LCD Douglass is writing stories and histories that deal with the impact of technology and science on culture and society. They are also writing the stories of the early 21st century. Their debut book of poetry, Dark Palace, will be out soon from Aurelia Leo Press. They have several works of fiction in progress. After working for the UK tech research project INTUTE for ten years, and writing briefly for Foreign Policy blogs, they started Histories of Things to Come in 2010 because it was a new medium with radical possibilities for expression and thought. When they started, one of many inspiring bloggers they met online was Kate Sherrod, who wrote a sonnet every day on their blog, Suppertime Sonnets, after they came home from work. They later published two books of sonnets. Sherrod had been blogging since the early 2000s, alongside notable bloggers like the late Mac Tonnies. Their work epitomized what the free Internet was supposed to be. Blogging gave them the freedom to explore informal and unconventional subjects, to consider ideas outside the professional academic sphere, and to reach the public. They worked anonymously under variations of the pen name, Tamaranorbust, for seven years. Things have changed. By the mid 2010s, social media creators were demonetized, shadowbanned, censored. Years of their work was erased. The original hopefulness and creativity of early blogs is gone. Betrayed by the very platforms which originally encouraged the Creative Commons, social media spawned hard-hitting cyber-resistance movements. If the future turns to war, totalitarianism, and a cyborg dystopia, they don’t want our successors to look back on us and say we didn’t try to stop this outcome. There is still time to recover the original hope of the Internet, before people lose their humanity. Their future projects involve community-oriented development, online and off. You can join their Discord discussion on those projects, here. They live in a big house surrounded by a small forest between Ottawa and Montreal, Canada. They studied silviculture to learn how to manage the forest. They are an Aquarius sun, Cancer rising, Leo moon. INFJ or INFP, depending on the test.
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