Slashdot Mirror
Bruce Sterling's Manifesto for January 3, 2000
StefanJ writes "SF writer and techno journalist Bruce Sterling has released the definitive version of "The Manifesto of January 3, 2000."
Unlike the version released last year, this one isn't directly tied to the Viridian ecodesign movement; rather, it is a passionate and bold call for a new movement in technology and art. One that promotes something like the Open Source movement, and hints at the coming of a posthuman age and an abundance of wonderful and terrible things. "
Hemos, you could have simply copied the text into the body of your post. (Or did you miss the "DISTRIBUTE AT WILL" part?) There's no reason to slashdot the page.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Just a few paragraphs into it (haven't read the whole thing yet), I spot this nice line:
"We have a new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia."
What, then, is the Slashdot community? Are the various forums and communities that exist all over the Internet totally devoid of intelligentsia?
I was under the impression that before this 'new economy' came a whole new brand of intelligentsia - the self-teaching, self-enhancing swag of techno-brutes that have been lifting themselves out of the muck of obscurity with the tools of the Internet and creating whole new social spheres, which subsequently resulted in entirely different modes of online economy.
Can someone explain, am I missing something here or is Bruce waxing poetic and I'm just being too literal?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Apologies in advance for the length of this post, but then.. If you have an account, you can set up a max comment length of only a couple kilobytes and you won't see more than the first few paragraphs without clicking "See the rest of this comment" or something similar. Without any further ado, here's the full document.
----------------------
Why are you printing this page? Wasting paper isn't Viridian!
This document is located at:
http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/index.asp?t=140
Viridian Note 124 : The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
Bruce Sterling
bruces@well.com
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/
IDEOLOGICAL FREEWARE: DISTRIBUTE AT WILL
The Manifesto of January 3, 2000
In 1914, the lamps went out all over Europe.
Life during the rest of the twentieth century was
like crouching under a rock.
But human life is not required to be like the
twentieth century. That wasnt fate, it was merely
a historical circumstance. In this new Belle Epoque,
this delightful era, we are experiencing a prolonged break
in the last centurys even tenor of mayhem. The time has
come to step out of those shadows into a different
cultural reality.
We need a sense of revived possibility, of genuine
creative potential, of unfeigned joie de vivre. We have a
new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia. We have
massive flows of information and capital, but we have a
grave scarcity of meaning. We know what we can buy, but
we dont know what we want.
The twentieth century featured any number of -isms.
They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy
trumps engineering. It doesnt. In a world fully
competent to command its material basis, ideology is
inherently flimsy. "Technology" in its broad sense:
the ability to transform resources, the speed at which new
possibilities can be opened and exploited, the multiple
and various forms of command-and-control -- technology,
not ideology, is the twentieth centurys lasting legacy.
Technology broke the gridlock of the five-decade Cold War.
It made a new era thinkable. And, finally, technology
made a new era obvious.
But too many twentieth-century technologies
are very like twentieth-century ideologies: rigid,
monolithic, poisonous and non-sustainable.
We need clean, supple, healthy means of support for
a crowded world. We need recyclable technologies,
industries that dont take themselves with that
Stalinesque seriousness that demands the brutal sacrifice
of millions. In order to make flimsy, supple technologies
thinkable, and then achievable, then finally obvious, we
need an ideology that embraces its own obsolescence.
The immediate future wont be a period suitable for
building monuments, establishing thousand-year regimes,
creating new-model citizens, or asserting leaden
certainties about anything whatsoever. The immediate
future is about picking and choosing among previously
unforeseen technical potentials.
Our time calls for intelligent fads. Our time calls
for a self-aware, highly temporary array of broad social
experiments, whose effects are localized, non-lethal and
reversible -- yet transparent, and visible to all parties
who might be persuaded to look.
The Internet is the natural test-bed for this
fast-moving, fast-vanishing, start-up society. Because
the native technology of the coming years is not the 19th
century "machine" or the 20th century "product." It is
the 21st century "gizmo."
A gizmo is a device with so many features and so
many promises that it can never be mastered within its
own useful lifetime. A gizmo is flimsy, cheap, colorful,
friendly, intriguing, easily disposable, and unlikely to
harm the user. The gizmos purpose is not to
efficiently perform some function or effectively provide
some service. A gizmo exists to snag the users
attention, and to engage the user in a vast
unfolding nexus of interlinked experience.
The gizmo in its manifold aspects is the beau ideal
for contemporary design and engineering. Because that is
what our culture will be like, at its heart, in its bones,
in its organs. A gizmo culture. We will go in so many
directions at once that most of them will never see
fulfillment. And then they will be gone.
This is confusing and seems lacking in moral
seriousness -- but only only by the rigid standards of
the past century, bitterly obsessed with ultimate
efficiencies and malignant final solutions. We need
opportunities now, not efficiencies. We need inspired
improvisation, not solutions. Technology can no longer
bind us in a vast tonnage of iron, barbed wire and brick.
We will stop heaving balky machines uphill. Instead, we
begin judging entire techno-complexes as they virtually
unfold, judging them by standards that are, in some very
basic sense, aesthetic.
Henceforth, it is humans and human flesh that lasts
out the years, not the mechanical infrastructure. Our
bodies outlast our machines, and our bodies outlast our
beliefs. People will outlive this "revolution" -- if
spared an apocalypse, human individuals will outlive every
"technology" that we are capable of deploying. Waves of
techno-change will come faster and faster, and with less
and less permanent consequence. Waves will be arriving
with the somnolent regularity of Waikiki breakers. This
"revolution" does not replace one social order with
another. It replaces social order with an array of further
possible transformations.
Since gizmos are easily outmoded and inherently
impermanent, their most graceful form is as disposable
consumer technology. We should embrace those gizmos that
are pleasing, abject, humble, and closest to the human
body. We should spurn those that are remote, difficult,
threatening, poisonous and brittle.
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck
wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last,
and are not worthy of that form of respect.
We must engage with technology in a new way, from a
fresh perspective. The arts traditionally hold this
critical position. The arts are in a position today to
inspire a burst of cultural vitality across the board.
The times are very propitious for the arts. Theres a
profound restlessness, theres money loose, there are new
means of display and communication, and the nouveau riche
have nothing to wear and nothing that suits their walls.
Its a golden opportunity for techno-dandyism.
Artists, dont be afraid of commercialization. The
sovereign remedy for commercialization is not for artists
to hide from commerce. That cant be done any more, and
in any case, hiding never wins and strong artists dont
live in fear.
Instead, we have a new remedy available. The
aggressive counter-action to commodity totalitarianism is
to give things away. Not other peoples property -- that
would be, sad to say, "piracy" -- but the products of your
own imagination, your own creative effort.
This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be
generous. Be "taken advantage of." The channels exist
now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions.
Never mind if you make large sums of money along the way.
