14h30 - 16h30 is ok for me then i have to go to another appointment
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Great topic, I remember about a conversation exactly on this during a Reef brunch 
On Thursday I’m also going to Bxl Laique for this event: Pour en finir avec les alternatives dérisoires. Definitely not Econ-scifi but might be some crowd to include in the discussion.
I will pass by on May 1, sounds like a good activity for the international workers day!
Looking forward!
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It’s a date. I also invited @mariekebelle, though she will only be just back from a long journey, so maybe she will be too tired.
Or very energised from it?
Count me in.
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Counted. Wow, very happy! This is shaping up to be great fun.
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Ok, here are some items we are going to be discussing.
- Format(s). Lecture with 500 people? Seminar room with 20 people and many whiteboards? Role-playing interactive theater, like the one dreamed up by Annette Mees? What else? (Remember: financing and format are very closely related).
- Keeping it simple. Can we do this well, yet in a light-hearted fashion, in a fun sort of way, without too much heavy structure? How?
- Partnerships. Related to the above, maybe we can partner up with existing events, and reduce the complexity of venue-scouting, marketing etc.?
- Money. I doubt this can be done without raising some. It would be great to understand, even roughly, how much we need, and how we could go about getting it. I have some ideas, looking forward to yours.
- Mixing the crowds. SF-lovers, utopians and restless folks might be immediately attracted to this idea. Should we make a conscious effort to mix in people from academia, too? Who? How?
- Being locals. This is just my preference, and I am open to changing my mind. But I would like this thing to take place in Brussels. It would be a contribution of our own to the whole (utopian?) vibe of this city.
If you have read Walkaway, you have a good idea of how SF can “do economics” in a very radical, out there way. If not, here is the man himself explaining how his book is all about how networked tools might solve in new ways the problem of coordinating human labor to address human needs – i.e. how you organize an economy: Coase’s Spectre — Crooked Timber
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Goes without saying that @oliiive, @Azraq and anyone who cares about this, really, is welcome to join us tomorrow, May 1st, at The Reef. We will provide some strawberries, a whiteboard, wi-fi, and as much coffee as you can drink. If you prefer to decamp to a café, that’s fine too.
can i join through an online format, i’m stuck at the shop at the moment
Just to add to the positive vibe I want to say I am interested to hear from this in the future.
I can’t make it today (neither live, nor online), but I would just like to add what came to mind reading this: Coming from the arts I immediately thought of artists that attempt to provoke ‘economic change’:
- Joep van Lieshout (Dutch enfant terrible of the art scene - http://www.ateliervanlieshout.com/news/ ) whom produced a series of works around 2000-2002 related to his AVL Ville (his own Free State) and still creates sculptures many find too provocative but attempting to mix critique on the current , imagining (even more unwanted) alternatives, … and thus stirring much needed debate … Current work focuses on the theme of ‘destruction, recycling and production in a circular economy’.
- Renzo Martens (Dutch but I believe teaching in Ghent at KASK), used to make provocative documentaries but later initiated the Institute for Human Activities in Congo researching how art can redress economic inequality in a material way (through art, exhibitions, …).
If this is too far away from scifi … I can understand … but I think it is interesting to have a kind of materialization of imagination, and art can do that so that scifi becomes ‘touchable’ … and experience. In fact that is what would interest me, how econ-scifi can become an experience and thus deepen the impact.
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Also thinking along arts lines there is this wonderful show by BXL based group Ontroerend Goed:
http://www.ontroerendgoed.be/en/projecten/£¥€$/
"Many experts say that if we realised what money really is, there would be a revolution. The whole system would implode because the trust, which is essential, would melt away like snow in the sun. Ontroerend Goed invites you to get around the table and play the system from within. "
Less Sci-Fi, more Economics, but possibly relevant to the whole ‘reimagining money’ conversation
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Hey All.
Excited by this.
Presently doing a lot of thinking around this topic.
Started writing a sci-fi where alternative economic system is at the core.
In person participation a challenge, as in Dahab. But would love to participate in some way.
Present line of thinking is this.
- Everyone can create money but meeting the needs of others (where others are both human, system infrastructures and natural service providers).
- Money is then spent on scarce goods and services.
Money generated through meeting Need. Spent in acquiring Preference.
Example of difference between the 2.
I need to eat.
I prefer to eat the food cooked by a particular Chef.
The Chef automatically mines money when they cook for me. But if there is market demand, they can also charge money on top. We don’t need money to eat, we do need it to eat a scarce dish.
In this way basic human needs are provided for. But we retain reward mechanisms and recognition, that allow for the greedy to thrive, through the meeting of our collective needs.
Connecting Monetary Value, to Planetary Value.
Anyway, more complicated than that in practice, but that’s the general idea.
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@alex_levene: really interesting. £¥€$ (or “Lies”) plays in London this summer. Should we go see it maybe? And we should probably pay a visit to these guys here in BXL.
@jaycousins: wow, this is a surprise, I did not know you where writing SF. Looking forward to read you. And of course you can participate in remote, we will be doing all of the preparatory work right here.
For both of you, and anyone else who is reading us: I wrote a small road map for the immediate future here. Things that can be done right now in remote: suggest readings around Econ-SF that we might start feeding the reading group, and try to think of a name for this event.
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I’m also super-interested in this. I’ll have a think about what I might be able to contribute.
One community I’ve found interesting in this area is Crooked Timber. It’s a group-blog of academics, mainly around economics and the social sciences. They’ve been running wonderfully in-depth book discussion sessions, including several where they take a SF novel and really tease out its implications: Charles Stross or Francis Spufford.
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Hey @danohu great reading you! How have you been?
Yes, the Crooked Timber crowd packs a mean debating punch. A few posts above I already pointed to the seminar on Walkaway organized by CT. I think by “a seminar” they mean a series of posts and related commentary… they asked about 10 people to contribute a post. One of them was Bruce Schneier, which I think is a meaningful choice.
I should probably get down to that reading list… we all should. 
@filip I just re-read your post and clicked on some of the links. Good point. Martens in particular seems to be drawn to experimenting with economics and business as a bridge to building utopias.
I remembered that you are involved in LUCA (they have a facility in the middle of Parc Duden, very close to our home and office: I run past it when I go running in the park). This would be a very natural partnership: after all, we will need videos if we go ahead with this. What do you think, would that be doable?
Hi Alberto, can’t open the road map unfortunately.
That’s what I get for being too clever with short links Apologies. Corrected above, reposting here: First steps: what happened in the 1st of May meeting. The road map is at the end of the post.
@alex_levene great tip. Haven’t seen them yet but have heard good things about them. Even though I am not a ‘theater aficionado’ it seems like this play could interest me because of the experiential setup.
@alberto I indeed work for LUCA (until end of August 2018) and yep we have a campus there of LUCA Pro. I think I have met the program director for Film & Video. I will send him in an e-mail cc-ing you.
I teach at another campus, to Graphic Designers, there I will just ask if colleagues are interested in for example in an exercise like ‘visualizing econ-scifi’ … once the most important works from the reading list are selected students could make posters for them … if you think that sounds like a good idea.
In addition I will also talk to the program coordinator of the BA Netwerkeconomie today. I am quiet certain he will find this Econ-scifi idea interesting for courses like Critical Thinking and I believe he will want to think about ways to get the students involved in the event.
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Hey guys, I came across this list of Scifi writers in different genre, could a good list to discover some people we didnt think about so far
https://www.xprize.org/about/scifi
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