I met Bruce Sterling, very briefly, at an Information technology, global ecology conference held in San Francisco, called "planetworkers" in 2000 A.D. His absolutlyfucking brilliant presentation, full of satire and typical neird-wit, was through a Scanner-Sterling lens focused upon a recent fire (May 2000) at the Los Alamos laboratories. He left no pun unpunished. He said that he quickly put this satirical-prose together on his flight, and i believed him. Inventive sharp-cutting satire, poetic genius, and a refreshing insightful criticism though without any low personal attacks, tabaloid-like attatcks, on character, or even Human error in some sense. Other forces are at work here.
I felt a refreshing contempt for the dull profit driven industrial/militaristic/agricultural/media marketing monsters too. IMAMMM "my own interpretation of THEM. THEY. The wealth and life-support monopilists. Maybe YOU are hypnotised by IMAMMM today? The excellent Planetworkers conference and its wide range of participants went on to provide concise, practicle, sustainable alternatives, GREEN ideas - if you like - which provided a vital backdrop for Sterling's particular species of silver-flash discourse.
After that experience Bruce Sterling became a name that i looked out for. A Novelist, and linguistic gymnast, [see google video below] video linked below, gives you a taste of Sterling. For the record, i detect the felt presence of William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, Leary and Mckenna in his presentation too. But i would do, naturally, because i admire these literary giants so much and feel most attracted to their world views and reality tunnels. The Novelist and poet deserve equal respect and attention, NEWS attention, IMHO, as the popular scientist and engineer - the champions of our popular technological industrial world - for the novelist, and other exponents of quality literature, include the more murky and subtle "social-psychological" parameters hidden within us all, often missing, occult, edited-out or watered down by the mediaters of our pissy-trickle-down "mainstream" of daily electronic signals; our surrounding digital environs. A technosphere becoming increasingly under attack or under renewal? from a kind of SPIME? trying to SELL/GIVE something, or make YOU believe/doubt something fundamentally, or maybe just partially? Do you see Brightly or darkly? I feel Bruce has a lot of questions for us, the digital aged, that will be of critical importance to our children and the future populations of Humanica! [
Blogjects created by clouds, spy chips and hyperlinked OBJECTS. GOOGLING life-support systems etc. Yeah, exactly. Immediatism. And the radical semantic implications of shortening the time between what you think and what you will, to their manifestation's in 3 dimensional space time. Its a kind of magic then? MIND? BODY? SPEECH? How will a corporate consumer landscape, for example, be changed by the introduction of the electronic TAO? Immediatism? You will become what you think, eat and act out almost Instantaneously? MIND BODY SPEECH. Supported by the hyperlinked GLOBAL tinternet? And so....
"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. - Buddha"
Welcome to the afterfuture.
Bruce Sterling speaking at LIFT conference.
SPIME
Acrillic Figa
