Archive for the ‘speculation’ Category
Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
Today, thank whatever deity you might fancy, it will be over. At the moment, it looks as if Obama is the favorite. I thought I might list a couple of things I see as possible side effects of an Obama victory. (Sans gnashing teeth or messianic glee.)
Those who have a ...
Posted in politics, speculation | 2 Comments »
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008
There's a bias in SF and its brethren such as alternate history to do world building around the big ass stuff; wars, revolutions, catastrophes. Or, for the sciencey mindset, the big ass discoveries that change our understanding of cosmology or fundamental physics, or some sort of massive engineering or ...
Posted in science, science fiction, speculation | No Comments »
Saturday, June 28th, 2008
Historically, almost every significant economic crash has been due to one factor of the human psyche, the inability to conceive of change. Not adapt to change; we’re pretty damn good at figuring things out after the fact. Beforehand? Not so much. Entire industries collapse because of ...
Posted in internet, microsoft, politics, rants, speculation | 5 Comments »
Friday, April 18th, 2008
Just saw an interesting post on The Feminist SF Blog that draws attention to one of those little cultural blind spots that are really useful in worldbuilding. You know, the kind of thing everyone takes for granted, so when they read about another culture (real or fictional) that does ...
Posted in internet, science, speculation, writing | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
I've gone on at length about the replicator economy, what will happen to commerce as the cost of "stuff" goes to zero and the ability to copy anything becomes ubiquitous. Understanding the implications of this is going to make the difference between success and failure for whole industries. ...
Posted in internet, science fiction, speculation | 2 Comments »
Sunday, November 4th, 2007
. . .and provides an example of a point I was making over ten years ago. You may or may not have visited my home page, which predates this blog by about a dozen years or so, if you have, buried in the writing portion are a couple of ...
Posted in blatant self-promotion, intellectual property, movies, science fiction, speculation, video, writing | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
L. E. Modesitt, Jr. wrote a long post on his blog on why he believes the singularity won't happen. [via SF Signal]According to Modesitt, it won't happen because such visions are based on technology, not on humanity and they're based on a western European/North American cultural chauvinism.He goes on to ...
Posted in rants, science, science fiction, speculation | 4 Comments »
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
According to The Guardian, ye olde brick-and-mortar bookstore is not long for this world. According to a survey at the Frankfurt Book fair [from SF Signal]:Almost a quarter of the 1,324 industry professionals who took part in the survey predicted that the high street bookseller would no longer ...
Posted in rants, speculation, writing | 2 Comments »
Friday, August 10th, 2007
Lois Tilton over at Deep Genre doesn't like Libertarian SF, at least some Libertarian meme she sees as infecting some SF. In a nutshell her main complaint seems to be with the idea that space would be more "free" (meaning absence of regulation) when she sees the scarcity of ...
Posted in rants, science fiction, speculation | No Comments »
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
I posted earlier about how we needed new models for an Intellectual Property economy. On John Scalzi's Whatever Blog there's a thread that goes into the specifics of an existing rental model that seems to work.I also had some thoughts about the economy of Second-Life and MMORPG's in general, ...
Posted in about the blog, intellectual property, internet, speculation | No Comments »