What I read in 2023, the list. How to read this list: * = Recommend** = Really recommendNC = No comment (or, really, do not bother)RR = Re-readF = FictionNF = Non-fictionP = Plays Titles and micro-reviews of what I read over the last year. Not many great ones, but a few interesting gems amidst the mid … Continue reading 2023 – A Year In Books
Tag: futurist bronwyn williams
Monkey Bars
I’m very interested at the moment in what is happening with the various social contracts that hold our civilisation together; those explicit and implicit agreements that govern what society is and how it functions. This topic of “social contracts” covers everything from the agreement states have with their citizens to provide services and protection for … Continue reading Monkey Bars
Citizens or code? – who do you trust?
From the calls to “defund the police” that rang across the USA in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election, to the community groups that mobilised across South Africa to defend their homes and businesses in the midst of the July 2021 riots that ripped through South Africa from Durban to Johannesburg; citizens are … Continue reading Citizens or code? – who do you trust?
Protection Rackets
"But there was more to it than that. As the Amazing Maurice said, it was just a story about people and rats. And the difficult part of it was deciding who the people were, and who were the rats." ~ The Amazing Maurice I can't help noticing the protection rackets all around us at the … Continue reading Protection Rackets
Very Personal Futures
People are just waking up to the fact that the same cryptographic game theory and technology involved in creating and securing the digital scarcity and ownership immutability that make cryptocurrencies, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of digital goods and services (from gifs and articles to tracks and tweets) valuable and tradable, can also be used to mint … Continue reading Very Personal Futures
Connecting the Dissapeared
Everywhere we look, people are disappearing. Disappearing into their bedrooms, into their phones, into the metaverse and out of their real lives. As life becomes more virtualised and more artificial, as our digital lives supersede our physical existence, as our stores of value - of both worldly financial wealth and social credit - become increasingly … Continue reading Connecting the Dissapeared
Skeleton Key Laws
Not with a bang, with a whimper, the world moves from objective rule of law, to subjective rule by law. There are more and more open-ended, multi-purpose "skeleton key" laws being passed in (supposedly) liberal democracies that can be used to punish, criminalise almost anyone at will. Of particular concern are any laws that criminalise … Continue reading Skeleton Key Laws
Tend your garden, Defend your garden
Two quotes to get you through chaotic times, when it feels like things are spiralling out of control: Tend your own garden "Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden." ~ Voltaire In a literal and figurative sense : look after yourself, take responsibility for your own … Continue reading Tend your garden, Defend your garden
Ideas that need to catch on
I'm currently trying to get the following self-created ideas/ terms to catch on, since I think they explain things about the future: The WIFI curtain (which I first wrote about anonymously, under cover, for Future World) as the 21st century's version of the Iron Curtain. Only this one is a 4D (it stretches across space … Continue reading Ideas that need to catch on
Machette Season
“Evil comes from a failure to think. It defies thought for as soon as thought tries to engage itself with evil and examine the premises and principles from which it originates, it is frustrated because it finds nothing there. That is the banality of evil.”~ Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality … Continue reading Machette Season