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Bruce Sterling's Final Prediction

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the so-long-Nostradamus dept.

In Bruce Sterling's final column for Wired, he summarizes the output of a survey of Net prognosticators conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The piece is peppered with Sterling's trademarked stop-you-in-your-tracks imagery. An example: "The bubble-era vision of a Utopian Internet is dented and dirty... The Lexus has collided with the olive tree, and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders."

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. "lexus and olive tree" Is a Tom Friedman reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Thomas Friedman used this visualization in a book I read about 4 years ago on Globalization. Wikipedia it.

  2. Lexus and the Olive Tree by CubeRootOf · · Score: 5, Informative

    This refers to toms friedmans book ' Lexus vs the Olive Tree ' or close, look it up - its a good book.

    Here is the summary:

    The Lexus represents modern life, aka - globalization, the internet, computers etc etc, and our love for these things and conveinces which make our lives better.

    The Olive Tree is our long standing traditions, communities, churches, families, the ties that bind us to each other and to the places we live.

    I have not RTFA, but from the summary, I can see this guy is a good writer... although he does lean somewhat heavily on an informed audience.

    This metaphor is actually pretty good - Our modern culture is clashing with our values, and its not pretty. Video game violence legislation, computure monotiring etc etc, all of the things we rail about on slashdot... the majority of them are a direct result of this clash.

    Read the book, and understand your world better.

    Don't read the book, trash authors because you don't get it, and look like an idiot.

  3. Re:Batshit Insane by Bastian · · Score: 4, Informative

    It was a book on globalization that came out several years back. The book-a-minute version I'd give for it is, "You can't stop globalization, but that's OK, because might makes right." The author tries to argue that the modern incarnation of free-market capitalism is a Good Thing, basically a remix of the old "rising tide that lifts all boats" combined with the pollyannaish implication that it must be good simply because it's happening.

    There were a few good points in there, but all in all I think that deep down inside The Lexus and the Olive Tree there was a clear and concise essay screaming to get out and being smothered by 200 pages of ad-hoc musings that were thrown in as filler.