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The plan and schedule for this site

James
— 3 min read

Welcome, folks. Right, time to kick this off. Here goes.

I think I'll start by reading through a few books that I've been meaning to, and sharing my notes and thoughts, chapter-by-chapter. This should lead to a bunch of Opinions, and perhaps, if you choose, Discussion.

In between, I'll hopefully find a bit of time to synthesize, narrow some thinking down, and perhaps even post some original thoughts. I'll also try to post less-well-formed thoughts as they occur to me, along with links to stuff I'm reading and thinking about. What is this, a blog?

Here's the rough schedule for my reading and posts around that reading. I'll probably come back and revise it as I realize quite how unrealistic I am being.

May to July: Breaking Together: A freedom-loving response to collapse

by Jem Bendell

Breaking Together is a massive tome, but — at least from the table of contents and a few quick dives into parts of the book that deal with (it seems to me) the critical topics — seems a comprehensive laying-out of the predicament we're in, and is also quite aligned with the way I would frame it. I hope reading this book and responding to it in public will a) give me the impetus to finish it, b) firm up some of my uncertainties, and c) be a resource for the interested.

Note that I'll be away in June and July, so the posting schedule will slow down. But it won't stop! I'm determined to keep some sort of rhythm up, once I've done the hard work of getting one established.

  1. Economic collapse: a time of limits and contradictions  — May 21
  2. Monetary collapse: it was made inevitable.  — May 24
  3. Energy collapse — and problems with net zero  — May 28
  4. Biosphere collapse — killing our living home  — May 31
  5. Climate collapse — cascading failures  — June 4
  6. Food collapse — six hard trends  — June 7
  7. Societal collapse — recognizing reality and cultural decay  — June 11
  8. Freedom to know — critical wisdom in an era of collapse  — June 18
  9. Freedom from progress — humanity is not on trial  — June 25
  10. Freedom from banking — how the money-power drove collapse  — July 2
  11. Freedom in nature — a foundation for ecolibertarianism  — July 9
  12. Freedom to collapse and grow — the doomster way  — July 13
  13. Freedom from fake green globalists — resistance and reclamation  — July 16
  14. Conclusion: Taking the green pill in an age of collapse  — July 23
Cover of the book "Breaking Together" by Jem Bendell. A statue of Atlas carrying the world on his back, previously broken and repaired, kintsuge-style, with gold

August: Tools for Conviviality

by Ivan Illich

Many people I've been reading over the past decade point to Illich as foundational thinking. As an "epilogue to the industrial age", and therefore as a critique of how we have applied modern technology, I feel this book might be, of all Illich's work, most closely aligned to my interests and to my areas of whatever moderate expertise I may have acquired.

In particular, I feel it's so important for us to think through automation vs empowerment, in this world where the stack of technologies we humans adopt, and therefore the cultures that are available to us, is in so many ways dictated by corporate (meaning both commercial and government) interests.

  1. Two Watersheds  — August 6
  2. Convivial Reconstruction  — August 13
  3. The Multiple Balance  — August 20
  4. Recovery  — August 27
  5. Political Inversion  — August 30
Cover of "Tools for Conviviality" by Ivan Illich. Silhouettes of a car, a broom, an axe, a syringe, a pot, a sewing machine, a power drill, and a bicycle.

September: Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism

by Jillian York

I want to reread Silicon Values more closely, as I think its specific account of social-and-platform tech companies, their policy processes, and their alignment with and opposition to governments, pulls on a really important thread in a field I work in — what is the relationship between the connected society, authoritarianism and democracy, and corporate power, in a world given leverage by scaled interpersonal communication technologies?

Cover of "Silicon Values" by Jillian York. A red fingerprint surrounded by the corners of a rectangle, indicating a biometric scan

Right. That's enough to be getting on with. If there's anything you'd like to be discussing in these or adjacent fields over the next few months, drop me a line or leave me a comment!

In the meantime, feel free to subscribe to the newsletter, or just add this site to your RSS reader. :)

In haste — 
James

James

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