Great idea, would love to reconnect as well. My time zone is Lisbon. I’d also be down for the book club. I’ve been wanting to read Varouf’s Another Now but Doctorow’s seems relevant too.
Also curious why @alberto you think The Dispossesed would not be the best title for a public discussion (other than because probably everyone’s read it). That book got me into both sci-fi AND book clubs
Kate, I found and downloaded an epub version of P&S. I don’t have any suggestion for the reading. Please tag me when you decide on the book, day, and time. Thank you very much.
Wow, that Kallis article (@alberto) took me down quite the rabbit hole. I’m still mulling Georgescu-Roegen’s Promethian processes.
re Call:
I’m Arizona time, and could make extreme edges of a day work.
re Book Club:
I find most sci fi treatments of economics unsatisfactory, with the exception of LeGuinn and Robinson (Red Mars, New York 2140). The rest give hints of interesting stuff which ultimately doesn’t make sense, and sets the whole programme backward. That said, I’ve been intrigued by Chamber’s Monk & Robot works and what seems to be a gift economy with accounting, and though it’s very incomplete it’s at least consistent.
What are people looking to get out of a bookclub? We could go the other way and read econ, such as Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, or Graeber’s Debt or Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. I’ve just started Romeo’s The Alternative but haven’t gotten far enough to recommend.
I’ll happily go along with any decision.
re Residency:
I’m excited about the possibility of a 4-day in Barcelona in early or late May. Meetings are important.
I beg to differ here. The point is not if sci-fi authors make good economists (which would be somewhat bizarre!), but what they bring to the table of economics debates that no one else does.
That said, we have had a blast back in the day with book clubs on Varoufakis’s Another Now and Robinson’s Ministry for the Future. I also wrote economic analyses of Doctorow’s Makers and Walkaway, plus some random stuff, like musing on where Modern Monetary Theory is found in science fiction.
As I was discussing with @alberto, it would be cool to suggest them a more structured sci-fi econ lab, perhaps building up on - and reinforcing what will emerge from those sessions? Just an idea
The registration link for the Call is here registration - please send it to your friends and colleagues if you want to introduce them to Sci Fi Economics
Note: if you’re already in the existing calendar invite you don’t need to sign up
Sorry @zazizoma on the 12th I can’t make it, and then we’re hitting up against the Lab happening in IST. For the next call I’ll do my absolute best ensure you’re there
I’d like to better understand what was meant by theory fiction since it might be related to what we’re doing here at ASU, using worldbuilding to test and develop economic theory. But I don’t want to assume these are the same things.
Referring to AI as goblins!!! Yes! I will be adopting that. It’s insane over here in academia, apparently no-one needs to write dissertations any more . . .
On a more serious note, the passivity or fatalism I’m observing with respect to being taken over by goblins is quite troubling.