If you successfully seize attention, nothing is more
likely. In a start-up society, huge sums can fall on
innocent parties, almost by accident. That cannnot be
helped, so dont worry about it any more. Henceforth,
artistic integrity should be judged, not by ones classic
bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping
bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away.
That is the only scale of noncommercial integrity that
makes any sense now.
Freedom has to be won, and, more importantly, the
consequences of freedom have to be lived. You do not win
freedom of information by filching data from a corporate
warehouse, or begging the authorities to kindly abandon
their monopolies, copyrights and patents. You have to
create that freedom by a deliberate act of will, think it
up, assemble it, sacrifice for it, make it free to others
who have a similar will to live that freedom.
Ivory towers are no longer in order. We need ivory
networks. Today, sitting quietly and thinking is the
worlds greatest generator of wealth and prosperity.
Moguls spend their lives sitting in chairs, staring into
screens, and occasionally clicking a mouse. Though we
didnt expect it, were all on the same net. We no longer
need feudal shelters to protect us from the swords and
torches of barbarian ignorance. So show them words and
images: make it obvious, let them look. If theyre
interested, fine; if not, go pick another website.
The structure of human intellectual achievement
should be reformatted, so that any human being with a
sincere interest can learn as much as possible, as rapidly
as their abilities allow. The Internet is the greatest
accomplishment of the twentieth centurys scientific
community, and the Internet has made a new intelligentsia
possible.
Like the scientific method, the Internet is a
genuine, workable, verifiable means of intellectual
liberation. Dont worry if its not universal. Awareness
cant be doled out like soup, or sold like soap.
Intellectual vitality is an inherently internal, self-
actualizing process. The net must make this possible
for people, not by blasting flags and gospel at the
masses, but by opening doors for individual minds, who
will then pursue their own interests.
This can be made to happen. It is quite near to us
now, the trends favor it. The consequences of genuine
intellectual freedom are literally and rightfully
unimaginable. But the unimaginable is the right thing to
do. The unimaginable is far better than perfection,
because perfection can never be achieved, and it would
kill us if it were. Whereas the "unimaginable" is, at
its root, merely a healthy measure of our own limitations.
Human beings are imperfect and imperfectable, and
their networks even more so. We should probably be happy
for the noise and disruption in the channel, since so much
of what we think we know, and love to teach, are mistakes
and lies. But nevertheless, we can achieve progress
here. We can remove some modicum of the fatal, choking
constraints that throughout centuries have bent people
double.
A human mind in pursuit of self-actualization should
be allowed to go as far and as fast as our means allow.
There is nothing utopian about this program; because
there no timeless justice or perfect stability to be found
in this vision. This practice will not lead us toward
any dream, any City on a Hill, any phony form of static
bliss. On the contrary, it will lead us into closer and
closer, into more and more immediate contact, with the
issues that really bedevil us.
Before many more decades pass, the human race will
begin to obtain what it really wants. Then we will find
ourselves confronted, in our bedrooms, streets, and
breakfast tables, with real-world avatars of those
Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously
existed only in myth. Our aspirations will become
consequences. Thats when our *real* trouble starts.
However, that is not a contemporary problem. The
problems we face today are not those somber, long-term
problems. On the contrary, we very clearly exist in a
highly fortunate time with very minor problems.
The so-called human condition wont survive the
next hundred years. That fate is written on the forehead
of the 21st century in letters of fire. That fate can be
wisely shaped, or somewhat postponed, or brutally
annihilated, but it cannot be denied. It is coming
because we want it. Its not an alien imposition; it is
borne from the inchoate depths of our own desires.
But were not beyond the limits of humanity, suffering
that, exulting in that. Were just going there, visibly
moving closer to it. Once we get there, well find no
rest there. The appetite of divine discontent always
grows by the feeding.
This dire knowledge makes todays scene seem quite
playful and delightful by faux-retrospect. Our worst
problems, which may seem so large, diffuse, and morbid,
are mere teenage angst compared to the conundrums were
busily preparing for some other generation.
Sober assessment of the contemporary scene makes it
crystal-clear that a carnival atmosphere is in order. We
exist in a highly disposable civilization that is hell-
bent on outmoding itself. The pace of change is melting
former physical restraints into a maelstrom of
reformattable virtualities. Thats here, its real,
it is truly our situation. We should live as
if we know this is true. This is where our own sincerity
and authenticity are to be found: in the strong
conviction that the contemporary is temporary.
We need to live in these conditions in good faith.
We need to re-imagine life and make the new implications
clear. Its a murky situation, but we must not flinch
from it; we must drench all of it in light. Because this
is our home. We have no other. Our children live here.
The mushroom clouds of the twentieth century have parted.
We find ourselves on a beach, with wave after frothy
wave of transformation. We have means, motive, and
opportunity. Spread the light.
Henceforth, it will make more and more sense to
base our deepest convictions around a hands-on
confrontation with the consequences of technology.
Thats where the action is. On January 3, 2000, thats
what its about. The deepest resources of human
creativity have a vital role there. Its where
inspiration is most needed, its the place to make a
difference. Come out. Stand up. Shine.
Turn the lamps on all over the world.
The Viridian Archive is hosted by bespoke.org
------
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I got dibs on the black-velvet painting of the pyramid shaped mightclub in the virtual reality world!
_______
2B1ASK1
"We need clean, supple, healthy means of support..." etc...
A list of generic 'the world should be like this and this' is fairly useless. They are hearwarming and we can all agree that clean + healthy = good. The real problems are with implementation.
"We need clean, supple, healthy means of support..." etc...
Who could disagree with that? But some people propose banning cars as solution or fluoridating our water supply to address these issues. Bruce's Manifesto doesn't have anything useful to say regarding these or any other issue.
I suppose this sounds like a bitter rant, but I find most SF material presents politics as a field with correct answers that satisfy everyone. In reality there are no right answers for the difficult problems and the only anwsers that exist will leave some section of the population unsatisfied (ex. fluoridation, or even abortion).
"Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect. "
I've been looking for a way to express this too - I point out that well-crafted code is not a manufactured device, no matter how humble the system in which it's embedded. Witness the skill of the original PDP hackers and "Spacewar", and the tight code of the old-school video game developers. Those devices I believe I'm fully justified in feeling awe for.
But on to what I see as the key insight of the Manifesto:
"The twentieth century featured any number of -isms. They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy trumps engineering. It doesn't."
Thank you, Bruce, for expressing in three sentences the idea I've been trying to convey to those who "Just Don't Get It" for most of my life. Your phrasing captures the insight in a delightful marriage of eloquence and force.
I believe this manifesto to be about as bad and worthless as those randomly generated paragraphs that keep popping up on slashdot from time to time. I've read Joyce and he makes more sense to me.. This is all just college 201 creative writing drivel.
