> On Aug 20, 2016, at 11:02 PM, Rajeev Chakravarthi <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/armageddon-comma-explained?utm_source=bbcfb
> <http://motherboard.vice.com/read/armageddon-comma-explained?utm_source=bbcfb>
[. . . ]
>
> John Sundman's recent post on the Synbio seminar he addressed, with the
> reference to Neal Stephenson and the Hieroglyph Project came to mind.
>
> Regards
>
> Rajeev
I was at Defcon, the giant hacker convention in Las Vegas, a few weeks ago &
gave a rather grandiose talk — a longer and more ambitious version of my talk
in Scotland — “Biohacking, Art, and the Preservation of Humanity”. The setting
was the Biohacking Village, a sub-theme at Defcon. There were about 30 or 40
people in the room at the time — other Defcon talks typically draw hundreds of
people.
http://www.defconbiohackingvillage.org
I don’t know how well my talk went over — and I’m not sure I even liked it
myself. It was a bit rough around the edges. I did get some compliments
afterwards but it was hardly a rousing success.
I intend to put a transcript of my remarks up on my website soon and I’ll post
a link here when I do.
This week I’ll be attending the SF convention “Templecon”[1] in Rhode Island,
where I’ll be on a bunch of panels and giving a talk and doing a reading from
my forthcoming novel and so forth.
http://templecon.org/16/ <http://templecon.org/16/>
The theme this year is “rebuilding after the apocalypse”. I wonder if I’ll be
the only one there who thinks this isn’t an especially fun topic. I personally
don’t think there will be much rebuilding after the apocalypse, if it comes. I
think it will be just suffering and misery until the ultimate extinction.
I’ll do a blog post after the con & post the link here.
jrs
1. Most SF conventions whose names end in “con” have some kind of obvious
meaning to the name, e.g. ComiCon, LexiCon, TusCon, etc. I have no idea what
the name TempleCon is supposed to indicate.
