Looking for content to listen to on the way to the Alliance annual meeting? Slate magazine recently launched a six episode podcast–“Stranger than Fiction.” Each week, Tim Wu, a Future Tense Fellow at the New American Foundation, will ask a contemporary science fiction author “are we living in the future?”
The first episode features Neal Stephenson, author of one of my favorite pieces of futurist fiction. The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer envisions the disruptive effects of a “book” that shapes itself as a personalized tutor to whatever child opens it first. Some of Stephenson’s other imaginings have come to pass, and I think this one may as well! Highly recommend.
In the second episode, Wu hosts Cory Doctorow, digital rights activist, co-editor of BoingBoing, and author of several science fiction novels. I’m currently reading “Makers” in which two inventors create an “open source” museum-cum-amusement park ride that visitors add to and reshape. Also worth a read.
The third episode will be available this coming Monday.
The hashtag for annual meeting is #AAM2013 –if you do listen to this series on the way to Baltimore (or back home in your office) tweet comments!
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