As a member of secret society slashdotoi, I believe memory is.. uh... I forget.. but information wants to be free too. I think this crypto stuff is gonna change the world. Oh wait, e-commerce? Yeah, that sucks, they didn't do it righti. I'm a member of a secret elite community that knows everything, didn'tcha now? Of course not, you don't know everything! blah blah blah, I'll just throw i,e, and X at the end of some words... boy I'm cool... hey look, my server got slashdotted. Dooooh...
-- That was humor, but you already knew that 'cuz you're a member of the slashdoti right?
I disagree. Those things come from earlier than the twentieth century. Some people in the twentieth century were more-or-less successful in pointing out some of the contexts where we've failed to live up to those ideals, but the ideals themselves are a legacy of an earlier time.
Though I suppose the author would find it more entertaining to speak of gizmo's and intangible social trends.
Social trends are at least as tangible as the things you speak of. They overlap quite a bit, actually.
"The problems we face today are not those somber, long-term problems. On the contrary, we very clearly exist in a highly fortunate time with very minor problems."
I find it very hard to accept this statement, clearly inserted to add a dash of substance to an otherwise vapid "manifesto". The current technological adequacy (sp?) of the world does not render us invincible to real, worldly problems. Starvation around the world? War? Hate crimes? Violence in schools? Maybe Bruce doesn't have to face any problems, other then the minor ones, but all it takes it to turn on the local news to see a handfull of problems, that I doubt will be resolved very quickly.
some interesting sentences from sire sterling :)
i especially like this sentence:
"We need clean, supple, healthy means of support for a crowded world."
which as another respondent noted is an image of slashdot as intelligentsia since it is increasingly crowded here, and yet a clean and healthy discourse arises on its own regardless.
"We need an ideology that embraces its own obsolescence."
is that wishfull thinking? or just the nature of democracy? a constant reinvention and patch to the socio-political process? a good idea, but the one thing history has shown, is that those with power do anything the can to keep it, and while getting more.
"We need to re-imagine life and make the new implications clear. Its a murky situation, but we must not flinch from it;
we must drench all of it in light."
the open source society rises!
while our biggest enemy is an uninformed citizenry, our biggest ally is the openness and potential for collaboration embedded in these networks.
i like what bruce is saying in his manifesto, i just think it takes a lot more work than any of us think to actually make the nicer parts reality.
coding a democratic future is a difficult job...
Enough said, I would not want to live in a world that do not care about anything but the latest gizmo. Rights, Liberty, Humility and Compassion, not one should give it up for any gizmo.
- Etam
I'll give ya intriguing and the attention snaging. The rest is garbage. I can easily imagine a solid, expensive, colorless, unfriendly, non-disposable, harmfull gizmo that is likely to harm me. Well, maybe not all at once, but definetnly several of those. I would put Zippo lighters under the heading of gizmo, for example, and Palm Pilots.
"Since gizmos are easily outmoded and inherently impermanent, their most graceful form is as disposable consumer technology."
So we can't print this out (we have to save paper), but you want a society of disposable gizmos?
"Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect."
Screw you, I will be awestruck by whatever I please. You want our society to be based on this crap, but you don't want us to like it?
"We need ivory networks."
No we don't. That's just as bad, if not worse, than an ivory tower. In an ivory tower you at least get a suspicion that everyone else might be doing something different, but on an ivory network you are surrounded by like-minded individuals who constantly remind you that what your group is doing is good and right and all that, and you whole ivory networked group ends up being just as useless, if not moreso, as an cityscape of individual ivory towers. We need need to have nothing ivory.
"...we will find ourselves confronted, ...with real-world avatars of those Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously existed only in myth. ... Thats when our *real* trouble starts."
Blah blah, end of the world, they said it in Greece, in Rome, yadda yadda yadda...
"The so-called human condition wont survive the next hundred years."
You mean I'll no longer be able to consider the consequences of my actions? To worry about right and wrong? That I will, like an animal, react upon my instincts alone? Somehow, I doubt that. Unless you're talking about a different human condition.
Sorry folks, but I don't buy what you're hawking.
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
The author sees today's good times as the hopeful beginnings of Utopia. I see them as a nearly-exact recreation of the accomplishments and attitudes of the Victorian era. And we all know what followed that.
Now Society has about 400 years of data in it, and if we patch the goddamn thing again, we'll have to start over. We can't patch sex.c with the system up...
The mission for this century, if you decide to accept it, is figuring out what, if anything, comes after advertising-driven capitalism. The basic idea that happiness is achieved through shopping is quite recent, and it may be transitory. What's the next stage?
What, then, is the Slashdot community?
It's a handful of funny trolls and a handful of informative coders, sitting atop a vast shitheap of yammering idiots.
Are the various forums and communities that exist all over the Internet totally devoid of intelligentsia?
Well . . . yes. They are. I spent some time subscribed to the Thomas Pynchon listserv this Fall. What a waste of bandwidth. And the net goes downhill from there, the only exceptions being Suck and McSweeney's. Feed has its moments too, I guess. But none of those is a "community" in any sense at all. Hey, wait, there's Neal Stephenson, too; IMHO he's ahead even of the Sucksters in the "internet intellectual" game. He's a thoughtful, intelligent person who groks the damn subject well enough to illuminate it. Jon Katz is endlessly amusing and I think he's a perfect fit for Slashdot, but he's not thoughtful, he's not intelligent, and he sure as hell doesn't grok anything, least of all technology.
I was under the impression that before this 'new economy' came a whole new brand of intelligentsia - the self-teaching, self-enhancing swag of techno-brutes that have been lifting themselves out of the muck of obscurity with the tools of the Internet and creating whole new social spheres, which subsequently resulted in entirely different modes of online economy.
They teach themselves Perl and enhance their t-shirt collections. This has nothing to do with an "intelligentsia". I'm hoping that you're using "economy" in some figurative sense, 'cause if you're not, you've missed the point more thoroughly than I care to contemplate. It's really not about making a quick buck at all. Crack dealers do that. BFD. If you're coming from a hard-core libertarian perspective, that would explain a lot: That viewpoint is fundamentally hostile to intellectualism, and answers all questions with the word "money". Hey, it's a free country, YMMV, it takes all kinds, etc. No problem. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just a very profoundly different thing.
am I missing something here or is Bruce waxing poetic and I'm just being too literal?
Yer waxin' a bit poetic there yourself, my friend
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
RE: Most nations and peoples in the world were far worse at the 20th century's end than at the beginning.
Care to give some specific examples on this?
Also, as for "the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer", I'd like to see some examples of that as well. I suspect what you really mean is the rich got richer to a greater extent than the poor did, which I believe has happened in some cases, at least here in North America. However, the poor are not worse off. A person here (Canada) can go on social assistance (or whatever they call it these days so as not to hurt the feelings of the recipients) forever and have a higher standard of living than a wealthy person 100 years ago (warm, clean accomodations, refrigerated fresh food, cable TV, free medical care, etc etc). Worst case they have to go out and panhandle a few hours a month to make ends meet.
