Chat About Anything

[Nicole]

Rossdavidh wrote: "my general experience is that the longer one works with any technology, the fewer illusions one has about how it will change the world."


haha – funny you saying that about technology. I keep hearing it from the side of social change. And true, wherever we work, we see the daily drudge, the many problems and failed efforts.
However, the internet really has changed the world, and in only 20yrs (and it's going to do it again.). Likewise, even schools or gender roles have changed; only look back 50 or 100 yrs.
Decades, or better centuries, is perhaps the timeframe we should be looking at when talking large scale change within a huge and complex society...

[Nicole]

And: Yes, I'm all for the thought experiment! :-) and for places of poetic negotiation....

[Rossdavidh]

Nicole wrote: "haha – funny you saying that about techn..."

So, there is a saying that people tend to overestimate the impact of a new technology in the short term, and underestimate it in the long term. Of course, it might just seem that way because the technologies that don't really have a long-term impact, we forget about. Zeppelins and VR and nuclear power and 3D movies all keep getting brought up as the big new thing, every generation or so, and never seem to really take off in the way that SF writers (among others) think they will. Doubtless there are many others that I don't know about, because they are forgotten.

This is also why I am skeptical of demands for tech entrepeneurs to think more about the consequences of their new businesses; it assumes they have the ability to do this. The record of business execs accurately predicting the impact of their technology on society is not really any better than the rest of us.

But, I'm in favor of SF trying anyway! When I read things like Andre Norton predicting cars with nuclear powered engines in "Star Man's Son", I don't think that's a knock against Norton, it's just the way it is; predicting is hard, especially about the future.

[Nicole]

Rossdavidh wrote: "predicting is hard, especially about the future"
yes! but then again, my prediction is that the future will be what we make it... (collectively).
which is another good reason to have thought experiments and fields for emotional practice. I guess solarpunk fiction is at least as much about vision as about prediction. and, I would say, once we have a good image: about repetition, in a thousand variations, for it is repetition that gives power and routine to an idea...

[Adam]

Hard SF Solarpunk! Includes Greg Egan and some other wonderful people.

Tomorrow's Parties: Life in the Anthropocene
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

[Hákon]

Benjamin Zephaniah died yesterday. For those that don’t know, he was a British poet, writer, musician, and actor (was in the series Peaky Blinders which I’ve never actually seen). I really liked a lot of his poetry, and some of his music. So I was looking at videos of him on YouTube, and came across one that is very solarpunk, and thought I would post it here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDWu9...

[Alxd]

After 3 years I can finally share my review (or rather an extensive critique) of Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Ministry for the Future": https://alxd.org/ministry-for-the-fut...

It is provocative on purpose, as I really wanted to show everything that "The Ministry..." makes us not think of - or gloss over.

Please let me know if you feel the same, or if I missed anything.

[Coralie]

I'm reading Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (the third book in the Wayfarer series) and wow it strikes me as very solarpunk! There's zero-waste closed systems, sustainability, renewable energies, recycling even of human corpses so that all nutrients go back into the Earth to fertilize crops. There's communal living and the provision of everyone's basic resource needs (food, shelter, water, air), with close-knit neighborhoods as opposed to the standard family unit. I'm sure it'd be more enjoyable with the background of the first 2 books in hand, but it *is* a standalone novel!

[Beige]

I just saw on this new anthology on my socials and thought I'd share with you all...

Solarpunk: Short Stories from Many Futures

[Lena]

That looks great thanks! It comes out September of next year.

[Adam]

Bakker - Sounds of Life, about understanding ecosystems through modern audio tech. Saw this non-fiction book and thought of solarpunk.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

[Lena]

Thanks Adam!