The Bell Riots Review looks at what I think will be the “long crisis of the 2020s” through the lens of the Star Trek 2-part episode “Past Tense,” which aired in 1995 and made a prediction—both unsettling and optimistic—about September of 2024. If the crisis unfolds and resolves the right way, we can get to a shared human super-enlightenment, a Trek-like future, where we have solved material wants and have pivoted to the cosmos (in body or in spirit). But there’s also a good chance the crisis unfolds in entirely the wrong way, and the consequences could be a lost century, or a lost millennium. The blog’s opening post from September of 2020 explains the formulation in some depth.
https://bellriotsreview.substack.com/p/the-bell-riots
The Bell Riots Review also allows me to air some ideas which don’t quite match the pace, format, medium, or general framing of the other kinds of work I do as an associate professor of geography. These other kinds of work include 2 books, a bunch of articles, and various visual projects. Links to these other projects are below.
Book about elephants and elephant-based transportation in India and Burma:
https://wwnorton.com/books/Giants-of-the-Monsoon-Forest/
Book about transportation and revolt:
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/transportation-and-revolt
Visual work and short essays (lots of map stuff, elephant stuff, and more):
https://jacobshell.carbonmade.com/
Academic faculty page and publications:
https://liberalarts.temple.edu/academics/faculty/shell-jacob
Twitter:
