albill

Well State of the World 2023

Human Readable Edition

Please see the following note: https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/522/State-of-the-World-2023-Bruce-St-page01.html#post15

0 of 332: Inkwell Co-host (jonl) Fri 30 Dec 22 08:14

We're stumbling into the new year, and it's time for the 23rd annual State of the World conversation. Bruce Sterling and I will be posting our thoughts over the next two weeks, along with our invited guests, members of the WELL, and readers who send comments and questions via email.

The year is 2023, which brings to mind the 23 enigma . William Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, Arthur Koestler, "Principia Discordia" and others consider 23 a significant number, i.e. "lucky, unlucky, sinister, strange, sacred to the goddess Eris, or sacred to the unholy gods of the Cthulhu Mythos." Wikipedia mentions that the 23 engima may be a case of apophenia, "the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things."

albill

396: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 16 Jan 22 09:19

But the Chinese are jealous. The Indians annoy them. They can't abide an India that seeks to out-China China. Especially, one semi-divine technocrat can't bear the presence in Asia of another semi-divine technocrat.

Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi are too much alike to be pals. China's the aggressor in the Sino-Indian relationship because China lacks tact. They'd rather punch noses than form an axis of authoritarianism.

A wilier China would blandly assure India that "Some day -- in the future --you'll be the greatest!" That's what everybody else always tells the Indians, feeling secure in their conviction that India is the country of the future and always will be. But China can't imagine a geopolitical situation for India that Indians might be content about. The Chinese have a grievance, so they need to make sure that India has a worse one; not the grievances India already has, which are plenty, but some brand-new grievances stamped "Made in Chi

albill

Well State of the World 2022

Please see the following note: https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/516/State-of-the-World-2022-page16.html#post382

0: Jon Lebkowsky (https://plutopia.io) (jonl) Wed 29 Dec 21 16:45

Welcome to the State of the World 2022, a survey of confusion, political chaos, societal disruption, climate instability. And the hopeful stuff: innovation, humor, transcendance, ice cream... we have two weeks for asynchronous conversation, and a lot of ground to cover.

Thinking back to Viridian Design - and acknowledging that there's something often referred to as the "intellectual dark web" - let's say this conversation could be the genesis of an "intellectual shiny web." Some people want to go down fighting, we want to go down thinking - and joking.

albill

inkwell.vue.510 : State of the World 2021

permalink #0:

Introduction /1 (jonl) Sat 2 Jan 21 10:20

This is our 20th annual State of the World conversation. The longer we go, the weirder the world gets! SOTW 2021 promises to be the weirdest yet, with the world evolving along the lines of the most extreme cyberpunk fever dreams.

Every year this conversation is hosted by the WELL, an online community that started as a BBS and has been around for 35 years. You can learn all about the WELL via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL

The annual State of the World event is a showcase for the WELL: if you want to have conversations like this every day, consider joining . Its long form conversations are a welcome change from drive-by posting on systems like Facebook and Twitter. Most conversations on the WELL are available to members only, but we're having this conversation in a special part of the WELL, called Inkwell.vue, that was set up for public conversation.

albill

Chairman Bruce on the state of the world excerpt on possessions:

I concentrate very hard on everyday objects -- intimate, immediate
things --  rather than on aspirational status luxuries. I remove things if I don't regularly interact with them or share them. I clear my space and time of obsolete tools that no longer efficiently perform a useful function.  

When I stumble over some possession of mine, I don't thoughtlessly assume, in standard consumer-culture fashion, "Oh well, this is a good thing, it's been around here a long time, it's kind of nice, I'm used to it, it cost a lot once." Instead, I ask what it is doing now to earn the privilege of being in my immediate vicinity and taking up my attention.  Quite often the answer is that it is doing nothing much, and hasn't seen pragmatic use for quite a while. In which case it should be given away, stored, sold, recycled or removed.

1. Beautiful things 
2. Emotionally important things. 
3. Efficient and useful tools.  

albill

Keybase proof

I hereby claim:

• I am albill on github.
• I am albillings (https://keybase.io/albillings) on keybase.
• I have a public key ASAAsFKhKv7kD86UmdjFdsxsiSKo4UVlJFULqNl3IN27LAo

To claim this, I am signing this object: