FOLLOW FOR NOW:
Interviews with Friends and Heroes
(Well-Red Bear)

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes is an anthology of forty-three interviews with minds of all kinds.

Spanning over seven years, Follow for Now includes interviews with such luminaries as Bruce Sterling, Douglas Rushkoff, DJ Spooky, Philip K. Dick, Aesop Rock, Erik Davis, Howard Bloom, David X. Cohen, Richard Saul Wurman, N. Katherine Hayles, Manuel De Landa, Rudy Rucker, Milemarker, Steve Aylett, Doug Stanhope, Paul Roberts, Shepard Fairey, Tod Swank, dälek, Eric Zimmerman, Steven Johnson, Mark Dery, Geert Lovink, Brenda Laurel, and many, many more.

Follow for Now is an eclectic, independently-minded snapshot of the intellectual landscape at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It also includes an extensive bibliography, a full index, and weighs in at nearly 400 pages.

Praise:

“This book is an exotic plant with roots sucking nutrients from the skulls of the most interesting people on the planet. Prepare to be pollinated.”  Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of boingboing.net

“Roy gets culture and, more importantly, gets why getting culture is so important. He’s a big picture thinker who isn’t so caught up in his visions that he forgets to research and report on the details of what’s really going on.” — Douglas Rushkoff, author, Get Back in the Box

“Roy Christopher writes on topics and from points of view that usually alienate me. But he transcends cliché, asserts an unexpected point of view, and ends up utterly fascinating me.”
Howard Bloom, author, Global Brain

“Roy Christopher has one of those distinctive voices that pops up every once in a while, an intelligent voice that hasn’t been domesticated by the academic machine, an engaging voice that hasn’t been prostituted by the infotainment complex. He’s been tracking down the situations, people and ideas that he thinks matter. I’d like to see him get this all down in a book, and I’m not alone.” — Peter Lunenfeld, author, USER: InfoTechnoDemo

“You know, when you get too old and too domesticated to know where the new stuff is going to hit you from, you need someone out there who knows how to duck and weave, and who brings back the news. That person is Roy Christopher.” — McKenzie Wark, author, A Hacker Manifesto

“Roy Christopher has figured out the intricacies of navigating through the Network Society better than anyone I know. If you are anxious to mainline the strange new hybrids of postmodern, 21st century culture, then he’s the connection you need.”
Steven Shaviro, author, Connected

“Such a diverse collection of interviews from all types of interesting folk. Even the people whom I was not familiar with prior to this were great.” Aesop Rock

Press:

“Relentlessly stimulating and insight-packed, Follow for Now is the kind of book I’d like to see published every decade, and devoured every subsequent decade, from now until the end of humanity.”
Maria Popova,
Brain Pickings

“Roy Christopher has long been regarded as an insightful (and sometimes inciteful) inquisitor of Internet-age antics. Follow for Now thus drops sufficiently many known and intriguing names in its table of contents (and on its cover) to stay on the shelves of both snooty philosophers and free-thinking subculturalites for decades. But the nuggets those names provide are intriguing enough to justify that stay, on those shelves and others. In short, the content is as intense as the cast. ” Ellis Godard, Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies

“This is a fascinating group snapshot of key thinkers of the webbed world.” Gareth Branwyn, StreetTech

This is possibly the most ‘cutting edge’ grouping of folks on the intersection of futurism/technology/art yet seen. We couldn’t recommend it highly enough!” V. Vale, RE/Search

Follow for Now is like a crisp and substantial remix of the major memes of the last decade or so.” Erik Davis, TechGnosis.com

 

 

 

Table of Contents:

Science:

  • Eugene Thacker: Whole Earth DNA
  • Mark C. Taylor: The Philosophy of Culture
  • Steven Johnson: No Bitmaps for These Territories (with Alex Burns)
  • Howard Bloom: Mind at Large
  • Terence McKenna: Struck By Noetic Lightning (by Mark Dery)
  • Manuel De Landa: ILLogical Progression (by Paul D. Miller)

Technology:

  • Howard Rheingold: Virtual Cartographer (by Brandon Pierce)
  • Rudy Rucker: Keeping it Transreal (part 1)/Game Theory (part 2) (by Tom Georgoulias)
  • Albert-Laszlo Barabasi: Think Networks
  • David Weinberger: Small Pieces
  • Eric Paulos: ExperiMental InterAction
  • Richard Saul Wurman: Technology, Entertainment, Design (by Mark Wieman)

Media:

  • Eric Zimmerman: Play as Research
  • McKenzie Wark: To the Vector the Spoils
  • N. Katherine Hayles: Material Girl
  • Geert Lovink: Tracking Critical Net Culture
  • Brenda Laurel: Utopian Entrepreneur
  • Peter Lunenfeld: Critic as Curator
  • Erik Davis: Mysticism in the Machine
  • Gareth Branwyn: Media Jam
  • Douglas Rushkoff: The Thing That I Call “Doug”

Music:

  • Mike Ladd: Rebel Without a Pause
  • Aesop Rock: Lyrics to Go
  • Pete Miser: Camouflage is Relative
  • Yoni Wolf and Richard Adams: The Sound of a Handshake
  • dälek: Gods and Griots
  • Weasel Walter: Killing Music
  • Milemarker: The Only Band That Matters
  • Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky: Subliminal Minded

Culture:

  • Brian Coleman: Nostalgia is Def
  • Hal Brindley: Wild Boy
  • Doug Stanhope: Deadbeat Hero
  • Paul Roberts: Peak Oil Recoil (by Paul Barman)
  • Tod Swank: Foundation’s Edge
  • Shepard Fairey: Giant Steps
  • Steven Shaviro: Stranded in the Jungle
  • Mark Dery: Postfuture Shock

Literature:

  • Steve Aylett: Rogue Volts of Satire
  • Philip K. Dick: Speaking with the Dead (by Erik Davis)
  • Adam Voith: Missives from the Downtimes
  • David X. Cohen: Futurama’s Head (In a Jar) (by Tom Georgoulias)
  • Sean Gullette: Faith in Chaos (by Tom Georgoulias)
  • Bruce Sterling: Future Tense (by Paul D. Miller)

Get Yours:

WEll-Red Bear

BANDCAMP

IndieBound

Amazon