Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

6 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. IMHO by El+Cabri · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:IMHO by twifosp · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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?
    2. Re:IMHO by siegesama · · Score: 2, Insightful

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

      --
      what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?
  2. Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree by Bastian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  3. Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree by Wicked+Zen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. Re:Lexus and the Olive Tree by uxo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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).