iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 09/11/2025

Weeknotes/ week 45 / 2025: ten theses on “the future” The moment to change a mental model is the moment at which it becomes an obstacle to understanding rather than a scaffold for it. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 02/11/2025

Weeknotes/ week 44 / 2025: hermit walks the dunes I'm running a three-day course on fiction-for-futures in January! In-person, on-site, and strictly limited to no more than ten participants... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 26/10/2025

Weeknotes/ week 43 / 2025: l'esprit de l'ascenseur Marketing 101 advises that you hone your elevator pitch. I'm increasingly convinced that simplifying problems this way just makes them worse in the long run. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 19/10/2025

Weeknotes/ week 42 / 2025: reinventing the wheel What’s the value of worldbuilding around the questions of a green transition, when participants could be spending their time developing products and services instead? I have answers! www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 12/10/2025

Weeknotes/ week 41 / 2025: stuck in the middle with you In which I channel my inner Inigo Montoya in an attempt to explain why talking about "technology" robs us of the sense of our own agency... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 05/10/2025

Weeknotes/ week 40 / 2025: the same river twice This week, it seems I'm flagrantly mishandling Heraclitus to make a case for horizon-scanning... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 28/09/2025

Weeknotes/ week 39 / 2025: staying with various troubles Utopias and dystopias are equally open to interpretation, as are all narratives of futurity. That's why, for me, the name of the game is to portray the messiness of hopes and fears alongside each other... www.worldbuilding.agency/we…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 21/09/2025

Weeknotes/ week 38 / 2025: player of games I’m waxing philosophical this week, as I consider the potential utility of the “dark forest” theory of the internet to foresight. So please exercise your (potentially illusory) free will and click on through to follow along... www.worldbuilding.a…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 14/09/2025

Weeknotes/ week 37 / 2025: a room of one’s own It’s been wall-to-wall logistics around here this week, as I’ve been moving in to a new studio/office space... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 07/09/2025

Weeknotes/ week 36 / 2025: at the intersection of three things I've been going on about this "narrative prototyping" thing for ages now, but how does it differ from science fiction and/or design fiction? Well, since you asked... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 31/08/2025

Weeknotes/ week 35 / 2025: radio daze Client work is keeping me busy this weekend, so perhaps you'd like to go listen to a recent podcast appearance? www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 24/08/2025

Weeknotes/ week 34 / 2025: the machine stops When life gives you lemons, make a lemonade-flavoured parable in place of the more considered content that you'd have written if you'd not lost the time to dealing with the lemons. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 17/08/2025

Weeknotes/ week 33 / 2025: how much is too much? Or, phrased differently: what do the IPCC's climate change scenarios have in common with the Star Wars franchise? www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 10/08/2025

Weeknotes/ week 32 / 2005: conspiracy culture There's nothing like looking at the disposable popular culture of three decades previous for reminding you that there's nothing new under the sun, and that history moves in waves rather than an arc. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 03/08/2025

Weeknotes/ week 31 / 2025: churches of futurity What can we learn about futures from thinking about them as if they were faiths or fandoms? Quite a lot, if you ask me... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 27/07/2025

Weeknotes/ week 30 / 2025: in defence of magickal thinking Divination and foresight are a deal less different than some practitioners in either camp would have you believe—both address questions of strategy through the sensemaking process of storytelling. Perhaps you'd like a free trial by way of …

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 20/07/2025

Weeknotes/ week 29 / 2025: rifts in the schismatrix Here's another way to look at the difference between science fiction and fiction-for-futures: the former is art, the latter is artifice. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 13/07/2025

Weeknotes/ week 28 / 2025: the concretisation of metaphor The tools of science fiction can be put to use in the storying of scenarios, but in such cases, they are means to a somewhat different end. How might we usefully describe that distinction? www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 06/07/2025

Weeknotes/ week 27 / 2025: on models and literacies "All models are wrong, but some models are useful"—so the saying goes. But how are they wrong, and how are they useful? And what does that mean for thinking about futures? www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 29/06/2025

Weeknotes/ week 26 / 2025 The hollyhocks stretch toward the sun, and WEEKNOTES wanders the backstreets to bask in their colours... This week, a fictional bishop transmigrates, and the Green Revolution is reassessed. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 22/06/2025

Weeknotes/ week 25 / 2025 The sun sinks behind the prow-stone, and WEEKNOTES sail on toward the summerland... This week, a solstice is observed, both figuratively and literally, and the up/down axis gets an airing. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 15/06/2025

Weeknotes/ week 24 / 2025 WEEKNOTES is on something like a holiday—so not much to see here for anyone but the serious completists! www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 08/06/2025

worldbuilding/ week 23 / 2025 Making stories while the sun shines, enjoying the music of the muezzin—WEEKNOTES aspires to feline reincarnation! This week, Eid is celebrated vicariously, and the philosophy of cats is revealed as a contradiction in terms... www.worldbuilding.agency/404

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 01/06/2025

Weeknotes/ week 22 / 2025 Trekking through the wilderness of story, traversing the desert of the Real—WEEKNOTES wander where they will. This week, warfare is conducted through comics, and Canada goes its own way... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 25/05/2025

Weeknotes/ week 21 / 2025 Hanging pictures on the wall / who can say when WEEKNOTES fall? This week, pictures are exhibited, and the devil rides out... www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 18/05/2025

Weeknotes/ week 20 / 2025 Firing up the neutron beam, slicing through the materiality of the text—WEEKNOTES straddles the disciplinary spectrum like Slim Pickens straddled the bomb! This week, facilities are toured, art is produced, projects are revealed... and houses are haunted? www.wo…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 14/05/2025

