Ask Bruce Sterling

This week's interview subject is author Bruce Sterling. If you've never heard of him (shame on you!) learn a little about him here or type his name into any search engine. He's an interesting dude and one of my personal favorite contemporary writers, and I feel privileged to have him with us this week. Post your questions below, as usual, and, as usual, Slashdot moderators and editors will select 10 - 15 of them, and (again as usual) Bruce's answers will appear Friday and, if he has time, he might jump into the discussion that follows the posting of his answers.

Comments

Viridian Green

[Lemmy Caution]

A lot of your work recently has been on the Viridian project - a movement dedica
ted to innovative, practical, and far-reaching responses to environmental crisis
. You've focused on the use of design and engineering to create a less destructi
ve way of living on this planet.

You're doing so in a way that seeks to avoid politics - you'll name names, but s
eem unwilling to pitch battles. Is this fatalism, or an attempt to preserve cons
ensus in a movement that includes both libertarians and communitarians? Do you b
elieve that conscientious consumerism is going to be sufficient to avert continu
ed environmental destruction? Do you believe that "local minima" of the immediat
e benefits of good design will always win in the market? Do you think lasting ch
ange will be possible without global regulation? And what do you think the most promising recent Viridian-positive developments have been?

Future William Gibson Collaboration?

[Robert.Franklin]

I thought that The Difference Engine was one of the most offbeat and interesting takes on the cyberpunk (steampunk?) genre. Are you still in contact with William Gibson? Do you have plans to collaborate with him again?

No more 'Whoa'?

[G-Man]

Bruce-

I still remember early Cyberpunk, and then the early years of Wired, as times of being exposed to one "mind blowing" idea after another. The future, though far from Utopian, was going to be very interesting. Anymore, though, I see few ideas that make me sit back and say "Whoa...now *that* is cool."

Now, in a mundane world of spam and banner ads, the coming future doesn't seem nearly so thrilling. In trying to pinpoint the source of my apathy about new ideas, I can't quite decide if it's me, us, or you. That is, I can't decide if: (a) My personal perspective has changed, and I've learned enough that little suprises me anymore, (b) We've all gotten better at predicting the future, so little surprises any of us, or (c) You folks (the SF writers and Futurists) blew out all the great ideas in the 80s and early 90s, and we'll just have to wait awhile for the next Big Thing.

So what I'm wondering is: Have you become at all jaded about technology and its effect on society? What do you think about our current state of predicting the future? Are there any ideas, authors, etc., that you've seen recently that make you say "Whoa..."?

The shape of future corporations

[webmaven]

One of the things that I found most intrigueing about Islands In The Net was the corporate structure and culture of the Rizome corporation.

Recently we've seen companies with radical new business models (such as Redhat and VA Linux) hiring developers to work on whatever they want, and corporate HR departments focusing on 'recruiting from within' to minimize employee turnover. Both these trends may be extrapolated to lead to Rizome type corporations.

So here's the question: What do you currently think future business entities will look like, and what can we do to make those future entities as human-friendly as possible?
--

Death of frontiers

[boojumsnark]

Bruce: I remember reading an essay by you about Burning Man a while back; you hauled your daughter along. I thought this move, besides indicating that you were an incredibly cool dad, pretty much marked the end of Burning Man as a "dangerous" underground phenomenom. Similarly, a number of different forces are transfroming the web-centric Internet into something increasingly bland. I know you're a long-time user of the Well, which is now owned by Salon, the Newsweek of the web.

Which leads me to my question. Do you think it's possible nowadays to create a sustained, independent, and transgressive community (a TAZ, if you will) without it being co-opted by society at large? Some of your old Catscan essays (particularly the one on Jules Verne) hint at what your response to this question would have been in the past, but I'm curious to hear what you have to say now.