James John Bell co-founded the non-profit advocacy communications organization smartMeme in 2002. SmartMeme's clients include national nonprofits, like Greenpeace

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

 and the Breast Cancer

Breast cancer

Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

 Fund, as well as local grassroots organizations. BenBella Books

BenBella Books

BenBella Books is an independent publishing house based in Dallas, Texas. Founded by Glenn Yeffeth in 2001, BenBella specializes in non-fiction books on popular culture, health, and nutrition, along with books on science, politics, psychology, and other topics....

 published Bell's afterword to the environmental science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 classic The Sheep Look Up

The Sheep Look Up

The Sheep Look Up is a science fiction novel by British author John Brunner, first published in 1972. The novel's setting is decidedly dystopian; the book deals with the deterioration of the environment in the United States...

by John Brunner

John Brunner (novelist)

John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...

. His other writings on science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 and social change

Social change

Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...

 can be found in the book Pie Any Means Necessary - The Biotic Baking Brigade

Biotic Baking Brigade

The Biotic Baking Brigade is a loosely connected group of activists famous for throwing pies in the faces of such figures as Bill Gates, San Francisco mayors Willie Brown, and Gavin Newsom, anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps, economist Milton Friedman, Swedish King Carl Gustaf, former Canadian Prime...

 Cookbook. He has authored chapters in The Battle for Azeroth: Adventure, Alliance, and Addiction in the World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...

and So Say We All: An Unauthorized Collection of Thoughts and Opinions on Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction franchise created by Glen A. Larson. The franchise began with the Battlestar Galactica TV series in 1978, and was followed by a brief sequel TV series in 1980, a line of book adaptations, original novels, comic books, a board game, and video games...

.

Bell was a writer/director at the non-profit public interest communications firm Sustain from 2000 to 2003. At Sustain he managed advertising and public relations campaigns for clients including the Sierra Club

Sierra Club

The Sierra Club is the oldest, largest, and most influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. It was founded on May 28, 1892, in San Francisco, California, by the conservationist and preservationist John Muir, who became its first president...

, Rainforest Action Network

Rainforest Action Network

Rainforest Action Network is an environmental organization based in San Francisco, California, USA. The organization was founded by Randy "Hurricane" Hayes and Mike Roselle in 1985, with the financial help of Fund for Wild Nature....

, Earthjustice

Earthjustice

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm based in the United States that specializes in cases protecting natural resources, safeguarding public health, and promoting clean energy...

, Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth

Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...

, and the Center For Food Safety

Center for Food Safety

The Center for Food Safety is a U.S. non-profit organization, based in Washington, D.C., that also maintains an office in San Francisco, CA...

 among others. Bell's work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine

The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...

, The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

, and Communication Arts

Communication Arts

Communication Arts is the largest international trade journal of visual communications. Founded in 1959 by Richard Coyne and Robert Blanchard, the magazine’s coverage includes graphic design, advertising, photography, illustration and interactive media. The magazine continues to be edited and...

.

He is one of a few published environmental critics of the technological singularity

Technological singularity

Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...

, most notably profiled on KurzweilAI.net's Big Thinkers and as a featured author at Stanford's 2006 Singularity Summit. See his Futurist magazine cover story "Exploring the Singularity" (May, 2003) for a cautionary environmentalist perspective on technological convergence

Technological convergence

Technological convergence is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks. Convergence can refer to previously separate technologies such as voice , data , and video that now share resources and interact with each other synergistically.The rise of...

 and NBIC

NBIC

NBIC can refer to different subjects:* Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information technology and Cognitive science * National Board Inspection Code...

technologies.