
Dangerous Prototypes
Whilst Dee and Jules play videogames downstairs, I sit in a beanbag in my makerspace and contemplate the various hardware projects that I would like to complete over the next couple of years.
The theme of last night’s Butchers Shop, organised by hip indy magazine Bad Idea, was transhumanism. We drank a little gin, then settled into the body-warm Victoria operating theatre for a little slice-and-dice of two short stories of human augmentation: in one, our narrator upgrades his heart; the other creates a xenographic sommelier with the nose of a canine. A little role-play, some heckling, then a chance for Matthew de Abaitua to wax lyrical over Paris Hilton’s doggy palace, peacocks and peahens, and consciousness as a evolutionary frivolity.
“Things” are speeding up, however. The rate of change of computing power is the most often cited example — processing power, whether measured in MIPS or the decimal FLOPS, is increasing exponentially — but increasing change-differential is affecting all parts of society, albeit at different rates. We are living in Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock” world now; it is entirely possible to become homesick for a place we never left (just talk to some older Caucasian Londoners and you will see what I mean).
Whilst Dee and Jules play videogames downstairs, I sit in a beanbag in my makerspace and contemplate the various hardware projects that I would like to complete over the next couple of years.
I guess I should update the ‘blog?1 Not an easy thing to do these days, since even finding the time to do something as self-indulgent as public journaling probably just means there’s something else I could be doing instead, but maybe it’s an experiment I would like to continue?
It’s 8am on the first day of the month, and despite the usual late night, I’ve been up for hours. Jules has been an early riser for years now, and it has had the effect of training me to wake up at 6am each morning — for no good reason, since he’s pretty independent in the morning these days — and so here I am.