nextwavefutures

[nextwavefutures]

The talkin’ 1962 Bob Dylan London blues

It was Bob Dylan’s 83rd birthday yesterday, and this post was written after listening to the great British folksinger Martin Carthy reminiscing about hanging out with Dylan in late 1962 when he visited London for a few weeks. Carthy is an almost exact contemporary of Dylan’s, and this is a story of two 21-year olds finding their feet in the world. It was first published a few days ago at…

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#Bob Dylan #CBS #Ed Sullivan Show #folk music #Girl from the North Country #Martin Carthy #masters of War #Scarborough Fair

[nextwavefutures]

‘The American’

‘The American’ is George Clooney as a hitman. At the start of the film, he is lying low in the wilds of Sweden after a job which may have gone wrong. But someone who doesn’t have his best interests at heart tracks him there and suddenly there’s a string of bodies lying in the snow, including a woman he had been living with. “Don’t have friends” says his controller, the sinister Pavel, as he…

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#Anton Corbijn #George Clooney #The American

[nextwavefutures]

Ginger Rogers, comic actor

A slightly updated version of an older post. ICYMI, something to make you smile.

Ginger Rogers was well-established as a leading lady when she made Vivacious Lady in 1938—she’d started young and had already made five of the nine musicals she starred in with Astaire, for example. But people also knew that she could act, especially comedy. From the description, I’d expected the film to be a “showgirl confounds the stuffy world of academe” story—the classic fish out of water.…

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#comedy #Ginger Rogers #James Stewart #Vivacious Lady

[nextwavefutures]

The Red May Day and the Green May Day

The Red May Day and the Green May Day: the politics of the environment and the politics of labour. New post.

As May Day approached this year I finally got round to a small project I’d been meaning to do for a few years now. This was to read Peter Linebaugh’s book The Incomplete, True, Authentic, and Wonderful History of May Day, which is a collection of pieces he has written over the years—some pamphlets, some articles—for and about May Day. Peter Linebaugh is a radical American historian, probably…

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#Beltane #Haymarket riots #Lucy Parsons #May Day #Merry Mount #Peter Linebaugh #William Morris

[nextwavefutures]

‘The Tourist’ meets ‘Summertime’

Watching The Tourist, I had this uncanny feeling that I was watching a remake of David Lean’s languid 1950s film Summertime, starring Katharine Hepburn. I don’t mean this literally. One is a modern romantic thriller, the other a gentle bittersweet romance. In one, everything is happening; in the other, almost nothing happens. Since you’re more likely to have seen The Tourist than Summertime,…

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#Angelique Jolie #David Lean #Johnny Depp #Katharine Hepburn #Summertime #The Tourist #Venice

[nextwavefutures]

Looking for hope

Jon Alexander, who wrote the book Citizens back in 2022, has been on a bit of a quest this year. As a result of the book, he has been around the world talking to citizens—usually activist citizens—“from Grimsby to Auckland and back again”, as he puts it.  What he learnt from talking to citizens, as he explains in the introductory article, is: that people everywhere across the world — literally…

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#Argentina #citizens #Ece Temelkuran #hope #Jon Alexander #Poland

[nextwavefutures]

Asking questions about the future

Asking questions about the future—reviewing Shell’s Seven Questions. New post at the next wave.

A sometimes colleague asked me a question about the Seven Questions interview framework, and when I had a look at it I realised that although the framework, or versions of it, is widely used by futurists, it’s not much written up. The framework itself is published by the UK’s GO-Science in their Futures Toolkit (p.29), and looking at some of my recent proposals, I barely send out a proposal that…

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#Gill Ringland #interviewing #Kees van der Heijden #Matthew Spaniol #Seven Questions #Shell

[nextwavefutures]

Riding London’s cobbled streets

Riding London’s cobbled streets. New post at Around The Edges.

One of the highlights of my Easter was riding the London cobblestones with Julian Kirwan-Taylor, who devised the route, among others. There are 55 stretches of cobblestones still remaining on the roads of inner London, and the ride contrives to connect them all into one ride. The route—which is shared on Julian’s website—starts in Shepherds Bush and runs clockwise via Paddington, Covent Garden,…

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#cobbles #cycling #Julian Kirwan-Taylor #London #Terroni #Where My Wheels Go

[nextwavefutures]

We’re going to live for ever, maybe

We’re going to live for ever, maybe. Fame has the dullest characters in musical history, but it’s in love with an idea of New York. New post at Around the Edges.

