Monthly Archives: January 2017

Jan 24

What do our imaginary societies have that they don’t “need”?

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What do our imaginary societies have that they don’t “need”?

Originally shared by Stewart Brand

My summary of Steven Johnson’s Long Not talk…

HUMANITY HAS BEEN INVENTING TOWARD DELIGHT for a long time. Johnson began with a slide of shell beads found in Morocco that indicate human interest in personal adornment going back 80,000 years. He showed 50,000-year-old bone flutes found in modern Slovenia that were tuned to musical intervals we would still recognize. Beads and flutes had nothing to do with survival. They were art, conforming to Brian Eno’s definition: “Art is everything you don’t have to do.” It looks frivolous, but Johnson proposed that the pursuit of delight is one of the prime movers of history — of globalization, innovation, and democratization.

Consider spices, a seemingly trivial ornament to food. In the Babylon of 1700 BCE — 3,700 years ago — there were cloves that came all the way from Indonesia, 5,000 miles away. Importing eastern spices become so essential that eventually the trade routes defined the map of Islam. Another story from Islamic history: when Baghdad was at its height as one of the world’s most cultured cities around 800 CE, its “House of Wisdom” produced a remarkable text titled “The Book of Ingenious Devices.” In it were beautiful schematic drawings of machines years ahead of anything in Europe — clocks, hydraulic instruments, even a water-powered organ with swappable pin-cylinders that was effectively programmable. Everything in the book was neither tool nor weapon: they were all toys.

Consider what happened when cotton arrived in London from India in the late 1600s. Besides being more comfortable than itchy British wool, cotton fabric (called calico) could easily be dyed and patterned, and the democratization of fashion took off, along with a massive global trade in cotton and cotton goods. Soon there was an annual new look to keep up with. And steam-powered looms drove the Industrial Revolution, including the original invention of programmable machinery for Jacquard looms.

Consider the role of public spaces designed for leisure — taverns, coffee shops, parks. Political movements from the American Revolution (Boston’s Green Dragon Tavern) to Gay Rights (Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles) were fomented in bars. Whole genres of business and finance came out of the coffee shops of London. And once “Nature” was invented by Romantics in the late 1800s, nature-like parks in cities brought delight to urban life, and wilderness became something to protect.

Play invites us to invent freely.

http://longnow.org/seminars/02017/jan/04/wonderland-how-play-made-modern-world/

Jan 23

I spent some time on the fringes of the self-help industry. There’s a good deal of fakery involved.

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I spent some time on the fringes of the self-help industry. There’s a good deal of fakery involved.

Originally shared by Guy Kawasaki

As an author and speaker, let me tell you that this is GREAT. As a reader and listener, you need to read this.

http://bit.ly/2jTtUYW

https://apple.news/AYMfU4eDVQreIevmWm4uEXA
Jan 21

This is so ridiculously cool that it has to be exaggerated.

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This is so ridiculously cool that it has to be exaggerated. Mind-controlled drones providing augmented-reality views to the pilot – and then you scroll down, and they have swarm drones that form what amount to protective force fields?

Doesn’t mean you can’t use these probably fictional drones in your fiction, though.

https://hackaday.io/project/11643-astral-ar

Jan 20

I’m a fan of Lindsay Buroker’s books as well as of her SFF Marketing Podcast, and I really appreciate how she…

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I’m a fan of Lindsay Buroker’s books as well as of her SFF Marketing Podcast, and I really appreciate how she includes a thoughtful counter here to the common “write to market” advice. Like her, I’m not very mainstream, and the thought of uncritically aping the tropes of something that’s already selling well is abhorrent to me, but there is a middle path between that and writing something that nobody but you will like.

Originally shared by Steve Turnbull

SO, YOU WANT TO BE A SELF-PUBLISHED AUTHOR?

This is a round up of the current situation by the highly successful self-published author Lindsay Buroker.

I strongly recommend you read it all, carefully,

http://lindsayburoker.com/e-publishing/streamlining-your-writing-publishing-and-marketing-process/
Jan 18

Want to write in a shared world for pro rates?

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Want to write in a shared world for pro rates?