If you can point to a case of a group being worse off, check the political climate in the time and place it happened and it might give you a hint as to why they're worse off.
You know (for example), it seems some people would rather go without running water if it means that their neighbour who invented economical running water will be running his into a gold-plated tub.
If you have an open mind and would care to read about the actual progress we have made in the last 100 years (as opposed to popular opinion and what you read in the newspapers), try picking up The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon. It won't change your mind, but it does make you feel a lot better about the future of our world.
You really believe this? Centralized power hasn't declined much (if at all), it's just shifted and gotten more subtle. Most "individualism" has been guided into nice harmless -- and easily-marketed-to -- channels. I think most people (here in the US, at least) are sheep in wolves' clothing.
". . . we have no new intelligentsia."
". . . the Internet has made a new intelligentsia possible."
Of course, it could just be that he's contradicting himself
I do see the smiley there, but even so I'm gonna pop my hand up and disagree. For example: My last raise made it possible for me to buy a new car, but I haven't (and certainly won't until my poor old Honda gasps its last in another 100,000 miles or so). "To make foo possible" is not "to bring foo about".
I'm going to disagree with Sterling on other grounds: There's nothing about the net which is likely to have any qualitative effect on any "new intelligentsia" which may rear its pointy little head in the years to come. E-commerce is turning out to be little more than a vastly improved interface for catalog shopping à la Sears Roebuck ninety years ago. Intellectuals are people who shoot their mouths off at each other, and the net means they can do it from their home in Sheboygan instead of having to move to Paris like Hemingway did. That's actually a damn good thing, but it's just a change in the interface. People make too much of this stuff. 99% of the "exciting changes" now happening are quantitative improvements on old news. It's all very cool and useful (not to mention the software boom economy that provided the raise which could provide me with a new car if I really wanted one
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
"A person here (Canada) can go on social assistance (or whatever they call it these days so as not to hurt the feelings of the recipients) forever and have a higher standard of living than a wealthy person 100 years ago..."
I believe you've missed RuntimeError's point entirely.
Can just anyone in, say, Saigon get one Welfare (yes, I'm from the US. That's what we call it here)? How about Russia? Brazil? Russian Georgia? Calcutta? The point is that the poor now tremendously outnumber the rich (no link to back that up, sorry). Therefore, if we assume this premise to be true (increasing number of poor), then the poor have indeed become moreso.
"If you can point to a case of a group being worse off, check the political climate in the time and place it happened and it might give you a hint as to why they're worse off."
India really doesn't have all that many problems; certainly no more than the US. Yet why is their standard of living so much lower than ours?
Communisim? No...
War? Not really...
Politics? Power-mongering? Maybe. Probably.
The point is that while our future is indeed bright, there are (to venture a guess) 3 Billion+ people who cannot echo our sentiments. Note the emphasis. It is the crux of my point.
And, OT, could you tell me why my Mom couldn't get Welfare when she was unemployable? Here in the US? Any thoughts?
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
. . this new Belle Epoque, this delightful era .
. .
.
. .
.
.
.
. .
. . Technology can no longer bind us in a vast tonnage of iron, barbed wire and brick. .
.
.
.
. .
. . and the Internet has made a new intelligentsia possible. .
. . the human race will begin to obtain what it really wants. .
. .
.
.
and last but not least...we have yet another y2kism:
The mushroom clouds of the twentieth century have parted. We find ourselves on a beach, with wave after frothy wave of transformation. We have means, motive, and opportunity. Spread the light.
It reads like a Captan Kirk log on crack!
Now bruce, you know everyone loves ya, and it's with that shining love that I point out that you've gotten a little to excited about a new millenium. Time and tehnology move forward, and we are too.
Let's not reformat now. We've come to far.
_________________________
people could actually accomplish less and less.
Let's look at this critically for a minute. According to Locke at some point in time society decided to trade it's' natural state for one in which we gave up absolute freedom for some ammount of protection. When was the last time you read a great novel or painting by a cave man? Barring the fact that the cave man didn't probably have the intellegence to do this they could not do all of these things that make us human if it weren't for the fact that someone somewhere decided to trade a little freedom for the ability to accomplish something.
I take real exception in the thought that since I live in America that I am suddently a stupid idiot who is just being lead by the ring in my nose by the evil unkie sam. Centralized power has allowed most people to gain more and more actual (I guess the best term would be subsidization) for our word.
People don't like the military but what did the military actually do?
1. Highway system taken by military tacticians from implimentations in Natzi Germany during their arms build up. Also taken from internal work done by various FDR labor programs.
2. The satellite systems and the space program in general; the entirety of this was basically because of the cold war and not because we actually cared about getting into space.
3. The internet in it's whole. Also taken from the cold war was the need to communicate and coordinate activity between units in the even of nuclear war.
4. Prevelence of aviation as a career and a science and not just barnstormers and wackos. Sure Lindberg started out this way but does flying around and doing crazy stunts suddently give my a liscence and redence as an actual trained and certified pilot? I guess those guys at the FAA are all wet huh?
So basically all the really good things that actually allowed people to do things easier and without the fear that a roving band of savages will come along and slice my head off or that I have to gather stores for the winter and barely survive the winter.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Its time we threw this preposterous question of the evil conspiracy which governs the world on the same rubbish heap as the question of how many toads cause a woman's labor pains.
I'm sure your unhappy with the direction of things and that's your right. But don't think that we are all victums of some system which you alone are smart enough to escape.
The truth is we all have things we'd like to change. And fortunatly we live in a country where we have a right to speak out like anyone else. Just ask Gov. Ventura
> In 1914, the lamps went out all over Europe.
;-)
:-(
> Life during the rest of the twentieth century was
> like crouching under a rock.
uh-huh. until a knight in shining armor came along, riding a white
horse and waving a manifesto...
> But human life is not required to be like the
> twentieth century. That wasnt fate, it was merely
> a historical circumstance.
true enough. for many (in the western world), for a while (after
1945), life ceased to be "brutish, nasty, and short". maybe this
pleasant anomaly will continue, maybe it won't.
> In this new Belle Epoque,
> this delightful era, we are experiencing a prolonged break
> in the last centurys even tenor of mayhem.
which coincidentally included the longest uninterrupted period of
european peace since who knows when?
> We need a sense of revived possibility, of genuine
> creative potential, of unfeigned joie de vivre. We have a
> new economy, but we have no new intelligentsia.
will an army of pseudo-intellectual internet cranks do?
> We have
> massive flows of information and capital, but we have a
> grave scarcity of meaning. We know what we can buy, but
> we dont know what we want.
thank your local deity. what "we" want doesn't generally coincide
with what "i" want.
