sorts of crisis a civilization can have.”
characteristically astute comment from Bruce Sterling, waxing futuristic in Seed magazine…
(he has a pessimistic companion piece, too)

Bio-terror shock, horror

Bioterrorism has been a regular headline grabber since the post 9/11 anthrax attacks in the USA. Even though the idea that a terrorist cell might manufacture old or new nasties got no support from the facts about that attack which eventually emerged (the anthrax strain used came from the US biowar labs at Fort Detrick), [...]

Limits to Growth got it right…

New Scientist recently ran a suite of features on the need to re-think our assumptions about economic growth which was reminiscent of the 1970s (and that’s fine by me). They follow up this week by highlighting an interesting paper from Graham Turner of CSIRO in Autralia, now published in the Journal Global Environmental Change but [...]

competition, competition

Just ordered the next mega-compilation from the UN Millenium Project, the 2008 State of the Future Report. I have been through the last edition. Now all I have to do is digest the latest – now running to 6,300 pages on the accompanying CD – and insert the result into the draft of the Rough [...]

optimism again

an interesting reflection on optimism here at worldchanging.com
not going to summarise, except to say that the argument is political,
and in itself optimistic, (I think).

deju vu

A double dose of deja vu today on the futures front.
Living in Bristol allowed a drop in on the launch of Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook (available from Green Books). He’s an impressive chap – good communicator, persuasive, and has synthesised a lot of information about peak oil, climate change and what people could actually do [...]