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Paul Graham Raven

@paulgrahamraven.com

130 followers 97 following 110 posts

Science fiction writer turned tech critic turned STS/critical futures academic turned consulting critical foresight practitioner and worldbuilder-for-hire. This account is POSSE broadcast only. Email if you want to reach me.

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Nov 16

People on this website: "this could be the new Twitter!"

Me: that's pretty much exactly what I'm afraid of.

This node will be POSSE broadcast only. Will maybe check for replies and DMs from time to time, but please donöt count on it. I'm easily contactable by other means with greater bandwidth.

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 4d

Weeknotes/ week 40 / 2025: the same river twice

This week, it seems I'm flagrantly mishandling Heraclitus to make a case for horizon-scanning...

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-40-2025-the-same-river-twice/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 7d

that one guy rides again

I can think of few people in the pro-AI academic space whose writing betrays such a desperate yet frustrated desire to be affirmed and approved of by those whose ranks he once aspired to join.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 11d

Weeknotes/ week 39 / 2025: staying with various troubles

Utopias and dystopias are equally open to interpretation, as are all narratives of futurity. That's why, for me, the name of the game is to portray the messiness of hopes and fears alongside each other...

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/we…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 16d

generational hangover

There are also moments when a widely-shared world ends not with a neat denouement, but rather with a slurry of lazy tropes and cliches.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 17d

and they burn so bright, while you can only wonder why

Like the faerie folk, once you’ve learned to see them, you always will—and also like the faerie folk, they can see that you can see them, and that marks you out for whatever blessings or curses they may choose to bestow upon you.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 18d

Weeknotes/ week 38 / 2025: player of games

I’m waxing philosophical this week, as I consider the potential utility of the “dark forest” theory of the internet to foresight. So please exercise your (potentially illusory) free will and click on through to follow along...

https://www.worldbuilding.a…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 23d

i’d buy that for a dollar

Few things hurt quite so much as a confrontation with one’s obsolete exceptionalisms.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 25d

Weeknotes/ week 37 / 2025: a room of one’s own

It’s been wall-to-wall logistics around here this week, as I’ve been moving in to a new studio/office space...

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-37-2025-a-room-of-ones-own/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 28d

meme opera

All things considered, I guess most USians of my acquaintance would probably rather have the penguins.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Sep 7

Weeknotes/ week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things

I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked...

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-36-2025-at-the-inter…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 31

Weeknotes/ week 35 / 2025: radio daze

Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance?

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-35-2025-radio-daze/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 29

a configuration that can’t possibly be true, and yet here it is

The shock of the same old new.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 24

Weeknotes/ week 34 / 2025: the machine stops

When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade-flavoured parable in place of the more considered content that you'd have written if you'd not lost the time to dealing with the lemons.

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-34-2025-the-machine-sto…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 17

Weeknotes/ week 33 / 2025: how much is too much?

Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise?

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-33-2025-how-much-is-too-much/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 13

so immersive that they transcend words on a page or pixels on a screen

Lock up your libraries, the brand-marketing people have discovered worldbuilding.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 10

Weeknotes/ week 32 / 2005: conspiracy culture

There's nothing like looking at the disposable popular culture of three decades previous for reminding you that there's nothing new under the sun, and that history moves in waves rather than an arc.

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-32-2…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 8

the months of rot

Reflections on the dog days of a) summer, b) that thing we still insist on thinking of as “civilisation”, and c) the human life-arc.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 5

and not a drop to drink

This, I presume, is why Amdahl was out there in the Gulf, hanging on at the trailing edge of the business: Big Blue was focussed on the big-ticket players, and a fading rival could still pick up some gigs on the fringes of its interests.

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Aug 3

Weeknotes/ week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity

What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me...

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-31-2025-churches-of-futurity/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 27

Weeknotes/ week 30 / 2025: in defence of magickal thinking

Divination and foresight are a deal less different than some practitioners in either camp would have you believe—both address questions of strategy through the sensemaking process of storytelling. Perhaps you'd like a free trial by way of …

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 20

Weeknotes/ week 29 / 2025: rifts in the schismatrix

Here's another way to look at the difference between science fiction and fiction-for-futures: the former is art, the latter is artifice.

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-29-2025-rifts-in-the-schismatrix/

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 13

Weeknotes/ week 28 / 2025: the concretisation of metaphor

The tools of science fiction can be put to use in the storying of scenarios, but in such cases, they are means to a somewhat different end. How might we usefully describe that distinction?

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-28…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 12

who loves ya, baby

<p>Signs that a) you’re getting old, and b) you don’t follow the news too closely: on seeing a picture of Jeff Bezos on the deck of his yacht, you think “whoa, I never realised Telly Savalas spent so much time at the gym”.</p>

www.velcro-city.co.uk

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 6

Weeknotes/ week 27 / 2025: on models and literacies

"All models are wrong, but some models are useful"—so the saying goes. But how are they wrong, and how are they useful? And what does that mean for thinking about futures?

https://www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/week-27-2025-on-models-and-lit…

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · Jul 2

mining our collective childhood for wistful cultural trinkets

<p>Metaphor is a powerful tool, and I’m a big fan of it, but metaphor is also a magickal working; if you keep describing an angry, capricious god, you’ll sure as shit get one.</p>

www.velcro-city.co.uk

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