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Interview with Bruce Sterling
kpost writes "Reason magazine has an
interview
with Bruce Sterling." Fairly lengthy and entertaining interview for you bookworms out there. Covers a lot of different subjects.
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He is right to the point, it doesn't really matter what the RIAA, MPAA and their cronies do, they surely can't stop us, it might have worked in the past, but now we control the information paths and they can't do anything except scare those who haven't got access to the sources of information that we do.
I wish more people like him were in politics, that way maybe we'd be better off.
He's also one hell of a writer.
"I'm not really all that interested in what Hollywood does with its stuff. I mean, they're only the size of the porn industry."
:)
I think that says it all
Wow. I hadn't recognized that pr0n is not only comparable to organized crime, drug dealing and child abuse but was also an explicit indicator of the end times. I was thought it was one of the main reasons there WAS an internet in the first place.
There is also Bruce's yearly visit to the Well's Inkwell.vue: The 2004 Bruce Sterling State of the World Address.
And, don't forget Bruce's new weblog at Wired: Beyond the Beyond.
If you really have no idea who he is, start this book and get up to speed.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Um... you sure you're not confusing Bruce Sterling (the sci-fi/cyberpunk novelist we're talking about here) with Bruce Schneier (the guy who wrote Applied Cryptography, among other things?)
-- Open Source: It's mad, but you don't have to work here to help.
... but experimenting with technology is. Palladium and similar technologies which are largely motivated by the desire to prevent us from unautorized playing movies, may as a side effect prevent us from experimenting with technology. If we can only run authorized programs, plug in authorized hardware, and browse authorized content, how can we experiment with new programs, new hardware or new content?
Ignoring the fact you've got the wrong Bruce...
You're assuming that restricting cryptography would stop them getting it. This seems to me to be an assumption without any evidence. The US didn't stop the rest of the world getting strong crypto when they tried to restrict it before, because the rest of the world also has the people who have the skills needed to devise or implement crypto. Why do you think that anything different would be true in the future?
I keep reading Sterling hoping to see what all the rest of you are apparently seeing, but all I get it someone deeply, deeply in love with hearing his own clever ideas, usually couched in some nebulously sardonic comment that makes it oh-so-hip.
Some random snippets...
"Socially, policy makers have made a series of choices very similar to what preceded the collapse into World War I."
Huh? Like?
"we've really turned our backs on a world that could have been pleasant, delight-ful, peaceful, and technocratic. Now we face a world that is religious, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, and violent."
This is precisely the sort of vapid utopianism that begs so many questions it's meaningless. Really? How did "we" turn our backs on it Bruce?
"Sure, we hate Exxon because they're huge and they're everywhere." Personally, it seems a little L.Ron Hubbard-y to contrive a eco-social movement with designated hate subjects, if not downright Nineteenth Century. Wouldn't it be more intrinsically interesting to try to understand the reflexive envy in a society that's not all that zero-sum anymore? Doesn't Bruce feel some irony in poking at Ellison's "proper" enemies, when his own cachet cows look as stereotypically sacred as anyone elses?
I dunno. He's just got this 'end of history' thing cooking, looking for the McGuffin in a story that's just a stream-of-consciousness monologue. He keeps trying to refer to "the real story" or the very-much-italicized "truth", but I don't see how he manages it with a straight face. Maybe he's laughing all the way to the bank. I still cannot find the kernel of tangibility he seems to keep flourishing.
It's probably just me.
-Styopa
"Id like to see what people can do with the Internet that they cannot do on paper. And there are certain things one can do that are not worth doing. Like I can set up a discussion group thats open to everybody! And that is not worth doing. Its sort of proven that it immediately turns into a cesspool because its badly designed." haha!
... it's about mass customization ...
/. submission on the question of why car manufacturers aren't aren't offering fully modularlized vehicles - sort of like you start with a front end option, add a drive-train option, add a rear option (so you get a lot of Ranchero-like hybrids). The best profits are in the vehicles people see more utility in (like pickup trucks) - this way you see more utility for you.
Work up this morning from a dream in which I was framing a
Maybe the carmakers are afraid that such modular creations wouldn't have as much brand identity, that the brand would effectively be more the individual customer than the manufacturer. But why should that matter if it sells? And think about the downstream revenue - get in a fender-bender, just replace that module - less work for repair shops, more orders to the factory.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Then he puts porn on the same level as mafia crime, pedophilia, and drugs.
No, he references the scare-mongering media's (and sometimes Justic Department's) "Four Horsemen," not his own. Plus he's being interviewed by his buddy, Mike Godwin (yes, Godwin's Law Godwin), who knows what Bruce means.
The question arises:
Has anyone ever seen Jon Katz and Bruce Sterling in the same room at the same time?
Seastead this.