One of the ideas I am constantly fascinated with is the twin concepts of boundary and continuity. Where do we draw separations between two things? Two ideas? Two objects? Two numbers? Dividing lines which seem perfectly straightforward can, on closer…
You can visualize every human who has ever existed as a node in space and time. We exist here and now, one in a vast array of faceted gems shining through space. We occupy orbital patterns, gravitate towards and away…
There is a tendency to regard the mind as existing separate to, and separable from, the body. Long ago a person once beheld a corpse of someone they knew, now devoid of motion and emotion, thought and dream, and they…
I don’t know how anything ever gets created. The moment a single creative decision gets made, everything shifts around it. If you’re writing a story and a character has a little two-paragraph flashback, the information contained therein affects every other…
Virtual reality will never be what you want it to be. What do we want virtual reality to be? We want the complete experience of being someone or something else. We want to be able to do what they can…
Is there a name for the deep hunger for evidence that we actually exist? “I think, therefore I am” is a pretty flimsy reassurance. Every character we write believes that they think; every character we write believes that they are.…
The term role-playing is applied very loosely to games. Not only has it come to mean something completely different when used to describe video games than the pen-and-paper games that originated it, but it has drifted away from its obvious…
I finally got new glasses, after a couple of years of financially-induced nakedfacing. It’s kind of amazing being able to see again. It feels like a superpower. It feels like, within the constraints of a couple of inches of glass…
We are all artists, with our masterpiece being ourselves. Every gesture, every word, is a work of performance, crafted through habit, from the day we are born. We shape ourselves based on audience polling: It’s not quite an applause meter,…
Halloween keeps growing. More and more over time, this act of pretending, and of naked greed for candy, has defined who we are. It’s expanded, taken over the entire month. October is Halloween now. It’s a couple of days before…
