In Defence of Serendipity

Praise

“I was deeply moved by this melancholy work, which sums up a generation of hectic labor by so many of my innovative friends and colleagues. Yes, the Digital Revolution has eaten its young, as indeed most revolutions do. It went from movement, to business, to racket, and if you read Seb Olma, you’ll have an inkling of how and why that happened, and what must come next.”
–Bruce Sterling, sci-fi writer and futurist
 
“In this practice-driven and original essay Sebastian Olma successfully catapults dialectics into the heart of the brutal ‘creative industry’ rhetoric. Good luck picking up the bits and pieces after the blast!” 
–Geert Lovink, net critic
 
“Sebastian Olma’s timely meditation on the uses and abuses of serendipity sets out to free chance invention and accidental discovery from its corporate and state captivity in the ‘creative industries’. His defence of serendipity as a sagacity of resistance dedicated to an open future is made with a wit and lightness of spirit conspicuously absent in the lugubrious managerialist appropriations of the term. His erudite polemic convinces the reader that – as Pasteur might now say – chance favours the mind prepared to change.”
–Howard Caygill, philosopher