on discernment

week 49 / 2025: against the supposedly inevitable

immediate and widespread access

week 48 / 2025: walking in the shadows

rock and roll is (not) dead

week 47 / 2025

a community of good fortune

week 46 / 2025: eyes on the street

woke up this way

Weeknotes/ week 45 / 2025: ten theses on “the future” The moment to change a mental model is the moment at which it becomes an obstacle to understanding rather than a scaffold for it. https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-45-2025-ten-theses-on-the-future/

Weeknotes/ week 44 / 2025: hermit walks the dunes I'm running a three-day course on fiction-for-futures in January! In-person, on-site, and strictly limited to no more than ten participants... https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-44-2025-hermit-walks-the-dunes/

Weeknotes/ week 43 / 2025: l'esprit de l'ascenseur Marketing 101 advises that you hone your elevator pitch. I'm increasingly convinced that simplifying problems this way just makes them worse in the long run. https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-43-2025-lesprit-de-lascenseur/

Weeknotes/ week 42 / 2025: reinventing the wheel What’s the value of worldbuilding around the questions of a green transition, when participants could be spending their time developing products and services instead? I have answers! https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-42-2025-reinventi…

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&#8217;re getting old, and b) you don&#8217;t follow the news too closely: on seeing a picture of Jeff Bezos on the deck of his yacht, you think &#8220;whoa, I never realised Telly Savalas spent so much time at the gym&#8221;.</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&#8217;m a big fan of it, but metaphor is also a magickal working; if you keep describing an angry, capricious god, you&#8217;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&#8217;s hard to see where the light might be coming from.</p>

Weeknotes/ week 24 / 2025 WEEKNOTES is on something like a holiday—so not much to see here for anyone but the serious completists! https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-24-2025/

you couldn’t feel anything, and you didn’t want to either <p>Last week in particular, body and mind were crying out for proper rest, but the freelance life doesn&#8217;t work that way.</p>

worldbuilding/ week 23 / 2025 Making stories while the sun shines, enjoying the music of the muezzin—WEEKNOTES aspires to feline reincarnation! This week, Eid is celebrated vicariously, and the philosophy of cats is revealed as a contradiction in terms... https://www.worldbuilding.agency/404/

virtual mallrats <p>A way to sell selling itself (infinite regress edition).</p>

Weeknotes/ week 22 / 2025 Trekking through the wilderness of story, traversing the desert of the Real—WEEKNOTES wander where they will. This week, warfare is conducted through comics, and Canada goes its own way... https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-22-2025/

ballad of a con-man <p>The times, they are a-changin&#8217;.</p>

Weeknotes/ week 21 / 2025 Hanging pictures on the wall / who can say when WEEKNOTES fall? This week, pictures are exhibited, and the devil rides out... https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-21-2025/