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alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@adamgreenfield I'm curious of that intellectual angle. A lot of criticism of my review say that "I'm asking for some grassroots fairy-tale", while I really wanted to express that I want to focus on things more >detailed< than a single, top-down solution.

Ada Palmer wrote about the dirty futures of hard work ( beforewegoblog.com/purity-and- ) and I'm under impression that a lot of other writers just want the solutions to be clean; mechanistic; elegant, without checking in with the reality.

22 March at 11:46 | Open on writing.exchange
13 comments
Adam Greenfield

@alxd That has not *generally* been Stan’s jam, which is why MFTF was so very disappointing.

22 March at 11:49 | Open on social.coop
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@adamgreenfield honestly speaking, I don't know if "The Ministry of Sustainability" is doable as a single book; looking at all the angles and levels of the changes needed. I could imagine it as a series, maybe even as some mega-anthology from multiple authors?

My take on solarpunk and climate fiction is to first see the uncomfortable things we don't want to see, so I could "cover" some activism, hard open data problems and so on, but would ask someone else to tackle the scientific parts.

22 March at 11:53 | Open on writing.exchange
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@adamgreenfield one way or another, I think that striving for a Single Climate Masterpiece might always pull us in the direction of too elegant, too pure, ignoring some really important parts of the world and problems to come.

That also means that "consuming" climate fiction might be different, potentially harder than reading science fiction, since the reader would need to do a lot more emotional and intellectual work.

22 March at 11:54 | Open on writing.exchange
Alberto Cottica

@alxd @adamgreenfield in KSR's defense, he has disavowed "blockchain" since. I find it interesting that the "central bank-issued, negative carbon-backed digital currency" has happened, except for the carbon part. At least that is my reading of the digital euro: ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_eur

22 March at 11:59 | Open on mastodon.green
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield

okay, not joking, I apologize for the annoying question, but -

Do you have any >source< on KSR disavowing Blockchain?

Apparently he says that a lot around the world, but he is never recorded / he never says it clearly in his writing.

The Chain is just such a vital part of the book's plot, that I have no idea how it could work without it as a Magical Technology.

22 March at 12:02 | Open on writing.exchange
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield regarding the digital currency, I do admit that I know too little about it to comment on either technically, economically or societally. I will get back to you when I read more on it :)

22 March at 12:04 | Open on writing.exchange
Alberto Cottica replied to alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alxd @adamgreenfield noo, nothing magical. It's just a slow database, and everything you can do with it you can do without it. The currency KSR imagined IMHO would work just as well with a regular secure database. Or maybe it would not, but that would be because of non-obvious monetary economics spillovers. I know little about this stuff, but I am a professional economist, so I do know a little, and cannot find any obvious inconsistencies.

22 March at 12:15 | Open on mastodon.green
Adam Greenfield replied to alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alxd @alberto_cottica If you’ll forgive me, I can recommend the cryptocurrency and blockchain chapters of my 2017 “Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.” They hold up surprisingly well.

22 March at 12:23 | Open on social.coop
Alberto Cottica
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts replied to Alberto

@alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield if you ever remember the interview, I'll owe you coffee ;) I tried searching for it, but all the problems he describes with tech in the Ministry are very... non-committal.

As in - he doesn't notice that without Blockchain the plot of the Ministry jus doesn't work. It's not that "ah, the cars should have flown lower", it's... the whole premise is just broken.

22 March at 12:12 | Open on writing.exchange
Alberto Cottica replied to alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alxd you owe me a coffee!
"In the list of mistakes I’ve become aware of making in Ministry, using the word blockchain is prominent. I should have said 'encrypted digital money,' or even just 'digital encryption.' " Source is the Crooked Timber seminar: crookedtimber.org/2021/05/14/r
@adamgreenfield

22 March at 12:44 | Open on mastodon.green
alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts replied to Alberto

@alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield thank you so much, I do owe you coffee ;)

I think I remembered it right then, he's backtracking on the terminology, not the solutionism / magical thinking itself.

22 March at 12:46 | Open on writing.exchange
Alberto Cottica replied to alxd ✏️ solarpunk prompts

@alxd hmm... I will have to disagree here nothing magical about digital currencies. And one of the central banks depicted in Ministry has the rollout of a digital form of cash on schedule right now. But I'll still take you up on coffee! :-) @adamgreenfield

22 March at 13:21 | Open on mastodon.green
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