Fame is a curiosity these days, I think. It was shot in 1980 in New York in the teeth of the heavily unionised US film crews, telling the fictionalised story of a four year cohort at the (real) New York School of Performing Arts. The director was Alan Parker, the writer Christopher Gore, although Parker and Gore reworked the script together. The story first. Having written recently about Kurt…

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#Alan Parker #fame #musicals #New York City

[nextwavefutures]

Using ‘literary futures’ to open up the imagination

I’ve been aware of the concept of “literary futures” since I attended a workshop at Lancaster University’s then Institute for Social Futures in early 2020.[1] Emily Spiers ran a narrative futures component in an all-day workshop that was, presciently, about biohazards. That work has been taken further by Emily’s former colleague Rebecca Braun, now at the University of Galway, and she has just…

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#Don Quixote #Emily Spiers #Institute of Social Futures #Literary futures #Rebecca Braun

[nextwavefutures]

Young men and the problem with masculinity (Pt 3)

We need to finds new models of masculinity that are better for men’s health and tht women can also value. Otherwise ‘toxic’ and regressive versions of maleness will keep on filling the gap. New post at The Next Wave.

In two previous posts (Part 1 here, and Part 2 here), I have discussed the recent work about divergent political attitudes between young men and young women. The TL:DR version of that: loss of status, and lack of economic opportunity, breeds resentment. But this also has qualitative aspects: what does ‘good masculinity’ look like? —- My starting point here is a long article about masculinity in…

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#Christine Emba #masculinity #men #Richard Reeves #women

[nextwavefutures]

Unravelling the gender politics of young men [Pt 2]

This is the second of three pieces on gender, politics, and young people. Part 1 is here. — There is some unfinished business from the previous piece on the gendered of young people. ‘Young’ is 18-29. So let’s start, briefly, with the politics of young women, radicalised in the last decade (in the UK, Germany, and the US), and the last half decade in South Korea. In his FT piece…

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#Alice Evans #economics #filter bubbles #generations #Girard #John Burn-Murdoch #Robin James #social media

[nextwavefutures]

Young women are becoming more radical. Young men aren’t. [Pt 1]

Young women are becoming more radical. Young men aren’t. [Pt 1]. New post at the next wave.

With a small nod to International Women’s Day, I am republishing here over the next three days three pieces that were originally published on my Substack newsletter, Just Two Things. — The data journalist John Burn-Murdoch is consistently one of the most interesting writers on the Financial Times. A recent FT article, which was also the subject of a long thread on ex-Twitter, points out some…

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#Alice Evans #generations #Germany #John Burn-Murdoch #South Korea #UK #United States

[nextwavefutures]

Whooping it up for the boys

Whooping it up for the boys. Watching Apollo 13 one more time. New post at Around The Edges.

Watching Ron Howard’s 1995 film Apollo 13 again after a long gap, some things struck me, more about the mission than the film, that I didn’t give much thought to last time. The first is that they were doing so much, technically speaking, with so little resource. Obviously we only appreciate this with hindsight, when we know—and this is a well-worn cliche now—that the moon missions had access to…

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#Apollo 13 #Clive James #Ron Howard #space

[nextwavefutures]

Building the democratic local economy

Building the democratic local economy—reading Stir to Action’s ‘how to’ guide. New post at The Next Wave.

The magazine Stir to Action, and the project that sits behind it, has been one of the most effective popularisers in the UK of the idea of community economics and community wealth building. This is Stir’s ‘mission’ (though it doesn’t use this word): We work to create a more democratic economy in workplaces and communities, in particular through new infrastructure, business support, research and…

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#community wealth building #how-to-guide #new economy #Stir to Action

[nextwavefutures]

The ‘vast uncertainty’ of AI and jobs

Making sense of the ‘vast uncertainty’ of AI and jobs—understanding models of change is more useful than spraying numbers around. New post at. The Next Wave.

I wrote here, critically, about the recent IMF report on the impact of AI and jobs. I was doing some research for a report I was writing recently which required me to go back into the same area, and found an article by David Autor that has a different view. Not more cheerful, necessarily, but maybe more honest about the radical uncertainty that pervades this whole area. Autor is a credible voice…

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#AI #Claudia Goldin #David Autor #Jan Tinbergen #labour markets

[nextwavefutures]

The Rhapsody in Blue problem

The Rhapsody in Blue problem—a huge success that has cast a long shadow over black music. New post.

It is the 100th anniversary this week of the first performance of George Gershwin’s orchestral piece Rhapsody in Blue by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in New York. Gershwin had declined an invitation from Whiteman to write a ‘concerto-like piece’, because he didn’t have enough time to write it. But Whiteman forced Gershwin’s hand by announcing the concert, and Gershwin’s piece, to the New York…

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#Duke Ellington #George Gershwin #Herbie Hancock #Paul Whiteman #rhapsody in blue #Richard Williams