> The twentieth century featured any number of -isms.
> They were fatally based on the delusion that philosophy
> trumps engineering. It doesnt.
it does. engineering is mechanism, philosophy is policy. policy is
dictated by the people using the mechanism.
> "Technology" in its broad sense:
> the ability to transform resources, the speed at which new
> possibilities can be opened and exploited, the multiple
> and various forms of command-and-control -- technology,
> not ideology, is the twentieth centurys lasting legacy.
can't argue with that..
> We need clean, supple, healthy means of support for
> a crowded world.
actually, we need a philosophy that doesn't mandate overpopulating the
world to death
> In order to make flimsy, supple technologies
> thinkable, and then achievable, then finally obvious, we
> need an ideology that embraces its own obsolescence.
you mean like the "scientific method"?
> The immediate future wont be a period suitable for
> building monuments, establishing thousand-year regimes,
> creating new-model citizens, or asserting leaden
> certainties about anything whatsoever.
if you buy a idea that the pace of change will continue to increase,
and have even a rudimentary understanding of human nature, you'd
realise that the immediate future is fertile ground for exactly these
things.
> The immediate
> future is about picking and choosing among previously
> unforeseen technical potentials.
true, but don't expect society at large to be too happy about having
to do this.
> A gizmo is a device with so many features and so
> many promises that it can never be mastered within its
> own useful lifetime. A gizmo is flimsy, cheap, colorful,
> friendly, intriguing, easily disposable, and unlikely to
> harm the user. The gizmos purpose is not to
> efficiently perform some function or effectively provide
> some service. A gizmo exists to snag the users
> attention, and to engage the user in a vast
> unfolding nexus of interlinked experience.
all together now... BLOATWARE SUCKS!
> Technology can no longer
> bind us in a vast tonnage of iron, barbed wire and brick.
> We will stop heaving balky machines uphill. Instead, we
> begin judging entire techno-complexes as they virtually
> unfold, judging them by standards that are, in some very
> basic sense, aesthetic.
instead of describing them using analogoies which are, in some very
basic sense, pre-"information revolution"...
> Henceforth, it is humans and human flesh that lasts
> out the years, not the mechanical infrastructure. Our
> bodies outlast our machines
quick, sell your stock in the pharmaceutical companies...
> and our bodies outlast our beliefs
...and the vatican...
> Since gizmos are easily outmoded and inherently
> impermanent, their most graceful form is as disposable
> consumer technology. We should embrace those gizmos that
> are pleasing, abject, humble, and closest to the human
> body. We should spurn those that are remote, difficult,
> threatening, poisonous and brittle.
but i *like* buying products that are hard to use and likely to harm
me!
> Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck
> wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last,
> and are not worthy of that form of respect.
clearly, someone who has never heard of "planned obsolescence". a
well manufactured device can *easily* outlive the owner, but only if
it is in the best interests of the manufacturer...
> Instead, we have a new remedy available. The
> aggressive counter-action to commodity totalitarianism is
> to give things away. Not other peoples property -- that
> would be, sad to say, "piracy" -- but the products of your
> own imagination, your own creative effort.
so *that's* why this load of tripe made it onto slashdot. another
remedy for a commodity consumer society is "voluntary simplicity". to
steal a bit of nike's thunder, "just don't do it!", where "it" means
mindless consumption.
> This is the time to be thoughtful, be expressive, be
> generous. Be "taken advantage of." The channels exist
> now to give creativity away, at no cost, to millions.
microsoft StreetCorner 2000 (available Q1 '01)
> Freedom has to be won, and, more importantly, the
> consequences of freedom have to be lived. You do not win
> freedom of information by filching data from a corporate
> warehouse, or begging the authorities to kindly abandon
> their monopolies, copyrights and patents. You have to
> create that freedom by a deliberate act of will, think it
> up, assemble it, sacrifice for it, make it free to others
> who have a similar will to live that freedom.
agreed
> Ivory towers are no longer in order. We need ivory
> networks.
like this new fangled notion of "academic peer review"?
> Today, sitting quietly and thinking is the
> worlds greatest generator of wealth and prosperity.
> Moguls spend their lives sitting in chairs, staring into
> screens, and occasionally clicking a mouse.
bullshit. moguls hire assistants to deal with their email, so i doubt
they spend much time personally scouring the net for the few gems
hidden among the oceans of cruft. moguls spend their time pressing
the flesh and making deals happen
> Though we
> didnt expect it, were all on the same net. We no longer
> need feudal shelters to protect us from the swords and
> torches of barbarian ignorance.
bullshit. this is like some hippie singing "we're all brothers, so
sing along together". technically, we share a common transport
medium. realistically, most people with at least half a brain self
select their content far more efficiently than any censor could ever
hope to. those without half a brain just look at whatever some
corporation has decided shall be their default home page
> So show them words and
> images: make it obvious, let them look. If theyre
> interested, fine; if not, go pick another website.
from a corporately sponsored and filtered search engine, no doubt?
> The structure of human intellectual achievement
> should be reformatted, so that any human being with a
> sincere interest can learn as much as possible, as rapidly
> as their abilities allow. The Internet is the greatest
> accomplishment of the twentieth centurys scientific
> community, and the Internet has made a new intelligentsia
> possible.
agreed.
> Dont worry if its not universal. Awareness
> cant be doled out like soup, or sold like soap.
> Intellectual vitality is an inherently internal, self-
> actualizing process. The net must make this possible
> for people, not by blasting flags and gospel at the
> masses, but by opening doors for individual minds, who
> will then pursue their own interests.
agreed.
> This can be made to happen. It is quite near to us
> now, the trends favor it.
whoa, back up and read that last paragraph again...???
> Before many more decades pass, the human race will
> begin to obtain what it really wants.
just as soon as there is a washing machine and color TV in every
home...
> The so-called human condition wont survive the
> next hundred years. That fate is written on the forehead
> of the 21st century in letters of fire. That fate can be
> wisely shaped, or somewhat postponed, or brutally
> annihilated, but it cannot be denied.
just let me grab my dictionary and look up "annihilated"...
[snip a large section of light and frothy "conclusions"]
> Henceforth, it will make more and more sense to
> base our deepest convictions around a hands-on
> confrontation with the consequences of technology.
> Thats where the action is. On January 3, 2000, thats
> what its about. The deepest resources of human
> creativity
such as philosophy?
> have a vital role there. Its where
> inspiration is most needed, its the place to make a
> difference. Come out. Stand up. Shine.
>
> Turn the lamps on all over the world.
philosophically, i prefer precision engineered, high efficiency
halogen bulbs.
#define Signal11 'Pot'
#define Money__ 'Kettle'
_________________________
My understanding of the intellegensia(sp) is that they are usually people associated with philosophy and humanist persuits. This usually included philosophers and painters and some of the less scientific realms of social science like maybe sociology or history/historic preservation.
