julian.bond

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• Commented on I had a blog entry for you, but it eated me
  Neal Stephenson's System of the World[1], obviously. These days I think I'm more interested in "Currency" than "Money". And we should be particularly interested in the process of commoditisation whereby the flow of money is hidden behind layers and layers...
• Commented on Life With and Without Animated Ducks: The Future Is Gender Distributed
  First world problems. I'd love to see some of this thought applied to the other 7/8 of the world. Once we've solved the food, clean water, fire wood, shelter problems the next one is cleaning. Have you ever watched a...
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  You too, huh? I have this childish theory that people's experiences between 15 and 25 have a major effect on their outlook on life for the rest of their life. It's the period they spend the rest of their life...
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  What you have to understand is that it's different in the USA and your suggestion is therefore impossible. Now what was the question?[1] re, why passenger rail transport is obviously too hard....
• Commented on Blank slate: politics and context in the 21st century
  Context rather than politics, I kind of want to channel Phil Dick and ask what drugs are the kids taking and what music are they dancing to? And cynically, what's the nostalgia act playing the Glastonbury 2032 Pyramid stage for...
• Commented on How Do We Get There?
  New Scientist had an article 10th Jan revisiting Limits to Growth. It's still behind the paywall but the summary output from one of the World3 simulation runs is here http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2846/28462101.jpg There was a comment in the article that it's not...
• Commented on How Do We Get There?
  I think I should make it a policy to post a link to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_growth on every post on this blog until I get banned! We have such a hard time understanding all the implications of exponential growth. Perhaps "post scarcity"...
• Commented on How Do We Get There?
  Post-Scarcity or Post-Job? There's really only one thing wrong with being unemployed and that's having no money. And a secondary result of having no food, shelter, health care and education. A way out of that may be to solve the...
• Commented on Death: A Pantomime
  The comment about the British Isles is crucial. Given our esteemed host, I think the terms of the competition should stipulate that you are starting with a British passport and in Edinburgh. It does strike me that this whole exercise...
• Commented on Death: A Pantomime
  "Find someone similar to yourself who has an incurable disease" makes me imagine a rather macabre personal ad in Private Eye!...
• Commented on World building 301: some projections
  I wonder what city you have in mind when you write that. LA, NY or Sao Paolo, Mumbai, Shenzen. I suspect that most cities round the world are much more resilient to supply shortages than those in the developed west....
• Commented on World building 301: some projections
  Ian, +1 for this. There are several comments here that try to look at one aspect of the modern world in isolation and extrapolate how that one area might play out. Food, energy, population and so on. Arguably, some of...
• Commented on World building 301: some projections
  Re those old people living in big cities who are afraid of the sky, this year is the 40th anniversary of "Limits to Growth" and the New Scientist has a retrospective this week. Pretty much every run of the associated...
• Commented on Sometimes I hate being right
  This post reminded me of a PK Dick story (Clans of the Alphane Moon) in which tribes descended from mental patients, with each tribe representing a particular form of mental illness such as paranoia, schizophrenia, etc. took roles in the...
• Commented on Radioactive turd, meet punchbowl
  The UK seems almost ideally placed to develop and exploit renewables. We've got some of the highest tides in the world, It's on the leeward side of a large ocean with large waves and comparatively constant winds. There's a moderate...
• Commented on Invaders from Mars
  Take your point. And here's another. In my local market town, it was Starbucks that simply ignored council planning regs and turned an empty restaurant into one of theirs. 2 years later, their planning application still hasn't been ratified and...
• Commented on Invaders from Mars
  As usual the comments stream is TL;DR. But I'll toss in another datapoint. When we talk about corporations we usually mean the US style of pyramid structure. RA Wilson (and Macchiavelli) had plenty to say about why pyramid structured organisations...