@paulgrahamraven.com.bsky.social
Science fiction writer turned tech critic turned STS/critical futures academic turned consulting critical foresight practitioner and worldbuilder-for-hire. This account is POSSE broadcast only. Email if you want to reach me.
Weeknotes/ week 41 / 2025: stuck in the middle with you
In which I channel my inner Inigo Montoya in an attempt to explain why talking about "technology" robs us of the sense of our own agency...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-41-2025-stuck-in-the-middle-with-you/
Weeknotes/ week 40 / 2025: the same river twice
This week, it seems I'm flagrantly mishandling Heraclitus to make a case for horizon-scanning...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-40-2025-the-same-river-twice/
that one guy rides again
I can think of few people in the pro-AI academic space whose writing betrays such a desperate yet frustrated desire to be affirmed and approved of by those whose ranks he once aspired to join.
Weeknotes/ week 39 / 2025: staying with various troubles
Utopias and dystopias are equally open to interpretation, as are all narratives of futurity. That's why, for me, the name of the game is to portray the messiness of hopes and fears alongside each other...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/we…
generational hangover
There are also moments when a widely-shared world ends not with a neat denouement, but rather with a slurry of lazy tropes and cliches.
and they burn so bright, while you can only wonder why
Like the faerie folk, once you’ve learned to see them, you always will—and also like the faerie folk, they can see that you can see them, and that marks you out for whatever blessings or curses they may choose to bestow upon you.
Weeknotes/ week 38 / 2025: player of games
I’m waxing philosophical this week, as I consider the potential utility of the “dark forest” theory of the internet to foresight. So please exercise your (potentially illusory) free will and click on through to follow along...
https://www.worldbuilding.a…
i’d buy that for a dollar
Few things hurt quite so much as a confrontation with one’s obsolete exceptionalisms.
Weeknotes/ week 37 / 2025: a room of one’s own
It’s been wall-to-wall logistics around here this week, as I’ve been moving in to a new studio/office space...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-37-2025-a-room-of-ones-own/
meme opera
All things considered, I guess most USians of my acquaintance would probably rather have the penguins.
Weeknotes/ week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things
I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-36-2025-at-the-inter…
Weeknotes/ week 35 / 2025: radio daze
Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance?
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-35-2025-radio-daze/
a configuration that can’t possibly be true, and yet here it is
The shock of the same old new.
Weeknotes/ week 34 / 2025: the machine stops
When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade-flavoured parable in place of the more considered content that you'd have written if you'd not lost the time to dealing with the lemons.
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-34-2025-the-machine-sto…
Weeknotes/ week 33 / 2025: how much is too much?
Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise?
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-33-2025-how-much-is-too-much/
so immersive that they transcend words on a page or pixels on a screen
Lock up your libraries, the brand-marketing people have discovered worldbuilding.
Weeknotes/ week 32 / 2005: conspiracy culture
There's nothing like looking at the disposable popular culture of three decades previous for reminding you that there's nothing new under the sun, and that history moves in waves rather than an arc.
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-32-2…
the months of rot
Reflections on the dog days of a) summer, b) that thing we still insist on thinking of as “civilisation”, and c) the human life-arc.
and not a drop to drink
This, I presume, is why Amdahl was out there in the Gulf, hanging on at the trailing edge of the business: Big Blue was focussed on the big-ticket players, and a fading rival could still pick up some gigs on the fringes of its interests.
Weeknotes/ week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity
What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me...
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-31-2025-churches-of-futurity/
Weeknotes/ week 30 / 2025: in defence of magickal thinking
Divination and foresight are a deal less different than some practitioners in either camp would have you believe—both address questions of strategy through the sensemaking process of storytelling. Perhaps you'd like a free trial by way of …
Weeknotes/ week 29 / 2025: rifts in the schismatrix
Here's another way to look at the difference between science fiction and fiction-for-futures: the former is art, the latter is artifice.
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-29-2025-rifts-in-the-schismatrix/
Weeknotes/ week 28 / 2025: the concretisation of metaphor
The tools of science fiction can be put to use in the storying of scenarios, but in such cases, they are means to a somewhat different end. How might we usefully describe that distinction?
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-28…
who loves ya, baby
<p>Signs that a) you’re getting old, and b) you don’t follow the news too closely: on seeing a picture of Jeff Bezos on the deck of his yacht, you think “whoa, I never realised Telly Savalas spent so much time at the gym”.</p>
Weeknotes/ week 27 / 2025: on models and literacies
"All models are wrong, but some models are useful"—so the saying goes. But how are they wrong, and how are they useful? And what does that mean for thinking about futures?
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-27-2025-on-models-and-lit…
mining our collective childhood for wistful cultural trinkets
<p>Metaphor is a powerful tool, and I’m a big fan of it, but metaphor is also a magickal working; if you keep describing an angry, capricious god, you’ll sure as shit get one.</p>
vibeshifty: on Adam Curtis
<p>It’s as if he has elected to haunt his own work, which—for someone who is very much a part of the extended Fisherverse—is a curious choice, almost a voluntary diminishment.</p>
Weeknotes/ week 26 / 2025
The hollyhocks stretch toward the sun, and WEEKNOTES wanders the backstreets to bask in their colours...
This week, a fictional bishop transmigrates, and the Green Revolution is reassessed.
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-26-2025/
Weeknotes/ week 25 / 2025
The sun sinks behind the prow-stone, and WEEKNOTES sail on toward the summerland...
This week, a solstice is observed, both figuratively and literally, and the up/down axis gets an airing.
https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-25-2025/
the pivot
<p>As the darkness gathers, it’s hard to see where the light might be coming from.</p>
