hard time getting here, but job peaks?

I've had the devil's own time finding an opportunity to write here. Seems like my ever waking hour is accounted for someplace else -- either job, or freelancing, or working for Belfort and Bastion (check it out, by the way. New books coming.)

But I did find the time to at least glace at this article by Jon Evans. Very interesting piece. Argues that we are moving toward a jobless society (hard to argue with that) and that unless we learn how to deal with it -- that is, how to give people incomes and self-respect when they aren't working -- then we are in deep trouble.

The final lines sum it up nicely, "If it’s not solved, then in the coming decades you can expect a self-perpetuating privileged elite to accrue more and more of the wealth generated by software and robots, telling themselves that they’re carrying the entire world on their backs, Ayn Rand heroes come to life, while all the lazy jobless “takers” live off the fruits of their labor. Meanwhile, as the unemployed masses grow ever more frustrated and resentful, the Occupy protests will be a mere candle flame next to the conflagrations to come. It’s hard to see how that turns into a post-scarcity society. Something big will need to change."

So here's the book...

...that has some of my transhumanist art in it:


Re.Doubt

And here's the cover:

So B&B will be publishing something soon

So Belfort and Bastion will be publishing some of my little illustrations soon. They in a a new collection called "Re.Doubt." Essays, photos, drawings, short stories, poetry...

Interesting development, I think.

Back again

Damn but it is hard to keep everything straight.

I've not written for ages. That's because everything has been normal, that is to say, totally crazed. Things which to be done and things which need to be undone...

But, I'll try to be a little better in future.

Oh, and one interesting development. I'll try to go into more detail later, but Belfort and Bastion is going to publish a few of my little electronic cartoons in an upcoming collection.

More to come.

The Black Queen

And how many Black Queens exist in human society? Consider the teacher, who is vital for the continuation of the culture, but who is neither respected nor paid particularly well.

You are doubtlessly able to think of many other examples.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21629-black-queen-tells-microbes-to-be-lazy.html

I'm doing some art...

I'm playing around with some illustrations. I'm not sure what to call them. E-toons? Anyway, there are an attempt to hint at the feelings invoked by the idea of transhumanism.

See what you think. Do these evoke the future?

Oh, and they're all at deviant art and they're all under a creative commons mark.

transhuman6

Red Dwarfs and Immortality

The new issue of Scientific American has a fascinating article on the far future of the universe...or, at least, our universe, perhaps only one among many.

In any case, it got me to wondering. The article dealt with events almost fantastically distant in the future -- billions, even trillions of years away. But if stars (at least cozy little red dwarfs) can have such lifespans, could sentient beings? Transhumanists and posthumanists would suggest that this is possible, even probable.

Which brings up another question. Will any of us living today know immortality in some form? Even if that immortality involves only the survival of our intellects rather than our biological bodies?

If that should be the case, is it not possible that some of us living today will see the unimaginably distant future discussed in Scientific American? Will, in fact, watch the stars wink out, one by one?

When 14 Billion Years Just Isn't Enough Time