The founding fathers of imaginative worldbuilding, Frank Herbert of Dune and J.R.R. Tolkien of LotR, both seemed pejorative toward the continued progress of technological artifice. What can their cautions and their creative philosphies teach us now, as their works remain culturally popular at a time when the secondary creation of computer systems automatically synthesized from the accumulated collective subconscious is becoming an popular reality?
I can't manage my passwords because of the inscrutable infinity of the digital realm, but I've realized that necessity is the key.
A wistful report of a strategist who has little tactical competence.
Simplicity is hard for me. I never really understood it. In my youth, I experienced cognitive dissonance when acknowledging the value and virtue of simplicity, because part of me kept insisting that it can't be morally wrong to look too deeply. To my younger self, this resistance seemed validated by …
Playfulness is one quality of traditional IF that is often difficult to critique or evaluate. Big-headed reviewers often find little use for it, since it is concerned neither with Making a Difference, nor with High Art, nor with abstract Capital Letter Ideals (CLI, because parser). Although many types of digital …