Perhaps the biggest person in the American and modern time was Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was able to gain a great deal of knowledge and practal experience which eventually lead him to create some very great ideas which were important for ideas sake. Much as Voltaire was able to use the power of satire and political analysis to look at how people were actually interrelating to each other and to their leaders.
Perhaps Machivelli would rank up there due to his illustration on how power could be maintained and kept in the hands of one man with cunning skill. Add to the same category Doystoyevsky(sp) who gave us the idea of the Grand inquisitor and George Orwell whol both influenced the concept of the way we create power structures. These three similar and intersecting philosophies are at the height of what could be called power/control concepts of populations and government. It basically says that if the poeple are not willing or if they do not matter that perhaps you can rule them.
What differentiates this from Franklin and Jefferson is that Franklin and Jefferson were people that wanted to think of people as equals and to be interacted with as such. Thsi also creates possibility that eventually the government will eventually be abolished or reformed when the people need something different.
So what we have in the present (and what will still plague people in the future is the need to balance these forces) is more of the same dramas that these first minds came up with. The next leap will come when we have something that could ammount to an organized form of democracy (or close to anarchy)( where people create webs of experts or systems or even layers of expertice. Such a system could be had through better computers and hish speed internet connections with ease.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Without all the jingoistic bullshi*t we hear from our TV's day-in-day-out now that we've tripped over the threshold, Sterling described a great idea, a *caustic* idea. Not only did he envisage a startling about-face, but he set out, point-by-point, how to get there, deftly using the uglier properties of the reigning ideology to his concept's advantage.
He's definitely not a doofus, as others of you have implied. A humorous proof of his ability to understand the "human condition" - even predict it - stared blankly at me during my morning meeting: my boss. She desperately wanted to know what the next "hip, with-it and on the culture beat" things were. "RIGHT NOW. Millennium over: January sales figures loom." Yes, that's a quote.
At the end of his charming and enlightening 1998 treatise, he says: But you know what? Where the first Viridian speech had vitality, charm, wit and perspective, this Manifesto is sadly lacking. Although I don't like to hear the condescending tattling of "Bruce Sterling and his Markov Chain Manifesto" (especially under the guise of incoherent anti-spelling), I'm disappointed in the tone, the lack of resolve. But more than that, it feels like forced... (and I hate to say it) jingoism: Still, I enjoy reading the Viridian Design Speech fairly regularly, and I hope the concept can return to that high again. To "turn the lamps on all over the world," we're going to need a crusher of a manifesto.
Let's _embrace_ fads and disposable technology. Yeah, that's a real great use of our Earth's precious resources. If there is one thing that will be America's downfall, it is the ugly and rampant consumerism that has gripped us in the past few years. Yes, we have money to burn, but we should not burn it on palm pilots and mp3 players. The manifesto implies that these "gizmos" will be short-lived and numerous. In other words, they are worthless junk. There are so many things that money can buy that are _real_ and _valuable_. Sure, buy art. Art is good. But don't buy a palm V because your palm iii (which replaced the palm pro) is now "passe" (avec accent ague). We have to move _away_ from gizmoism (ism!), not towards it.
There are a few missunderstandings, but there are also some really good points to the Manifesto.
:)
The part beginning with Artists, dont be afraid of commercialization. is just plain wonderful.
The gizmo idea is a bit flawed, but repairable. As others have said disposible products are waistful and bloatware is very bad, but devices which empower users via communicationg with each other and allowing efficent programability is a very good thing, i.e. everything is a preriferal to your wearable computer. This all means that gizmo's should have the properties described, but only by virtue of interacting with other gizmos and your computer. The only real disadvantage is that people who can not program will not be able to function, but hey you can't make an omlet without breaking a few eggs..
We have an ideology for the masses that could preform everything he wants.. it's called the scientific method. The masses just refuse to learn it.. hell they even teach it wrong in all the high schools.. and many people with engenering degree's never reall learn it. I suspect Bruce has not read enough Carl Sagan or he would understand this.
Finally, I dissagre that we are really creating problems for another generration. Example: Did the discovery of evolution creat problems for us? Asside from a few morons who refuse to evolve themselves and don't believe in it.. nope not really. Did automation of assembly plants cause any problems? Nope, a few people had to move from dangerous crappy jobs to safer but basically equivelent jobs.. execpt that now they can get a car for cheaper. there is no reason to believe that future advances in technology will be harder to adapt to. The will come faster, but we are even learning to cope with that.. these things will only help us in the long run.
Our big problem is that people do not understand the scientific method (and all the associated things that go allong with this like believing in God). The Church-Turring Thesis may help us over the first step: getting people to think through the process to things a little since it can be streached to say that you can not use a computere effictivly without understanding a little bit of flow control (using a computer effectivly is deffined as writing a one line script to do a repeditive task for you).
Jeff
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And by the way: "right-wing libertarian" is at least *supposed* to be something of an oxymoron (believe it or not, it's possible to be neither left nor right, which is how a lot of libertarians would classify themselves). Admittedly though, there are a lot of conservatives around who talk a libertarian line when convienient (e.g. when discussing the right to smoke tobacco, as opposed to marijuana), and maybe that's the kind of person you're talking about.
Personally, I think that there are indeed problems with slashdot as a discussion forum, but far worse than "frequent flame-fests" is the fact that any strongly stated opinion is at the risk of being pounded down as "flamebait", so there's a certain tendency toward blandness.
But far worse than that is simply the speed at which the discussion happens... anything over a day old is effectively dead (compared to usenet, where a discussion can go on for weeks, or months). How much effort are we supposed to put into writing, moderating and meta-moderating discussions that are just going to evaporate in a day?
Bruce Sterling is an imaginative and competent wordsmith. He has to be, because otherwise it would be more obvious that this piece of nonsense is just that -- nonsense. It's very nice-sounding nonsense, very quotable nonsense, very trendy (by design!) nonsense. But he still is missing the point of where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.
Here is where he goes off-track:
The problem with this is twofold:
This notion that we need to abandon philosophy and ideology in favor of "pragmatic" or "engineering" solutions -- well, let me phrase it this way. "Because many of our troubles this century have been due to poor philosophy, let us give up on trying to have better philosophy." Forget worrying about what is right and wrong, let's all amuse ourselves with gizmos!
Instead, this is precisely the moment when we ought to be analyzing what was right and what was wrong with the "-isms" of the 20th century. As G. K. Chesterton put it nearer the beginning of the century:
The second faulty assumption here is that we are "fully competant." Clearly, we are not, nor are we likely to be so anytime in the forseeable future. Take global climate -- it's pretty clear at this point that (a) we have the power to muck it up pretty badly, to our own pain and sorrow, and (b) we don't understand completely how it works. Most ecological issues exhibit this same dynamic -- we have the power to destroy, but not the knowledge to understand, and certainly not the wisdom and will to forbear from destroying. When American agriculture produces more bushels of soil erosion than bushels of crops, can it be any more obvious that we are incompetant?
