Continue reading »]]>

An interesting little piece called: Do thoughts have a language of their own? The language of thought hypothesis.

It seems to me inner speech is clearly a private language, at least in some of its utterances. This language is so rooted in the unique self that an eavesdropper, could there be one, would not fully understand it. It has so much of one’s person in it, a listener would have to be another you to follow it. And if someone invented a window into consciousness, a mind-reading machine, that could invade one’s privacy, would they be able to understand the, now revealed, inner speech? I think not. They might be able to understand most of the words, but the non-linguistic or imagistic elements would be too much a personal script to follow. If this eavesdropper watched you, including your consciousness, for your whole life, had access to your memory and knew your way of combining non-linguistic representations with words, they might have your code, but this is another way of saying they would be another you. In practical terms inner speech would be inaccessible in its meaning even if it were accessible in its signifying forms.

It’s well worth a read.

via Robb Eason

pic nicked from here

Continue reading »]]>

For Earth Day, the Toronto Star asked 15 science fiction writers, including me, how we’d tackle climate change. To save some space, my answer was edited down.

Here’s my full reply:

The environment is something I watch on TV. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it’s a pristine world free of human interference. But it’s also the concrete, the highrise and the little blue screen. Where animals are pests. The destruction wrought on the so-called natural world results from the false division between humans and it. Humans need to fuse with nature. Using biotech, houses should be grown not built. Towns designed with no clear line, aesthetic or technological, between human and environment. Euclidean geometry must be overthrown. Only by reaching such a state of obvious symbiosis can we end this conflict with the world we inhabit. The alternative is an increasingly alienating spectacle that will end in the circus of our own destruction.

You can read everyone’s answers here.

Continue reading »]]>

I’ll be at Ad Astra this weekend. It’s a science fiction convention.

Ad Astra’s 31st Con will be held on April 13, 14 & 15, 2012

Ad Astra is a literary fan-run convention, promoting local talent within the genres of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Paranormal, for all media of the written word. Our weekend includes panels on a variety of topics including writing, publishing, media, creative works, comics, costuming and steampunk, as well as many events including Masquerade, writer workshops, and book launches.  Complementing our programming, Ad Astra also has a dealer area, featuring many vendors, writers, exhibitors, artists and artisans and an Art Show and auction.

I’ll be doing some panels. I’m not sure what. Like, I know and everything but I’m too lazy to go through the schedule right now and find them.

I think I’m doing one on criticism in the 21st century, fascist undertones of SF, Dystopian Aesthetics, and I can’t remember what else.

But I’ll be there.

Continue reading »]]>

Popular stand-up philosopher, Slavoj Žižek has an interesting little essay on Corporate Rule of Cyberspace. My favourite part:

There are two tell-tale words here: abstraction and control. In order to manage a cloud, there needs to be a monitoring system which controls its functioning, a system which is by definition hidden from the end-user. The paradox is thus that, as the new gadget (smartphone or tiny portable) I hold in my hand becomes increasingly personalized, easy to use, “transparent” in its functioning, the more the entire set-up has to rely on the work being done elsewhere, on the vast circuit of machines which coordinate the user’s experience. In other words, for the user experience to become more personalized or non-alienated, it has to be regulated and controlled by an alienated network.

With the sale of Instagram to Facebook for a cool billion dollars, this seems like a good time to pay some attention to who owns the Internet.

There’s little reason to think that these entities will act any better with a monopoly than any past entity ever has. Other than the fact they wear dungarees to work and don’t have cubicles.

If they even still do that. Who knows?

via Bruce Sterling

Continue reading »]]> This is an interview that occurred in late January and will be hitting 12 television stations and 80 radio markets in about a week via TVCOGECO. It’s for Brent Holland’s Night Fright Show.

Ryan Oakley – Technicolor Ultra-Mall via Skype from Toronto Canada. What if in the future Toronto had been turned into a huge indoor mall? But the class hierarchy is dominated by roaming gangs intent on enforcing their own version of what makes up a society. Free of authority, free of military, free of…order? Ryan draws upon the current “Occupy Movement” and a certain amount of libertarian doctrine as his prose. Would a society be better off under these circumstances, worse off because of roaming gang mentality or just same old same old? And that is the challenge of his book and our show together. We challenge each other’s conventions throughout this show and expose many shocking government policies that may already be in place and not in the future. Profound.

This is the first interview I’ve ever done of this type. (Radio, television, sound and image.) So yeah, I was a bit nervous. It should come as no surprise that I’m most comfortable in print.

But Mr. Holland was quite friendly and I think it all went off pretty well.

And cool shit about the internet, if you want to ask any follow up questions or anything like that, there’s always the comment section here.

Continue reading »]]>

Official Meeting of The Adventure Time Nap Gang

If you’re interested in my sleep patterns and I have no idea why you would be, I was recently interviewed by Denise Balkissoon for an article in the Globe and Mail: Is Bi-Modal Sleep as Good as Eight Straight Hours? I don’t know. Guess you’ll have to read it to find out.