Originally shared by As If

Call For Contributors: Science-Fiction Anthology

As If Productions is currently seeking short story writers for a science-fiction/near-future anthology entitled “UbiquiCity”.  All stories take place within a “Smart City” of the first world 100 years in the future, where ubiquitous computing has become commonplace.  The project will be releasing both an anthology and a sourcebook for RPGs, based on the anthology material.  Roleplaying or GMing experience is preferred, but not essential.

Details:

* This is a guided collaborative project.  Authors will be working in a curated setting, using characters and plots of their own devising.  Guided by this document and the project curator, authors will be encouraged to intertwine their contributions in interesting and logical ways.

* There will be three online meetings, to be held in the first week of Feb, Mar and Apr, respectively.  Additional meetings may be called, either for the whole group or just for particular writers whose content interacts, depending on circumstances.  Notes will be made available for anyone missing a meeting.

* Final deadline for stories will be Apr 15.

* I’ll be looking for around 5,000 words, on average.

* Expected Publication: Winter 2017.

* Terms: Seeking first world rights in English and exclusive right to publish in print and electronic format for six months after publication date, after which I retain nonexclusive right to continue to publish for the life of the anthology.  In addition your characters will be statted for the sourcebook, which is (to that extent) a derivative work.

* Compensation: A paperback copy of the anthology and either $0.06/word on acceptance OR a perpetual share of revenue (based on price received) pro-rated by pagecount.

* Interested? Send a query and backgrounder to everyone@asifproductions.com and use “UbiquiCity” in the subject line. Writing samples may be linked or attached; science fiction preferred.

* Query deadline is 28 Jan 2017

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Looking forward to reading your work!

About the Anthologist: Tod Foley is the founder of As If Productions, specialists in interactive development and game design.  He’s the creator of the “DayTrippers” RPG line (a surreal science-fiction reality-hopping RPG), and designer/writer of “Other Borders” (a narrativist game based on Robin Laws’ “DramaSystem”), “Watch the World Die” (a collaborative apocalypse-generation game), “CyberSpace” (an old-school cyberpunk RPG), as well as several roleplaying games and adventure modules for Iron Crown Enterprises.  His website is http://asifproductions.com

Jan 17

TIL:

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TIL:

Originally shared by Adafruit Industries

Mary Somerville: The Woman For Whom The Word “Scientist” Was Made #WomenInSTEM

https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/01/16/mary-somerville-the-woman-for-whom-the-word-scientist-was-made-womeninstem/

Via All That is Interesting

When we think of history’s great scientists, names such as Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, or Nicolaus Copernicus likely come to mind. The funny thing is that the term “scientist” wasn’t coined until 1834 — well after these men had died — and it was a woman named Mary Somerville who brought it into being in the first place.

Mary Somerville was an almost entirely self-taught polymath whose areas of study included math, astronomy, and geology – just to name a few. That Somerville had such a constellation of interests, and possessed two X chromosomes, would signal a need to create a new term for someone like her — and scientific historian William Whewell would do precisely that upon reading her treatise, On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences, in 1834.

After reading the 53-year-old Somerville’s work, he wanted to pen a glowing review of it. He encountered a problem, however: The term du jour for such an author would have been “man of science,” and that just didn’t fit Somerville.

In a pinch, the well-known wordsmith coined the term “scientist” for Somerville. Whewell did not intend for this to be a gender-neutral term for “man of science;” rather, he made it in order to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of Somerville’s expertise. She was not just a mathematician, astronomer, or physicist; she possessed the intellectual acumen to weave these concepts together seamlessly.

Read more

https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/01/16/mary-somerville-the-woman-for-whom-the-word-scientist-was-made-womeninstem/

Jan 17

Clothing is some of our most gendered cultural equipment. This is an interesting insight.

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Clothing is some of our most gendered cultural equipment. This is an interesting insight.

Originally shared by Deborah Teramis Christian

This is a very interesting read.

“Motivated by Octieber and determined to combat the world of gendered clothing, Lucy Rycroft-Smith tries menswear for a month and documents her findings”

https://www.thefword.org.uk/2017/01/i-wore-mens-clothes-for-a-month-and-it-changed-my-life/