The Amish, in many ways, exemplify Sterling's "clean, supple, healthy means of support for a crowded world." And yet, they achieve this by adhering to a strict ideology, subordinating technological innovation to their chosen vision of a way of life. Meanwhile, all the hip post-modernists, "free" from "-isms", seem caught on the iron treadmill of "rigid, monolithic, poisonous and non-sustainable" techno-determinism proceeding "with that Stalinesque seriousness that demands the brutal sacrifice of millions."
There's more wrong -- for example,
might be true in the Bay Area, but will no doubt come as a great surprise to the people of Kosovo, Iraq, and East Timor. But hey, they're not so "wired," so why worry about them?Ah, well. I would hope that the foolishness of advocating the "demystification" of Gizmos, while at the same time placing our hope of earthly deliverance in them, would be obvious, even through the clever wording ...
Yes, but how seriously can one take comments about art coming from a guy with a mullet?
. We've got computers, we're tapping phone lines, you know that ain't allowed - Talking Heads, "Life During Wartime"
We can't design such a political system because no single system can satisfy all the multiple conflicting requirements: it's the well-known "failure of universalism".
That's why the meta-philosophy of individualism is in ascendency, ie. no single right or wrong but a multiplicity of consensual views between interacting individuals instead. Bruce is heading right down the middle of that road, although the needs of his writing competency doesn't allow him to express it that simply.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
1) I don't consider myself to be not-sheep, though I like to think (perhaps mistakenly, of course) that I'm less sheep than most people.
2) I don't think that some "evil conspiracy" is necessary for what I've said to be true. In fact, I consider that to be the least likely scenario.
The whole point of manifestos is to be superlative and breathless. What he's doing is quite all right... i think it's important to remember that Sterling's real target isn't us geeks, but rather the traditional ivory-tower intelligensia, and the artists. He wants to bring them to a life of constantly changing technology, as well as bring art to those who are creating the technology.
More importantly, i think he's saying that old centralized governments and idiologies (i always spell it with an i rather than an e) are too rigid and self-centered to cope with future shock. And, like any rational person, he fears a world of technology without heed for consequences.
With this in mind, he is proposing art and aesthetics as the only lens "supple" enough to keep up with the mad rush of technology. Central planning cannot insure that new tech will be environmentally or socially sound - in fact, it will probably make it worse (the history of the 20th century is the history of government and corporate abuse of technology). Aesthetics, however, may work. Technology that is environmentally or socially destructive is ugly, and should be rejected for its ugliness.
Sure, it doesn't make much sense, but it makes more sense than the alternatives.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
You can start here. The manifesto doesn't make a whole lot of sense without the context (perhaps that makes it less of a manifesto?) - but I think what Sterling is trying to do is a kind of unification of the arts with technology. When he says there is no modern "intelligentsia" what he means is that today's influential writers and thinkers have, for the most part, not embraced science and technology. And on the other hand we techno-geeks have, for the most part, failed to learn those rhetorical, literary, and general social skills requisite for thoughtful leadership. And yet what we are doing, in creating software or new hardware "gizmos", is highly creative and close in spirit to what "artists" see as their responsibility.
Our society has some serious problems. The greenhouse effect is perhaps the one with the worst long-term possible consequences (think Venus). Technology alone can't solve the problems but it provides us with the routes the world needs to follow, IF we can persuade the rest of the world to follow along. Logical argument doesn't usually help. Economic argument may - but you have to have a sizeable market before fuel cells or what have you can be made affordable: the usual chicken and egg problem. To get over that hump you need something else - emotional power, style: we as technology experts need to work closely with people who are people experts if we expect any of our great ideas to really solve problems. That's what (I think) Sterling is getting at.
Energy: time to change the picture.
I'm an artist of sorts- been doing that sort of thing all my life, and in fact I've won my share of awards and prizes (not a huge share: I had an acrylic painting displayed in the Prudential Center in Boston, won a web-gif design contest, that sort of thing).
These days? Let me see. Yesterday, I bought several magazines on ultralight aircraft, because I have been getting a kick out of designing aircraft in the flight simulator 'X-Plane', which does blade element modelling which genuine aircraft designers would have killed for in 1970. I get a huge charge out of applying extra realworld constraints to the design and making a beautiful aircraft that could actually be built- part of the artistic thrill is in making the plane fly a certain way as well as look a certain way. Nothing could be farther from painting pictures on canvases- and if you're good and really get into it, the sense of the limitless interactions of factors is very tangible, and exactly the sort of thing Sterling is talking about.
Instead I started playing with Myth II mapmaking for the first time, figuring out processes for making each type of map in Photoshop. Again, a Sterling-esque experience- first it was using several tricks for making an interesting texturemap, then a bunch of different emboss effects to produce a shadowmap, more GFX hacks to make a texturemap, back to the shadowmap to add some extra shading to the texturemap, then hunt down the information for a terrain map and evolve ways to produce a slope map and changing the colormap to produce rocky impassable areas algorithmically and so on and so on- finally taking the whole conglomeration into the game and 'walking around' in it, having archers fire arrows from the tops of rocky embankments incredibly far and feeling the complexity and interest of this entirely imaginary environment- the entire process a series of artistic judgement calls but built upon a collection of obscure information and hacks which again are very much what Sterling is talking about.
Yet having worked out this much, that the artistic and creative impulse faces incomprehensible freedoms (you can build ultralights and fly them without a license, you could take those VR concepts and build a whole world as an art statement on the computer), Sterling trips up when looking at what this means.
Yes, it is possible to distribute art and creation with absurd reach and little cost. (As someone with about 1 5/6 novels, a bunch of visual arts, video clips, and a series of essays and rants on his website, I can vouch for this ;) ) However, this does not necessarily mean 'fame and fortune comes to everyone'. With billions of people following their muse, the chances of this are even rarer than they once were. The ideal of 'give it away' becomes a philosophical position, not a means to an end. You end up practicing generosity because you are disenfranchised, have no control or input, but you still have the ability to exchange work, art, creations with other people like you. It's a small pleasure, but a honest one.
Who gets rich? Not a very difficult question. Nobody seems to have informed the corporations, the governments, that their job is picking daisies and knitting quilts out of electronic parts. The expression of technology or government on a large scale is never simply about technology or government- it's always tempered with a hefty dose of self-perpetuation, of power for its own sake. Sterling sees this (in the Gilded Age comments) but doesn't follow the logic of it: the result is that while the masses of people increasingly turn to entertaining frivolity, frivolity of undreamed of interest and usefulness (designing planes on the computer? designing architecture, or governing cities on the computer?), the ruling forces (government _and_ corporate) cling to their secondary value, power for the sake of it. Given new tools to maintain this power, to extend it by surveillance and controlling the masses, these ruling forces do so without even a second thought.