Bi, straight, bedtime, eight . . . Sounds sexy.

I never thought people were interested in this sort of thing. Like, how I sleep is how I sleep. No big deal. But, if major newspapers are running this, maybe I should do a post on it sometime soon.

I’d certainly like to expand on my answers in the article.

Continue reading »]]>

2011. You might have heard. I was published.

Yeah, congrats, I know.

Since then, it seems like every conversation I’ve had is about the book. People tell me that they plan on buying it, have bought it, inform me of where they are in it, tell me their thoughts about it, sometimes ask questions and sometimes express surprise that I can write. It’s all fine. Just a bit tiring.

I’m getting better at lying. No one should ever believe anything I say about the content of Technicolor Ultra Mall. It’s my steadfast belief that it’s completely inappropriate for an artist to offer an honest interpretation of their work. If you’re going to do that, why even bother creating it?

(The single time I came close to doing this was at the launch, where I sought to undercut the marketing of the book because salespeople have even less place in the reader’s head than big-mouthed authors. But that wasn’t to offer my own opinion so much as to warn people away from the pre-packaged ones they were being sold. By me.)

It’s difficult to balance a belief in being open with a belief in being closed. One must give up consistency.

And I’m trying to figure out how this year went . . .

It’s been busy. The editing was done this year. Most off it off my lap as I had no desk. I finally got a desk. And a couple of pairs of bespoke shoes.

My Nan died. I miss her.

Lost a few friends. Have mixed feelings on that.  I don’t get to see the ones I do have often enough.

My wife continued to put up with me. Somehow. I don’t know how she does it. I can hardly put up with me.

Most of what’s important hasn’t made it to these pages. Partially because I’ve been busy and partially because it’s hard to see things when you’re very close to them.

I’ve had good years and I’ve had bad years. The jury is still out on this one. It’s been a busy year. There’s been a lot of incoming data and not much time to arrange it into any sensible shape, let alone one commiserate with my personality. Half the time, I feel like I’m chasing my own tail.

A lot of this has to do with the publicity aspect of being a writer.

I’ve received publicity in the past but, until this year, have never sought it out. The process basically disgusts me. Makes me feel like a hooker and not a very good one. Pretending to give a fuck is exhausting.

And yet, one must pretend. It is the expected thing.

But, if you ask me, most of that is a rain dance. It doesn’t actually make any sort of difference to anything –books succeed without it, fail with it– but it makes everyone involved feel like they’re at least doing something. My challenge is keeping up appearances, that is, actually doing this part of the job, while refusing to let it take over.

Publicity is like a god-damn credit card for your soul. It has its uses but be careful: Bills come due. And they carry a lot of interest.

But it’s not a bad problem to have. I know a lot of people want what I’ve got –a long time ago, I was one of them– and I see them out there, trying to get their shot. It kinda breaks my heart. I just want to say, forget this game, go outside, get fingered. Fuck it. Life is short. But it’s not the sort of advice anyone wants to hear.

Shit, people, young writers in particular, are taught to discard that advice.

I guess that’s about the best summary of my year I’m gonna come up with: Problems I’m Lucky to Have. Hasn’t always been this way. Guess I should be happy it is now.

And, I suppose I am.

Continue reading »]]>

I’ve put some hours in and made an illustrated, tumblr version of Guy Debord’s 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle. You can find the first post here. When you finish reading it, simply hit NEWER and it’ll bring you to the next paragraph.

Some of you are probably familiar with the book. Others of you just don’t know you are. Some of you should be.

You could say that it was the guiding text behind punk, culture jamming and has informed most critiques of commodified culture up to and including the Occupy movement and, certainly, its parent Adbusters.

As for me, I came to this book quite late in life. I knew of it for some time –since it was first recommended to me by a fascist in a bar– but found Debord’s writing impenetrable. This was, perhaps, due to bad translations. A few years ago, I gave it another go. I can see why the fascist recommended it. Quite a bit of my own thinking is made lucid here. I, of course, had the dis/advantage of living in a era that seems to have reached a saturation point of spectacle and commodity.

Tumblr seemed like the perfect vehicle for this book for a couple of reasons: First off, it epitomizes so much of what the book is about. Secondly, the book it made up of 221 single paragraphs, which suits the ADD just fine. Thirdly, full frontal nudity and gifs.

If you’re at all interested in my methodology, and I don’t know why you would be, I used a combination of pictures from my computer but, mainly, just what was coming across my dashboard at the time.

At any rate, it’s my hope that this treatment might make the book a bit easier to digest for those who, like me, found it difficult and that some others might be exposed to it.  If not, I’m just happy to have it for myself.

You can find the first paragraph/post here and advance through it by hitting NEWER.

Best of luck.

Continue reading »]]> I’m gonna file this one under – when it’s not evil to blog straight off a press release . . .