S G Bell

S G Bell – author of The Epilogue Event and Baptised and Newly Born, books in the AI Aftermath Series.

S G Bell’s fiction is concerned with technology apocalypse. His interest in this subject began in 1999 when his academic research drew him to the Technocities phenomena, metropolitan utopias or infernos emerging across the world. Academic and consulting work took him to over 40 countries, where he worked on a variety of issues including: drug control on the Afghanistan/ Pakistan border, computer systems planning in Nigeria and China, the measurement of sustainability in the Mediterranean, micro-financial systems in Bangladesh, and IT satellite systems in Ethiopia. At the same time, he found that writing fiction gave him the freedom to explore complexity, dream beyond the facts, consider the aftermath of apocalypse, of technology outstripping vulnerable social development. It helped him think.

With degrees in development studies, information science and a PhD in computer systems development, his work has always involved multi-disciplinary boundary hopping. This has provided him with insights, braiding the multiple strands of activity that make up the world.

In 2010 he was researching the future of the internet and became concerned by the way groups were becoming enmeshed in technologies. Fascinated by the dynamics, as CEO of the Bayswater Institute in London, he engaged in the study of groups in the learning event: Wisdom In Groups. Professional experience confirmed the observation from 1999, that heedless technological expansion posed a threat to social cohesion.

With more than 100 published articles and papers and several academic books. Most recently, S G Bell has written books on mindfulness and the mechanics of fear. He is Emeritus Professor in Innovation and Methodology at the Open University.

S G Bell remains deeply concerned with the sustainability of the human project, but reassured by the apparently limitless scope of human resourcefulness.