The WELL: inkwell.vue.343: Bruce Sterling: State of the World, 2009

#177: Linda Castellani (castle) Thu 15 Jan 09 19:01

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:01:00 PST

Thanks, Bruce! Have a wonderful 2009. [Read entire topic]

#176: Eric Gower (gower) Thu 15 Jan 09 16:48

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 16:48:00 PST

Riveting as always, thank you bruces! [Read entire topic]

#175: Emily J. Gertz (emilyg) Thu 15 Jan 09 14:41

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 14:41:00 PST

Nau might be the line that edges towards a chic version of 511 Tactical. I bought several items during the big fire sale, when it looked like Nau was going under during the spring. I would have really regretted paying full price for a couple things -- the "casual" pullover cotton blouse, say -- but the technical gear is almost miraculous. Crafty understated zippered pockets, wide range of movement in the sleeves and shoulders, beautifully cut and sewn, and the fabrics feel and look durable without saying "I'm a nature freak." And no logos ineradicably cut and sewn into or printed on the garments.

And it's all supposedly extremely eco-virtuous material, to boot, but I really have nothing to compare that claim to.

Thanks for hosting a great, thought-provoking conversation, jon and bruce! [Read entire topic]

#174: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 15 Jan 09 05:43

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:43:00 PST

Thanks to all who dropped by, vocal or lurking. See you all next year...! [Read entire topic]

#173: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 15 Jan 09 00:17

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:17:00 PST

Well, as Huey Long used to say during the last Depression, "Every man a fish with a bottle of Perrier."

I see that both my banks are crashing today, because they've lost all confidence in the loans they gave me. Gosh, if I'd known it was that easy to smash capitalism, I probably woulda done it when I was a college student.

I live pretty modestly here in Turin, but compared to Friedrich Nietzsche (he lived in my neighborhood) I have every conceivable advantage. I'm better fed, I'm better educated, I have my health and even the critics are kinder. So I guess that 2009 is the year when I knuckle down and whip out a text to top THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA. Like reformatting industrial civilization, that oughta be easy. And fun.

So long till next time. Be luminous! [Read entire topic]

#172: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 14 Jan 09 16:20

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:20:00 PST

Our hosts haven't mentioned it, but today a new Inkwell conversation is starting and our formal commitment to carry this one forward ends. Nobody's dousing the lights or locking the door, though... so carry on if you'd like.

Here's the link for 5.11 Tactical: http://www.511tactical.com/

I can imagine a world where everything's DIY. That's where we came from, after all. Economies may crumble but people carry on... life persists. I was watching a bit of the Golden Globes and thinking how massive an enterprise filmmaking has become, and how expensive... and they're still churning them out, and crowds of filmgoers are still showing up, enough to drive ongoing production. We haven't abandoned the theatre experience completely in favor of our various devices, however sophisticated the display and sound. The experience of sitting in a crowded theatre with others sharing an experience is still compelling. And elsewhere, I see more people aggregating in more places, coordinating those physical experience through virtual channels. So as Bruce says, we're no way asocial, but sociality has been redefined and rechanneled, those energies are pouring into new infrastructures for experience.

Derek Woodgate and I have created a think tank, called Plutopia, that produces events instead of white papers. Our next will be at SXSW Interactive, March 16. It's the kind of event I think we'll see more of... there'll be bands and DJs, and many convergent art installations, and speakers (including hopefully Bruce), and all kinds of interestingly weird, forward-looking experimental stuff. Robots, makers, etc. We might throw up some screens and do something with film or high res video. People just flock to events, and the event itself is an art form. (This isn't completely new... we learned a lot from Mark Petrakis, aka Spoonman, and his Anon Salons... actually the "Spoonfest Betatest" that I attended in 1993, which was a bunch of Bay Area geeks doing cyberactive vaudeville.) And it's social, people meet at events and hang out. Not long ago I watched an ad hoc intentional community form in front of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band at Antone's in Austin... for a couple of hours a bunch of people who were unlikely to see each other again fell in love ... with the band and with each other... and I think this is not uncommon.

When you jack into the noosphere, I guess you don't have to be explicitly social in some defined way. A fish doesn't need a bottle of Perrier. [Read entire topic]

#171: Linda Castellani (castle) Wed 14 Jan 09 14:58

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 14:58:00 PST

>but they can't make anything that you couldn't make in 1875 given a room full of machine tools and a small casting works.

Jacob, this statement reminds me of the cartoon showing the scientists and the flow chart with the spot marked "And then a miracle occurs." The whole point is that room full of tools. When I went to see the Leonardo: 500 years in the future exhibit when it was in Florence, the thing that stood out, in my view, was that not only did he invent things (some of which were actually made during his lifetime) he also had to invent the technology to make them, like the casting works that he had to design to build the Sforza horse. It's the tools where the miracle occurs. What you make with them is the sub-miracles.

On a slightly different note: here's an example of an early community fabrication workshop: http://www.bicyclekitchen.com/ [Read entire topic]

#170: Scott MacFarlane (s-macfarlane) Wed 14 Jan 09 13:35

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:35:00 PST

The big rap on ethanol is how it drives the cost of food up. The big rap on American's these days is the epidemic of obesity. And...yes...corn syrup is the number one culprit. SO, to have more fuel to burn and burn more calories at the same time**i.e., help solve the energy crisis and generate a quantum improvement in the physical health of the population, at the same time, all we need to do is...

(((have the USDA ban high fructose corn syrup in all domestically consumed foods and drinks))) [Read entire topic]

#169: (jacob) Wed 14 Jan 09 11:58

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:58:00 PST

The milling and deposition and laser-hardened-goo machines are very clever and very cool. but they can't make anything that you couldn't make in 1875 given a room full of machine tools and a small casting works. Putting that capability in your garage is a big step forward but it's maybe 0.01% of the way towards a universal object-building machine. I doubt I could find a single object in this entire office which could be made only from parts made in such a machine, and that's assuming that I'll do the assembly work by hand.

That is not to detract from them. I'd love one myself. But we're at least as far from a small-scale self-replication-capable assembly machine as from human-level artificial intelligence. [Read entire topic]

#168: Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually (rik) Wed 14 Jan 09 09:47

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:47:00 PST

That's easy. bruces has gone over to LEDs. [Read entire topic]