week 48 / 2024

Back once more (with the wallop in the score)—it's WEEKNOTES at Worldbuilding Agency.

THE BATHROOM IS DONE! (NB: actual results may differ considerably from purely illustrative image.)

As if that weren't enough good news for one week, I have also been selected to join the 2025 intake of artistic innovators who will be supported by STPLN, a Malmö-based incubator for creative businesses! More news on that in weeks to come, I'd wager.

So, something of a celebratory mood Chez Magrathea at the moment. What else have we been up to, though?

ticked off

Whole lotta new project names in the system this week. Exciting times!

• Eleven hours on PROJECT TEMPORAL. (Whoof, yeah. Shouldn't be too much of this one over the remainder of the year, though there's still some bits and bobs to sort out.)
• Five hours working on an application toward something which, should it come off, will be known as PROJECT MAPMAKER. (Bit of a long shot, really, applying for an artist residency with a project idea that relies strongly on visual methods, at a stage when my CV is almost entirely creative writing stuff. But hey—if you don't ask, you don't get, right?)
• A couple of hours of admyn and contract-checking for a small creative commission in the new year, mentioned a few weeks back, which is now code-named PROJECT LOFTY. (This one looks like it's pretty much in the bag. Not a big gig, but a fun one!)
• Three hours at a meeting with a group of academics at Lund, discussing a funding application for which my involvement—again, assuming it comes off!—will be code-named PROJECT BLINDSIGHT. (A deeply speculative thing, this, in three or four different senses of that term. Those who know their landmark sf novel titles may be able to pick up a hint of the direction this one is pointed in... )
• One and half hours discussing the very earliest preliminary phases of PROJECT PONTIF. (This one will be a very long game indeed, and necessarily quite clandestine for the foreseeable—but it's gonna eat enough hours that it needs a place on the project roster.)
• Three hours working on stuff for This Very Website. (Work toward an as-yet unfinished essay. I wanted to push something out on Wednesday but, as you can see, it's been a busy week, and I didn't want to publish something half-baked. This piece will probably be pushed into the new year, as I've got one big publication in the pipe for December already, and I figure there's little point doing another one in the Lost Weeks of the holiday season.)
• Five hours of admyn. (Emails, accounts, blah.)
• Four hours of kinmaking, not including meetings already listed as project items.
• Ten hours of undirected writing and reading, as always. (You know how this works now, I figure.)

kinmaking

Spent an hour or so on Tuesday catching up with Will Slocombe of the Olaf Stapledon Center at the University of Liverpool. Will is co-editor of the imminently published Routledge Handbook of AI and Literature (with Gen Lively), in which I have a contribution, but that didn't get much of a look-in, really; we spent most of our time talking about geopolitics, the varying depths of blood-on-the-floor in European and UK academia, and the Daoist model of history (of which, see more below).

I spent a very nice Wednesday morning chatting with Elise Lindahl, a sustainability strategist at the architecture firm FOJAB. This was basically a fact-finding mission for my part, as I have come to realise that I don't know much about what architects actually do, beyond the inaccurate cinematic stereotypes... but I think I also managed to explain what it is that I do, and where those two fields of action might overlap. (One thing I learned: architects have good coffee.)

Thursday afternoon was rounded off by a chat with Adam Vigdor Gordon, foresight scholar at Aarhus University. Among the topics discussed were the question of what quality looks like in the field of futures and foresight, and the perennial question of whether a foresight practitioner embedded in a firm is as "true" as one who works primarily in the consultative mode. (Our consensus on the latter issue was basically "d'uh, of course," but this is a surprisingly contentious suggestion in certain circles.) I also got to do some narrative prototyping show'n'tell for Adam, which made me realise that I definitely have a pitch, even if it's a long way from being short enough for the proverbial elevator ride!

reading

For reasons which will be explained at a later date, I've been re-reading The Difference Engine by Gibson and Sterling. For the same to-be-explained reasons, I shall mostly be sitting on my thoughts about it for now, other than to say it's well worth returning to, nearly three and half decades after its original date of publication... indeed, I'd even go so far as to say it's uncannily timely.

a clipping

I'm digging in the vaults here, but given this essay on the Daoist model of history came up in my chat with Will this week—and further given that it left a colossal mark on me when I first read it, in a way that much of the stuff I read every week mostly doesn't—I figured it was worth putting in front of y'all.

... a Daoist understanding of history contrasts with the teleological tenets found within the Judeo-Christian tradition and the symmetric cyclic interpretations that are also common in Western thought. And it could provide several insights in comprehending our increasingly intricate and uncertain world.

Though the word doesn't crop up in it all, if you've heard (or read) me mention enantiodromia and wondered what the hell I was on about, well, that essay will give you a bit of grounding.

That will do for now, I think. Thanks, as always, for reading—and do feel free to get in touch if anything herein has sparked your interest!

This has been the Worldbuilding Agency weeknotes for Week 48 of 2024. Thanks for reading! If you've enjoyed them, it's free to subscribe, but please consider supporting this research journal with a small monthly payment. You'll get access to the occasional bit of Exclusive Content™, and you'll be funding free subscriptions for those with fewer monetary resources, but first and foremost you'll get the warm glow that only ever comes from enabling fully independent and climate-focussed foresight research to continue.

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Have a good weekend.