- One of the themes of the project is the creative process. I thought it would make sense if every character was working, perhaps struggling to work on something: Divanov on the handbook, the journalist on his article, the editor of the magazine on the magazine itself, and so on.
- One thing the stories of these characters would investigate is the fear of the blank page / the writer's block. The first ever writer can’t quite figure out why writing doesn’t happen easily and all the time, or why it sometimes sucks; or maybe he can write easily when he lets the bot do it for him, but he understands that's not what he wants writing to be... It's just hard to imagine what else it could be.
- The image of the editor/founder is starting to take shape. I'm imagining a bearded old-fashioned suit-wearing gentleman who's got wealth and not much to do, and a passion for the journalism of old — he may have a collection of newspapers and magazines and pamphlets and books — that is tampered by his near-inability to read any of it. He's literate, but gets bored and distracted too easily. He loves the idea of a magazine or newspaper, and he loves to hold them in his hands, to turn the pages, to admire the layout — but actually reading even a short article demands too much attention from him. So he has this dream of starting a magazine but he doesn't quite know how to go about it cause he's never actually read one (nor does he write; nor does he know anybody who does either of these things).
- How does he have wealth, and what is the economy of the Immedium? Here's my note on it: "Jobs in the Immedium: mostly meetings and procrastination; the meetings are boring and their goal is to create engaging thoughts that would promote brands. Brands are not tied to objects anymore, they’re just symbols fishing for donations. Some people are their own brands and get sent donations, others work for brands and get paid for it. The editor is a media magnate — he owns thought networks, brands and ideologies that get a lot of income and don’t require much of his participation. His employees want to have meetings with him cause they think that’s what work is. He’s bored and dreams of publishing a magazine".
- A random thought I am intrigued by: maybe we should be thinking about ideas and societies (like that of the Town) as characters on their own "hero's journeys". So you take a premise and let it change and move and evolve the way characters do — a challenge is presented, a call is answered, etc.
- Finally, a note on something I brought up the last time we talked: I loved your two chapters and the world you're creating in them, but I wasn't sure how to get it in sync with everything else I have in mind. Here's an idea: the Journalist is sent on his first ever assignment by the Editor, with the Editor expecting a dry journalistic report (of which, again, he's read almost zero, but the idea of which is very dear to him, something he thinks about a lot). Instead, the Journalist writes this evocative prose, whole dimensions of which could very well be fiction — because, like the rest of the characters sans Divanov, his thinking and, by consequence, writing are augmented by thoughtbots, which optimize for engagement. That is: his days are more interesting to him when he imagines himself a character in a cyberpunk crime novel, so he can't help but interpret reality in this way, and he can't help but write in this style. Perhaps he sends his writing back to the Editor, and he actually reads it — which takes time and some uppers, but the main thing that carries him through is the high of being the reason this writing even exists — and then he can't figure out what this text is, exactly. Is this journalism? Is the world the way the Journalist describes it?.. The writing is psychoactive, but what he's doing to him he can't say.
- Finally, a notion I've been growing into: our characters start out not knowing that the Immedium — this immediate, media-less world of theirs — exists, they're not aware of it as fish aren't aware of water; as they start to step out of it — by writing, reading, engaging in contemplative practices — they realize it is there, and it's weird, and it's not all that reality is; finally, the more they explore the edges, the more they find out that the Immedium is small. It's not that there is strange life on the edges and utter wilderness outside — this seemingly all-encompassing realm is really just a weird layer or pocket of human existence. There are subcultures like the Town that exist outside of it. There are drug users and lobotomized street folk and spiritualists who treat thoughtbots as demons and know how to keep them at bay. There are the creators of thoughtbots that have a different relationship to them than the users. There are whole countries that took a different path. The thoughtbot society seems total at first, encompassing all society and even all time — but slowly becomes a weird pocket of a much bigger, even less definable world...