@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.
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.
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?
@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.
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
@filip as always in Edgeryders, the doors are wide open for you or anyone interested to take part. You can speak for the initiative – in fact, you are encouraged to do so.
The state of play is that we are still looking at the feasibility. Someone needs to do a back-of-the-envelope spreadsheet to make sure we can make a skeletal event happen with, say, 20-25K (and also define what happens in a “skeletal event”). At this point, we move onto planning the crowdfunding campaign, which would anyhow launch after the summer. So, yes: do talk to anyone who you think might be interested in taking an active part. Be explicit that we have not quite pressed “go” yet: LUCA (or people with similar skills) might be asked if they would be interested in helping out with the video, if we decide to go ahead, and at which conditions. Ideally, everything would be donated, becoming an in-kind contribution to the event itself.
Would love to catch the show, but August is always a tough month for me as i’ll be in Edinburgh for the whole time at the Festival (which incidentally is where i first became aware of the show last summer)
The company are interesting and innovative creatives, so if you do reach out to them in Brussels please let me know. I’d love to help out with bringing them on board. Perhaps there’s an evening event that sits alongside the Econ-SF conference?
It turns out @winnieponcelet’s sister is technical director for Ontroerend Goed (they are based in Gent, not in Brussels). Winnie has offered to connect us, and is investigating whether there might be a show in Belgium in July. I will keep you posted.
Just a little heads up @yannick@mariekebelle@ireinga@jaycousins@filip@alex_levene@danohu@nadia that this conversation is also continuing to unfold in the thread following our first meeting here and in the wiki on works and authors here. Dive in if and how you wish… would particularly love your thoughts on directions for the reading group which we’re looking to start in July!
Non-violent, non-cooperative, out of the economic system resistance is what we need. I am interested in alternative economics. Charles Eisenstein is member of Elos Institute. The gift economy. I strongly believe I could find a system relative to Egypt in villages and small communities.
We are challenged big time.
I do not have time now to share with you my findings and write about different forms of alternative economy that you might be aware of now. Bristol in the UK is an interesting city. They use an alternative currency the Bristol pound, many cooperatives, and their economy is good. It’s a port and there was something related to space industry in the article I read. Anyway, there are, also several institute formed after the occupy wall streets at USA, who are researching alternatives to the current economic system which they sensed have failed. OWS was alarming and they are trying to be proactive.
Maybe I can create a database - when I have some time - of type of Alt. economics, contacts, movies/article.
I have a number of friends who live down in Bristol (and i went to Post Graduate there) so if anyone wanted someone on the ground to do some research and reporting i could easily go down there and explore on behalf of ER
For the seminar, though, I propose we look at “imagining completely different economic systems”. The alt-currency crowd normally does not make the cut. They are simply looking at small (though important) add-on to the existing system. They have to, or their solutions would not be viable.
This cuts out two huge swaths of thinking:
Hacks bolted on top of existing systems, like alt-currencies. These are very important when trying to build anything workable. But here we are trying to come up with something that can act as a beacon, to give all these attempts a sense of direction.
Critiques of capitalims, neoliberalism or what have you. Again, important stuff, but we are aiming for alternatives.
As for Eisenstein, Nadia and I went to a conference of his years ago, in Brussels, and, with respect, were underwhelmed. He played massively the guru card, appealing to people more through personal charisma and millenarism than via rigorous thinking. I may have misunderstood, or he may have moved on. But man, that was a lot of handwaving.
Good catch, @nadia. This is rather a generic selection, not oriented towards economics. But there seems to be at least one work worth exploring, Ada Palmer’s Terra ignota. I’ll look into it.
The bunny prince wants to join the seminar! This is very much down my line of work, as an (environmental, experimental) economist by training and a science fiction author myself
Welcome, then, @OmaMorkie! Environmental-experimental sounds great. I used to be an Env Economist myself, but our brand of Env Eco, in my opinion, failed pretty badly. Maybe we’ll meet at the seminar, if we manage to organize it, and trade war stories.
They are so cool, all of their plays.