the circus comes to town

Hello, worldbuilders! This is your weekly newsthingy... and we're gonna start with An Actual Announcement.

Talk and workshop: The Conference, Malmö, Mon 26th August 2024

I will be giving a talk entitled Wisdom for worldbuilders: fictions, futures, fandoms on the morning of Mon 26th August.

Said talk is the opening act of a day-long set of workshops, which in turn is the first ever educational supplement to The Conference, which in turn is the , uh, conference that my good friends at Media Evolution put on in Malmö at the end of every summer.

This is gonna be a great day if you want to get some practical foresight stuff under your belt, as well as thinking about the theoretical side. We've got people from Sitra (the Finnish innovation fund), we've got people from the justly famed Gehl architecture firm, we've got people from In/LAB at the forefront of media- and futures-literacy; a whole lot of talent.

All that for the knock-you-out price of zero Swedish kronor? Honestly, if you are at the decision-making level of an organisation that's based within a day's travel from Malmö, you'd be nuts not to sign up now, while the FREE places are still available. See you there?

Did I mention it was FREE? It's free!

Essay: it's not the phones (but it's not not the phones)

Ladies and gentlemen and anything else: we have content. 😎

it isn’t the phones (but it isn’t not the phones)

Let’s clamber into the express elevator with Karl Schroeder, and have a little think about EVs and the Doomscroll. Mind the doors!

Worldbuilding AgencyPaul Graham Raven

The LinkedIn crowd liked this piece, it seems. Did you read it? What did you think? Drop me a line—hit reply to this email (or click through to the comments on the site, if you prefer) and tell me why I'm wrong!

Weeknotes

EHRMAGERD new-style weeknotes are up!

Week 32 / 2024

Malmöfestivalen and the rain have arrived in town at the same time; who will win? We ask this and much much more in this week’s Worldbuilding Agency weeknotes... now in an exciting new format!

Worldbuilding AgencyPaul Graham Raven

They're still long as heck, but that's just how it is. Love me, love my verbosity! In an age of terse marketing slogans and socnet squibs, a vote for me is a vote for prolix bloviations we so desperately need at this time!

Station ID

Worldbuilding Agency is the online research journal of Magrathea Futures AB, and is written and managed by Paul Graham Raven. Perhaps you'd like to learn more about the site?

Magrathea Futures AB is a boutique creative and critical futures studio, providing worldbuilding and foresight services to the more interesting and adventurous ends of the public, private and academic sectors. If you are wondering what MFAB could do for you, why not get in touch and arrange a call to discuss it?

That's your lot for now. In the meantime, thanks for reading!

—pgr