Interviews/ unknown pleasures: an interview with Cameron Tonkinwise (part 2) In the second part of my interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, we discuss Transition Design, prefigurative politics, dramaturgy, narratology, imagination, and... urban cycling as filtered through the philosophy of Georges Ba…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 11/05/2025

Weeknotes/ week 19 / 2025 Counting the beats, coming in on the one—WEEKNOTES rock the rhythm 'til the tune says stop. This week, we're up in the mountains with Olga Tockarczuk, and down in the valleys of art. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 04/05/2025

Weeknotes/ week 18 / 2025 Dodging drunk kids, spurning pagan conflagrations—WEEKNOTES marches into May with flags unfurled! This week, the grid goes down, but the work goes on. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 27/04/2025

Weeknotes/ week 17 / 2025 Looping the loops and riding the curves—a white-knuckle WEEKNOTES that only just came in to land. This week, a wall is hit (albeit slowly), and "AI" is treated as normal. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 23/04/2025

Interviews/ design designs designers: an interview with Cameron Tonkinwise (part 1) In this first half of my interview with Cameron Tonkinwise, we discuss design as a practice that necessarily takes place in an already-designed context, and what that practice has in common with worldbuilding. htt…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 20/04/2025

Weeknotes/ week 16 / 2025 Hunching over the desk, hanging out with the wise animals—WEEKNOTES rocks out with the cherubs for a change. This week, the social and the technical are inseparable, and ol' man Burroughs plays with scissors and celluloid. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 13/04/2025

Weeknotes/ week 15 / 2025 Paddling away from Calypso's island, claiming false identities in every encounter—the genre of WEEKNOTES is never merely a tale, but also its telling! This week, it all adds up in the end, and Emily Wilson sets sail on the wine-dark sea. www.worldbuilding.agency…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 06/04/2025

Weeknotes/ week 14 / 2025 Organic patterns emerge from deterministic rules, causal connections go unnoticed—WEEKNOTES start the simulation and sees what happens. This week, ecosystems get their freak on, and Solarists reach the edge of the rational. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 02/04/2025

Essays/ nowhere to go but further in: a hypothesis of fandom intensity The differences in dynamic between the fandoms of primary- and secondary-world media can tell us a lot about the micropolitics of future imaginaries. worldbuilding-agency.ghost.io/essay……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 30/03/2025

Weeknotes/ week 13 / 2025 Dusty with fragments of citation and punctuation, blinking in the sudden light—WEEKNOTES emerge briefly from the word-mines! This week, the nose goes the grindstone, and Toffler goes to China. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 23/03/2025

Weeknotes/ week 12 / 2025 Up and down the west coast with a head full of viral fog, over the bridge and back to a melancholy melody—WEEKNOTES keeps moving, even when they don't feel like it. This week, the fort is held, and Scandinavian history is scattershot. www.worldbuilding.agency/we…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 19/03/2025

Interviews/ the scenario doesn’t know it’s a scenario: an interview with Madeline Ashby Few folk are better equipped to understand the art of worldbuilding from both sides of the futures/fiction border than Madeline Ashby, who has a fully justified reputation for excellence in both aspects. Find o…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 16/03/2025

Weeknotes/ week 11 / 2025 No ornate ironies and allusions this week—just a pared-down back-to-basics WEEKNOTES, because I am sick as a dog and it's all I can manage. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 09/03/2025

Weeknotes/ week 10 / 2025 There and back again, running the risk and riding the rails—WEEKNOTES takes a trip to That London. This week, the Chronoberg Chronicle meets its moment, and Discworld trumps Middle Earth in almost every way. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes/…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 05/03/2025

Essays/ of system and story: how narrative-based futuring expands the planner’s toolkit What use is story in the context of serious, grown-up planning? It's the best way of finding out the flaws in your existing system model—let me tell you why. www.worldbuilding.agency/essays/of-……

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 02/03/2025

Weeknotes/ week 09 / 2025 From dead giraffes to post-apocalyptic monastics—WEEKNOTES lays it all out on the sidewalk, and lets the kids watch, too. This week, the world is (so much) more-then-human, and fiction is (so much) more than a signal of its author's morality. www.worldbuilding.a…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 23/02/2025

Weeknotes/ week 08 / 2025 Be it the guitar music of the post-Millenial moment, or the market shenanigans of the same period—WEEKNOTES dare look back as a way of looking forward! This week, economics is sacred, and fixes are virtual rather than spatial. www.worldbuilding.agency/weeknotes…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 16/02/2025

Weeknotes/ week 07 / 2025 Old oak bears weight across a sea of years, its splits like lines in a face that's really seen some stuff—but what would it know of WEEKNOTES? This week, wands are threefold bold and bright, a trilogy comes to an end, and Ted lays down the law. www.worldbuilding…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 09/02/2025

Weeknotes/ week 06 / 2025 In February the sun returns slowly, like a scorned but needy god, and we prostrate ourselves before it with offerings of incense, firstborn lambs and WEEKNOTES. This week, finish lines are approached asymptotically, and the eschaton is retrospectively re-immanentised. …

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 02/02/2025

Weeknotes/ week 05 / 2025 Past the old oak pillar and up the concrete stairs—that's where you'll find the WEEKNOTES, at least until the free beer runs out. This week, shells are haunted, and implausible worlds imagined with an uncanny thoroughness... oh, and a short story is published, too. htt…

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 28/01/2025

some thoughts on the stock market 4369

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Paul Graham Raven @paulgrahamraven.com · 26/01/2025

Weeknotes/ week 04 / 2025 Slipping on the bison-skin cloak, dancing around the fire in the lowering light—WEEKNOTES will banish the unquiet spirits which ail you! This week, the train remounts the rails, and the deep past is as alien as the far future, while also as familiar as childhood itself.…

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