The con has managed to pander to most of my obsessions this time around, so I'm looking forward to these panels. It's going to be great to be on these with old friends like Charlie Stross, Vandana Singh, Cory Doctorow, Toby Buckell, Allen Steele, Mark Olson and Walter Jon Williams. Check out the schedule, and I hope you can drop by!
Radical Economics in Speculative Fiction Format: Panel
12 Feb 2021, Friday 15:30 - 16:30, Burroughs (Webinar) (Virtual Westin)
Currently scholars from around the world are calling out the inherent injustice and destructive nature of endless economic growth. New economic theories are coming up, from degrowth and agrowth to eco-anarchism and eco-socialism. How does science fiction reflect these ongoing paradigm shifts in our world? How may we take these real world ideas and play with them in fiction?
S.B. Divya, Karl Schroeder, Vandana Singh, Charles Stross
Into the Great Unknown: Migration as Plot Format: Panel
12 Feb 2021, Friday 17:00 - 18:00, Griffin (Mtg Room) (Virtual Westin)
Floods. War. Famine. The 10 plagues of Egypt. Any number of calamities can cause peoples to move en masse from their home and travel into the great unknown in search of survival, safety, and security. Migration is depicted in various ways from caravans to generation starships. What do we need to consider when telling these stories? What can and / or should be left behind? How do we handle exploration into the unknown? What part might a people's history, or that of a character, play in the story?
Vandana Singh, Tobias Buckell, Carlos Hernandez (M) , Aliette de Bodard , Karl Schroeder
Reading: Cory Doctorow and Karl Schroeder Format: Reading
12 Feb 2021, Friday 20:00 - 21:00, Indy D (Mtg Room) (Virtual Westin)
Karl Schroeder, Cory Doctorow
Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder Format: Kaffeeklatsch
13 Feb 2021, Saturday 10:00 - 11:00, Indy B - Kaffee (Mtg Room) (Virtual Westin)
You must signup to participate in this session by clicking on the blue button to the right to "Sign up and add it to your schedule." Space is limited to 25 people.
Karl Schroeder
Are We Ever Getting Off this Rock? Format: Panel
13 Feb 2021, Saturday 19:00 - 20:00, Harbor Ballroom (Webinar) (Virtual Westin)
Could there be permanent settlement anywhere but Earth? What would it take to create a colony elsewhere in our solar system? The three most important factors in determining the desirability of a property are "location, location, location." What are the hot properties in our neck of the woods?
Allen M. Steele, Karl Schroeder, Kenneth Schneyer (Johnson & Wales University), Mark Olson
Imagining the World of the Future Today Format: Panel
14 Feb 2021, Sunday 13:00 - 14:00, Marina Ballroom (Webinar) (Virtual Westin)
It's typical in the science fictional future, for the human population to not be jobless or homeless while robots take over work of all kinds or the Earth (dystopic or post-apocalyptic futures excepted). How do we perceive the evolution of human work? How do we avoid the parenthetical exceptions above? Everything is on the table and the future is ours.
Walter Jon Williams (Word Domination), Alastair Reynolds , Linda D. Addison , Allen M. Steele (M), Karl Schroeder
]]>"The Suicide of Our Troubles" is set in the same universe as my novel Stealing Worlds, and in fact happens at the same time and in the same city. I guess I'm not quite done talking about the personhood of natural systems, which is a theme I've been writing about for twenty years now.
I hope you enjoy the story, and if you do, pass on the link!
]]>Go register on Eventbrite or Polyplexus.com to join the session. The session will be moderated by Laura Anne Edwards, NASA Datanaut and TED Resident.
]]>Back in 2014 I published "Degrees of Freedom," in the farsighted short story anthology Hieroglyph (which was edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer). The story is about indigenous rights, self-government, and new technologies for governance, and man did it have legs! It's still being taught at a couple of universities and garnered interest from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among other entities.
Now, the adventurous hackers over at queeriouslabs.net have built a test version of it! You can try it for free over at the We Get It website.
In the story, wegetit.com is a popular site that's used as a kind of funnel to feed discussions into policy-generating forums. You can have conversations about any subject on wegetit, but one of the things it does is expect you to define your terms. In other words, when I used the word "liberal" in this post, what do I mean by it? When you use it in your reply, what do you mean? The theory is that the permanent rolling meltdown of understanding we see in social media is largely the result of people misunderstanding what each other mean by very basic words. I say something I think is innocuous, you get triggered by it because a word I understand one way is read by you in an entirely different way. And it goes back and forth, amplifying mistrust and enmity.
Wegetit tries to dampen out this feedback system by guaranteeing that people understand what each other mean, not just read what each other say. This first version is very bare-bones, but that's how systems are developed. You can just give it a whirl and see where it leads you. I'm playing with it and having a great time.
Thankis, queeriouslabs!
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Saturday, August 15, 2020
The AI Amongst Us Format: Panel
15 Aug 2020, Saturday 13:00 - 13:50, Earthseed Room (Online Convention (via Zoom))
AIs are here, slipping through our everyday world, crunching numbers, sorting data, and learning their field of study at an exponential rate. However, general artificial intelligence still remains a distant digital dream. Has AI failed us or have we failed AI? Has innovation stalled? What can researchers learn from science fiction regarding sentient AI systems? What grains of innovation inspiration remain untested within the pages of novels and will increased computing power help bridge that uncanny gap?
(As you can imagine, I have a few ideas about this...)
