Bruce Sterling's Final Prediction

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."

Comments

metaphor

[Orp]

"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."

Yeah, this stops me on the tracks alright - I'd rather the train run me over than read a book full of this lousy attempt at metaphor.

IMHO

[El Cabri]

Wired is an overrated collection of BS. I read it for a while during the bubble extasia, found it was crap, stopped reading it. I picked up an issue (that one with the atheists) a few weeks ago to see if it had matured : in my opinion it has not. People who write for Wired should get out and do something useful.

Re:IMHO

[twifosp]

People who write for Wired should get out and do something useful.

What, like post on Slashdot criticizing other people's work, rather than creating something of your own?

Re:IMHO

[siegesama]

seconded. Also, the gp falsely assumes that posting on slashdot and other forms of creativity are mutually exclusive.

Re:The short version

[Nasarius]

Dear God, this article is awful.

Low-cost connections will proliferate, encouraging creativity, collaboration

No, really? I could have sworn that's already happening.

and telecommuting.

To an extent, maybe. But I know a couple sysadmins who are able to work from home (I refuse to use pointless buzzwords) but choose not to. I just can't see many businesses or employees wanting to do this, except in fringe cases. In-person communication is usually vastly more efficient than electronic communication.

If you're under 21, you likely don't care much about any supposed difference between virtual and actual, online and off.

I'm 21, and you're a fucking moron. Yes, young people tend to use the Internet. Some spend way too much time documenting their shallow lives and stalking others on MySpace. This doesn't mean that they have difficulty telling the difference. For example, it is extraordinarily difficult to have sex online.

Like the real world, the Net will be increasingly international and decreasingly reliant on English.

Uh, we're already there. Try to keep up.

It will be wrapped in a Chinese kung fu outfit, intoned in an Indian accent, oozing Brazilian sex appeal.

What? If this means anything, it escapes me.

Now a TypePad account is a license to deliver nose-to-the-pavement perspective with an attitude.

The Internet allows for easy communication. Fancy that. It doesn't mean anyone will listen to you or give a crap about your "perspective with an attitude" (I assume it's also EXTREEEEME!)

Today's Internet-savvy futurist is more likely to describe himself as a strategy consultant or venture capital researcher. That development doesn't surprise me. Frankly, I saw it coming.

Again, you make a statement that doesn't really mean anything, then pat yourself on the back for "predicting" it? Yes, people who can accurately predict trends will do well in business. Wow.

Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree

[Bastian]

Of course 'The Lexus vs. The Sword' doesn't sound quite right

Probably because a pathological obsession with violence isn't the exclusive provice of "olive tree" people.

Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree

[Wicked Zen]

While the original metaphor of the Lexus versus the olive tree might have been good, Sterling's reference to it is not. It is common in poor writers reference good work in an effort to make one's own seem better than it is.

"The Lexus has collided with the olive tree,"

Fine. He ought to have stopped right there.

"...and its crumpled hulk spins in a ditch as the orchard smolders."

Appalling. This Lexus has collided with an olive tree so violently that it has got the orchard (not just the tree) smoldering while the vehicle itself, now a crumpled hulk, is still spinning in a ditch. What got the smoldering staerted? Did the gas tank rupture and spew already-burning fuel all over it? It just doesn't make sense. Mr. Sterling has taken a perfectly apt metaphor and mangled it.

How one can draw the conclusion from this bit of tortured writing that the "guy is a good writer," I loath to guess. Taking that point of view, I would suppose that every movie that has a character utter "Here's looking at you kid," is a good one. It simply isn't the case.

Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree

[uxo]

It's a poor metaphor if you can't understand it unless you've read the book. Consider "a rose is a rose": it's a great metaphor, but if you've never read Shakespeare you'd have no idea what is implied by it.

But you don't have to have read Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" to comprehend "The soil of a man's heart is stonier!"

I think I'll "understand [my] world better" if I read Milton Friedman (the economist) in lieu of Thomas Friedman (the journalist).