Many of us will be best suited to Sterling's utopian dreams- creating, giving, sharing, laying the foundation for a populist society that breaks national and economic borders. That's a powerful new force, for which communications is responsible.
Some people will need to look beyond that, to answer the trend of corporations and governments seizing ever-more power over the individual. The power to control is the power to profit and thrive and get rich, and there has traditionally been no off switch on this desire, nor is there any reason to believe that 2000 will bring one.
In a way it's like natural populations of animals- populations of governments and corporations do have a place in the 'ecosystem' but they WILL not control themselves automatically. Without predation, the populations explode and eventually succumb to natural disasters of one sort or another. Example: the Gilded Age leading to stock market crash and the Great Depression.
To some extent, government and corporations predate on each other, which is desirable. Where Sterling goes wrong is failing to see these entities in their true light- competitive, hostile forces slugging it out like competing animals, with the condition of struggle and battle being not only the norm, but the only desirable state. Doubters might consider what's happened to the populations of computer operating systems and application software in a time when one 'competitor' has managed to effectively win. Rather than bringing in a new era of peace and affluence, this 'winning' has brought imbalance, stagnation... in all, a perfect picture of a natural population of animals plunged into comparative suffering through overpopulation.
Sterling's vision seems far too prone to believe in the Magic Plateau (him and The Well and Wired are all horribly guilty of this). Unfortunately, any such stagnation can only be harmful. As with the natural world, the only healthy condition is the balance of opposing forces- of conflict, the inefficiency and sordid reality of not always winning, of not everybody agreeing, of struggle.
Living in a sterile plastic bubble may be peaceful, undistracting, may even seem like a utopian existence, but it is both vulnerable and bland. Life thrives on conflict, and conflict springs eternal- even in the era of Microsoft (which claims to love conflict but acts to eliminate anything that might conflict with it, whether that is competition or government) conflict produces Linux, which is partly driven by needs MS doesn't want to fill, and partly driven by this latent need for conflict- by the "So MS will fill all my needs, huh? Well what if I want X?" (pun intended ;) ) and the "So MS will crush Linux because of x, y, and z? Like hell it will!". It's only partly about the abstract fulfilling of purposes. The rest is about life- and the spilling over of will to live, the spirit of living things coloring even these abstract computer interfaces which aren't themselves alive.
Sterling's call to the aesthetic seems to be announcing a plateau. This is nonsense- but his means may be perfectly legitimate. There is no reason not to share and create and give away- indeed, this is one of the natural counterbalances to the disempowerment Sterling denies. Just as one arm of society, the corporations, hits new peaks of control, victory and domination based on sheer capitalism, another arm begins to counterbalance this by setting up a barter and gift culture that's not so beholden to the corporations. One could predict these things- as long as you don't make the error of thinking the world is a stable plateau, or ever will be.
Cheers, to fellow slashdot conflicters ;) now, in the spirit of conflict, I ask that anyone bravely still reading both mark me Flamebait and also write a flame in response ;)
I don't think he's saying we need many social and technological and temporary paradigms so much as he is saying that, thanks to technology, that is where we are heading, however much some Literati's philosophie-du-jour insists we should go elsewhere.
Technology has come to a point where Philosophy is powerless to reign it in. While the modern day Karl Marx tries to 'reign in' the Internet to service his own philosophy, the White Supremacists are doing their bit as are the Boy Scouts and AT&T. It's too slippery for any ONE to get an exclusive grip on it. Not to say that philosophy is dead; it just has a dancing partner it's own size and with a will of its own.
The 20th Century WAS full of 'isms that reigned in technology in the 'interest' of philosophy. Now, for better or worse, technology has squirmed out of its grasp.
**>>BELCH
Most of all, we must never, ever again feel awestruck wonder about any manufactured device. They dont last, and are not worthy of that form of respect.
I just can't applaud this enough. People might see this as a plea for wastefulness or a lack of craftsmanship, but I see it as a healthy cynicism and a conscious unwillingness to be seduced by a technology in the knowledge that it will be trumped in due time by another. This could lead (is leading) to the 'disposable' idea he talks about. People will grow irate and speak of environmental damage, but I'd feel a lot better chucking an outdated Palm Pilot on the sidewalk trash pile than a 40 lb bomb-proof 386sx.
We're already getting to the point where one no longer needs a large, heavy, dedicated desk-top PC to transact with the Internet. This will lead to massively interesting and unexpected outcomes which he hints at in his paper.
It's funny, I'm not a fan of his SF, but I really like this essay.
**>>BELCH
"We need ivory networks."
...with real-world avatars of those Faustian visions of power and ability that have previously existed only in myth. ... Thats when our *real* trouble starts."
No we don't. That's just as bad, if not worse, than an ivory tower. In an ivory tower you at least get a suspicion that everyone else might be doing something different, but on an ivory network you are surrounded by like-minded individuals who constantly remind you that what your group is doing is good and right and all that, and you whole ivory networked group ends up being just as useless, if not moreso, as an cityscape of individual ivory towers. We need need to have nothing ivory.
In the Ivory Network you have 'like-minded individuals' and mealy-mouthed detractors alike in highly unpredictable amounts. Ideas offered (like Bruces essay) are put to the test in a wonderfully public manner. Have you read a Slashdot forum recently?
"...we will find ourselves confronted,
I'm not too sure what Bruce is getting at here either, but I choose not to brush it off as blithely as you do. It hints at some interesting possibilities.
You mean I'll no longer be able to consider the consequences of my actions? To worry about right and wrong? That I will, like an animal, react upon my instincts alone? Somehow, I doubt that. Unless you're talking about a different human condition.
In referring to 'the Human Condition', I think he means things like war and starvation. I'm not sure what you're referring to. It's a very bold statement on his part, and seems unlikely to me, but that's good. Writers need to make bold statements.
**>>BELCH
This refrain is getting old.
Pot-smoking morons who think disposable products are wasteful are idiots who should be beaten like the dusty couches they crowch upon. Still driving that Gremlin? Still glued to that 2600? Still caressing the cold steel casing on that old 8086? Sure, your hanging on to that record collection, as am I, but you don't really use it that much now do you? You'd like to think you do, and you tell all your hip, pot-smoking friends you do, but secretly, you know you don't. I bet you could really use that space too, but no, that reserved for Yes, Rush, The Villiage People and Ted Nugent, not to mention your Vixen special pirate editions. You really listen to cd's (disposable), mp3's (disposable) and the radio (throw it away now!). Don't worry, I won't tell. We all know your a connoiseur of Vinyl, and that you really can tell the difference!
**>>BELCH
You can listen to Bruce Sterling in RealAudio on NPR's All Things Considered here.