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Future Laws
Format: Panel
29 Jul 2020, Wednesday 10:00 - 10:50, Programme Room 1 (Webinar) (Programming)
Law changes when the world changes. When you can duplicate a person, who owns the house? Which one is married to the spouse? How do you define property when physical objects are almost worthless but computing power is in short supply? Is it ethical to genetically "correct" autism in the womb? We're going to have to decide.
Future Economics
Format: Panel
29 Jul 2020, Wednesday 13:00 - 13:50, Programme Room 4 (Webinar) (Programming)
Will we ever fully disentangle from the physical? Blockchains, crytocurrency, differently organic sentinence. Will economic concepts of supply, demand, money, resources hold up? Evolve? Or be completely different? And what might they look like?
Kaffeeklatsch: Karl Schroeder
Format: Kaffeeklatsch
31 Jul 2020, Friday 13:00 - 13:50, Kaffeklatch and Literary Beer Room (Programming)
Would you like the chance to video chat with nine other fans and a writer? Grab your favorite beverage and sign up for a spot!Reading: Karl Schroeder
Format: Reading
2 Aug 2020, Sunday 09:30 - 09:55, Reading Room 2 (Programming)
The Day After Tomorrow: Near Future SF
Format: Panel
2 Aug 2020, Sunday 11:00 - 11:50, Programme Room 3 (Webinar) (Programming)
What are the challenges of SF set in the near future? What are good examples?
Thalience and Sentience
2 Aug 2020, Sunday 13:00 - 13:50, Programme Room 4 (Webinar) (Programming)
Thalience and sentience. Is there really a difference? How do we tease it out?
]]>
What might be most interesting about this interview, which ranges across many topics, is that we did it just pre-COVID-19. The disease was out and ravaging China and Iran, but it hadn't really established a presence in Canada yet. Nonetheless, what I wanted to talk about with Nikola was how we can remain optimistic when humanity's options and power seem increasingly constrained. The context of the discussion was global warming, but the ideas apply equally well to the pandemic. Head on over to the Singularity Weblog, and hear for yourself.
]]>Format: Reading
14 Feb 2020, Friday 20:30 - 20:55
14 Feb 2020, Friday 21:00 - 21:50
Our behemoth of a spaceship has been in transit since the days of our many-times-great grandparents. We've finally reached an Earth-like planet and are ready to go. What will our panel (of appointed/anointed/hereditary/elected?) leaders suggest doing first? Have they forgotten something important? Watch the panel map out our future and that of the human race on this, our new home. Then suggest your own ideas.
15 Feb 2020, Saturday 12:00 - 12:50
The world as we know it has changed dramatically in the last 100 years. How about the next 100? What might everyday life be like a century from now? What technological marvels will the near future bring? What social changes will take place? How about natural and human-made disasters? Overall — where will we be, and how will we get there? Is the Singularity coming? "Day Million"? Or will our grandchildren herd sheep and shiver in the dark?
15 Feb 2020, Saturday 14:00 - 14:50
Creatures that are part human and part machine. Sentient alien species. People living on ships and across time itself. The future is full of people. So what does it mean to be a person in the future? How might futuristic societies evolve based upon their surroundings and histories? How can we escape the perils and pitfalls of contemporary social norms in order to create societies that feel completely fresh and new?
15 Feb 2020, Saturday 16:00 - 16:50
15 Feb 2020, Saturday 17:00 - 17:50
]]>This was a great conversation and you can listen to it right now, in The Bitcoin Podcast: Episode 288.
]]>Beckett's Gamechanger is set about sixty years later than Stealing Worlds, but they could almost be the same world. In my novel, we're balanced on the uneasy edge of the future; AI, self-driving cars, and murderbots aren't quite here yet, but people are already being displaced by their imminent arrival. In Gamechanger, the whole whirlwind of change that cyberpunk shows us has come and--not exactly gone, but evolved in really cool ways. Beckett's vision of the future is staggering, and I'm thrilled to be able to share the evening.
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15 Aug 2019, Thursday 14:00 - 14:50, Level 4 Foyer (CCD)
16 Aug 2019, Friday 13:00 - 13:50, Level 3 Foyer (KK/LB) (CCD)
16 Aug 2019, Friday 15:00 - 15:20, Liffey Room-3 (Readings) (CCD)
Format: Panel
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 10:00 - 10:50, Liffey Hall-2 (CCD)
Will humans ever live long-term in space, or is it easier to let our ‘mind children’ go to the stars, whether as uploaded minds or independent intelligences? If humans (or AI) leave for space, would we miss them?
Lauren James (Walker Books) (M), Diane Duane (The Owl Springs Partnership), Karl Schroeder (Tor Books), Laurence Raphael Brothers
Format: Panel
17 Aug 2019, Saturday 15:00 - 15:50, Wicklow Room-3 (CCD)
Writing is a many wondrous thing filled with highs and lows, but those lows can be really tough to navigate either after a great success or after a lack of success. Rejection is something every writer has to face, but how do writers keep writing in the face of failure? What lessons have they learned along the way? Our panellists share the ups and downs of a writing life.
Aliette de Bodard, Ian R MacLeod (M), Karl Schroeder (Tor Books), George Sandison (Titan Books), Nina Allan
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There are a handful of SF writers whose novels are both vastly entertaining and which also serve as engineer-level blueprints for refashioning the world. In this category I would put Kim Stanley Robinson, Vernor Vinge, Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear, and Charles Stross. Now, with a shift in his focus from far futures to near horizons, I would add the name of Karl Schroeder.
Read the rest of the review and see if you agree!
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