The Doomsday Clock was effective Cold War theatre, but does it fail to convey the threat of today’s slowly unfolding existential crises?
Midnight Mass Delusion (The Monthly)
Faced with the prospect of an environmental ‘technofix’, it’s time to change the ethical climate (ABC)
The tendency to think of climate change as something in humanity’s future, as opposed to something that is unfolding now, in real time and with lethal consequences, has retreated a little in recent months.
Brave New Wild is out and proud!
My new book, Brave New Wild: Can Technology Really Save the Planet? is out and available at/through all fine book stores. And hopefully some disreputable ones too!
Certified Flesh: Why Body Horror Gets Under Our Skin
In Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool (2023), author James Foster (Alexander Skarsgård) is holidaying with his partner Em (Cleopatra Coleman) on the island of Li Tolqa, when he hits and kills a local man while driving back to his resort at night. The next day he is arrested by the authorities and told that the penalty... Continue Reading →
Thinking within the guardrails: a review of Techno by Marcus Smith
For those of us who would like to see a revival of the ‘techno-critical’ tradition in public debate (the tradition of Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman and Langdon Winner, inter many alia), it is a cause of some irritation that the hegemonic view of technology remains the ‘instrumental’ one.
Zooming Out: The Ecomodernist Mindset at Large
The notion of the Anthropocene was first proposed twenty-four years ago by the atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen. It denotes a geological epoch defined by human activity, and remains an unofficial designation, with the International Commission on Stratigraphy—whose processes appear to be geologically slow—yet to approve it for technical use. Nevertheless, in that quarter of a... Continue Reading →
Interview with The Paradigm Shift on Brisbane’s 4ZZZ
https://paradigmshifton4zzz.com/2024/07/15/s2e30-technocriticism-with-richard-king/
A Review of Here Be Monsters
By the excellent Bruce Menzies, in The Fremantle Shipping News: https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2024/10/16/roaming-among-monsters/
Nuclear frisson: On Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer
The best scene in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes towards the end of the movie. The titular physicist is talking to Einstein, recalling a previous conversation in which they’d discussed the possibility that an atomic bomb would ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. ‘When I came to you with those calculations’, Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) reflects, ‘we thought we... Continue Reading →
