Showing posts with label Speculation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Speculation. Show all posts

Friday, 30 November 2018

E-Mails From The Future by Robert J Sawyer

This was a fun little email exchange with an agent negotiating a writing contract for an author.

The exercise in this story is projecting what the world will be like 10 years in the future.

Making it even more fun was that it was written in 2008.

Some of Sawyer's ideas are still a ways out, while much of what is in the story is not that far fetched any more.

A nice little chocolate mint of a story at the end of a lovely banquet of interesting and entertaining short stories.

Well done sir.  Well done.


Monday, 15 January 2018

PostCapitalism by Paul Mason - Book Report #215

I had a difficult time with this book.

It was mostly me, I just could not penetrate Mason's writing.  I found myself reading a passage and having to re-read it again to understand what he was saying.  It was like that for most of the book.

The subtitle was certainly a bit misleading - A Guide to Our Future it hardly was.  3/4 of the book was spent on describing capitalism's long history.  Over and over again the author would take us on a tour of the past.

Finally, in the last section, he began to apply theory to a new economic model.  It is interesting to contemplate the effect the digital realm is having on the economy.  It was also a challenge to imagine how a society would work without money.  Try it.  Every single aspect of our way of life relies on it.  It's like water.  We need it.

I found the book a difficult read but that has only spurred me on to wanting to learn more about it.  It is a curious notion to think that we are in the first decades of this very transformation.  Like everything else, I believe a solution will be found.  You have to believe that otherwise living is just too bleak.

I am not so sure I would recommend this book as I had such a difficult time with it.  But, without it, I wouldn't know where else to look to try to get a better understanding of a world without money.

I a search for more understanding on the subject I found The Postcapitalist Future website.  Try reading the manifesto first and see if that sparks any new insights.  -  http://postcapfuture.com/manifesto/

Paul Mason's website - http://www.paulmasonnews.com/

Paul Mason