Introduce yourself I’m the project director of a climate fiction short story initiative that is looking at dreaming of a future that is green, clean, and just. I also work at a climate solutions lab, called Fix who is interested in the power of storytelling, cultural production, and narrative shifting.
I’d like to collectively imagine alternative futures with other folks who are using the power of the imagination to dream of new ways forward.
Witnesspedia entries All the world interest me. I’ve yet to dig into the material enough to see which of the floating districts is exciting to me. Also, I think of the project itself as a solution to breaking through the ethos that capitalism is an end of history moment.
Introduce yourself Hi there,
This is Kiley Arroyo from the Bay Area based Cultural Strategies Council. Looking forward to learning more about this inspiring tool!
Kiley
Introduce yourself I’m an Australian science fiction author specializing in First Contact
Witnesspedia entries I’m interested in exploring how the disparities between the economic systems of extraterrestrial races can be harmonized. The challenge is in assigning value to incomparable goods and services from different cultures. Historically, when this occurred between East and West, there were hyperinflated bubbles for even the simplest of things (like Tulips or spices). Also, I think time/distance is another complicating factor. Too often, science fiction writers use handwaving to avoid the limitation imposed by the speed of light, but there is NO rational indication it’s going away (anyone that thinks otherwise does not understand relativity and how it defines reality). This will limit the value of goods and services and restrict commerce, making it akin to long-term/generational investments. Knowledge will be more important than goods, simply because instructions can be communicated at light speed. Why wait for a sub-light freighter when you can send instructions and have goods created onsite, etc. So the prospect of galactic trade with luminal limits is an intriguing idea to explore.
In light of this, I’d like to suggest a district known as ‘Celeste,’ which acts as a port for interstellar trade in ideas/knowledge and acts as a manufacturing hub for the subsequent goods.
Introduce yourself This project appears so interesting! The possibility to experiment building a new world with other people from all over the globe and the potential to learn lessons to bring to the real world is amazing. I would like to contribute by brainstorming new ideas with everyone, prototyping them and experimenting in this virtual world (My background is as an ecologist).
Also, the name of the city! Is it a reference to Erikson’s Karsa Orlong?
The nerd in me is jumping with excitement!
Witnesspedia entries I am not a writer, but I know basic Data Science and R programming and could potentially help with data visualizationss if that is something you are interested in.
@KileyArroyo, so glad to see you here my friend. Let me know if you need any help to get your bearing.
@pcawdron honored to meet you, sir. I have several works of yours on my ebook reader.
The issue of open economies (some foreign trade, some circulation of people) is dear to my heart, and central in the way we dreamed up the architecture of Witness. In Witness we play, but it’s serious play, at least for me. I would like it to inspire myself and others to think about, for example, experimental regional policy programmes for radical innovation of territorial economies. Real-life economies have some degree of openness. It is indeed interesting to look at extreme cases, like the one you suggest (no atoms get through, only bits), and also at how the Distrikts of Witness, physically close to each other, can insulate themselves in order to maintain some kind of economic sovereignty. Ping @yudhanjaya
Introduce yourself Interested in inclusive societies, alternate market mechanisms.
Also interested in how societies support and grow inclusive economies and potential for innovation.
dedicated to human and social system synergy that is mutually enriching.
Introduce yourself I’m interested in imagining new worlds based on direct democratic means & transformative ideas & ethics. I’ve been being written by a story set in a post-revolutionary, committee-driven, solarpunk-type society, actively imagining new ways of relating, governance, design, & creating. I want to see how others work with worldbuilding projects, also curious to see what this one is about. I’d maybe like to take part in developing parts of this world, or picking others’ brains on the how-to of the project. Open to see!
Witnesspedia entries I need more time to read through all the entries, but a full set of worlds has been more or less developed!
Introduce yourself I am coordinating a project about empowering communities and grassroots initiatives to build resilience and adaptation to climate change, with a book featuring 16 authors around the world covering themes around permaculture, local leadership, alternative economic models and general systems change. We are looking to launch this in September, before the COP26 summit. You can see a summary of the whole project at COP26 Project - Climate adaptation, resilience and systems change | Arkbound Foundation
It would be great if you could feature this on your network and social media. Likewise, we can do the same about your work and even help raise awareness of your objectives at the COP26 itself, which we share.
Introduce yourself As director of applied research at NewCities, I’m most curious to see how these experiments evolve and their applicability back into the real world.
Witnesspedia entries I’m new to Witness, and look forward to exploring each distrikt!
Introduce yourself I am interested in which significant elements and narratives worldbuilding strands coalesce against. I would like to see how that stimulates me ludically.
Witnesspedia entries I have only had a brief look at the Witness, The History section intrigued me. I wondered if any ARGs were concealed within Witnesspedia
Speaking of ARGs, @matteo_uguzzoni runs the Trust In Play project in which Edgeryders is a partner. I also applied for funding for Avantgrid: Joule de vivre! but it didn’t come through, but that idea was later developed into the distrikt of Avantgrid.
Introduce yourself This sounds awesome!
I’m an economist working in the Research Department of a central bank. I’ve done some policy work, Public Economics, Public Choice Theory, a bunch of Macro stuff, incentives in debt issuance, defense budgeting.
I’m very interested in market failures, and see most of them as relating to externalities. These are often sadly not solvable by markets, and government often (usually) sucks as resolving them as well, but is usually better than nothing, so we use it.
I’m also a lifelong sci-fi/fantasy fan.
(EDIT: Forgot to mention that I gave a presentation on the Economics of Science Fiction Universes at the Helsinki WorldCon in 2017)
My interests, beyond looking around at all the cool stuff, is looking at failure points. Where do the various systems break down? Why do they or do they not? What’s their patch/solution/escape valve/preferred murder mechanism/eventual death spiral? How can we do our best to fix them?
Witnesspedia entries I don’t know yet, I need to read a lot more.
I’m fascinated by Avantgrid - WTF??
DR - opt-in total Communism with an as-close-as-we-can-get-to-omniscient central planner that is not part of the system nor being incentivized by it directly. What to Big Mother get out of it? Over what dimension/s is it optimizing? How do we avoid it turning into a paperclip maximizer? Though I suppose that last is limited by the computation power required to run it, since it sounds like it rises exponentially rather than linearly, making WORLD DOMINATION practically impossible.
Hygge - a viable MMT system? How does it control inflation? Maintaining a low unemployment rate is a good start, but usually not enough. And the handwaved giving all the basic stuff is…interesting.
