Tag Archives: Bruce Sterling

Early web influencers

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My blog clean-up project (ongoing) reminded me of these early-web influencers (for me). Some of these folks are still around but most are no longer the “stars” they were in the early days. Link to my posts below. (Descriptions by GPT 4o)

Visionaries, Theorists, and Futurists

  • Bruce Sterling – A science fiction writer and cyberpunk pioneer who explored the social and cultural implications of digital technology.
  • Clay Shirky – An influential thinker on Internet culture, crowdsourcing, and the power of decentralized networks.
  • Douglas Coupland – Coined “Generation X” and explored the cultural impact of digital technology in novels and essays.
  • Douglas Rushkoff – A media theorist who wrote about cyberculture, the social effects of technology, and digital optimism.
  • Kevin Kelly – Founding editor of Wired and a deep thinker on how technology shapes society and the future.

Journalists and Media Analysts

  • Dan Gillmor – A pioneer in citizen journalism, advocating for the participatory nature of news in the digital era.
  • Jeff Jarvis – A media critic who has been vocal about how the Internet disrupts traditional journalism.
  • Steven Levy – A tech journalist who chronicled the history of computing and the rise of the digital age.
  • Steve Outing – An early advocate for online news, exploring how journalism adapted to the Internet.
  • Terry Heaton – A television executive who recognized the shift from traditional media to digital platforms.

Tech Pioneers and Web Innovators

  • Chris Pirillo – Founder of Lockergnome, one of the earliest online tech communities, helping people understand software and the web.
  • Dave Winer – A key figure in the development of blogging, RSS feeds, and podcasting technology.
  • David Weinberger – Co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto, which framed how businesses should adapt to the Internet age.
  • Doc Searls – Another Cluetrain Manifesto author, emphasizing user empowerment and open-source principles.
  • Jakob Nielsen – The godfather of web usability, setting foundational principles for user-friendly web design.

Marketing and Culture Shapers

  • Halley Suitt – A prominent blogger and voice in the early blogosphere.
  • Hugh MacLeod – Known for his “gapingvoid” cartoons and commentary on creativity and business.
  • Mark Ramsey – A key voice in digital radio and podcasting strategy.
  • Scott Adams – Creator of Dilbert, which captured the absurdities of tech and office culture.
  • Seth Godin – A marketing guru who popularized permission-based marketing and how digital culture changes business.

Entrepreneurs and Digital Business Minds

  • Mark Cuban – Made his fortune selling Broadcast.com to Yahoo, later becoming a major figure in sports and media streaming.
  • Nikol Lohr – Less widely known, but active in early online DIY culture and communities.

The Scariest Beast Ever Created

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“Many lesser troubles will appear in everyday private life. Simulated fake AI porn will likely be a big annoyance, since people like to pay attention to that. If you’re a gamer, AIs will be trained to cheat at your games. If you’re a schoolteacher, you’ll look askance at the kid at the back of the class who never raises his hand but turns in essays that read like Bertrand Russell. Fraudsters might fake the voices of your loved ones, and invent scams to demand money over the phone.”

— AI is the Scariest Beast Ever Created, Says Sci-Fi Writer Bruce Sterling

“The country had cracked”

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“It had never occurred to the lords of the consumer society that consumerism as a political philosophy might one day manifest the grave systemic instabilities that Communism had. But as those instabilities multiplied, the country had cracked. Civil society shriveled in the pitiless reign of cash. As the last public spaces were privatized, it became harder and harder for American culture to breathe. Not only were people broke, but they were taunted to madness by commercials, and pitilessly surveilled by privacy-invading hucksters. An ever more aggressive consumer-outreach apparatus caused large numbers of people to simply abandon their official identities. It was no longer any fun to be an American citizen. Bankruptcies multiplied beyond all reason, becoming a kind of commercial apostasy. Tax dodging became a spectator sport. The American people simply ceased to behave.”

— Distraction by Bruce Sterling (1998)

Knowledge

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“Knowledge will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no knowledge.”

“Knowledge is inherently precious even if you can’t sell it,” Greta said. “Even if you can’t use it. Knowledge is an absolute good. The search for truth is vital. It’s central to civilization. You need knowledge even when your economy and government are absolutely shot to hell.”

— Bruce Sterling’s Distraction (1998)

Distraction

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I’m re-reading Distraction by Bruce Sterling. Published in 1998, it is/was frighteningly prescient.  Here are a few of my favorite excerpts (does that first one remind you of anyone?).

“He’s like a not very bright child who can be deceived and managed, but not reasoned with.”

“The American national character realty wasn’t suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World’s Movie Star. The world’s tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world’s acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions.”

“It always offended him to hear his fellow Americans discussing the vagaries of “white people.” There was simply no such thing as “white people. That stereotype was an artificial construct, like the ridiculous term “Hispanic.” In all the rest of the world, a Peruvian was a Peruvian and a Brazilian was a Brazilian— it was only in America that people somehow became this multilingual, multinational entity called a “Hispanic.”

“Political reality in modern America was the stark fact that electronic networks had eaten the guts out of the old order, while never finding any native order of their own. The horrific speed of digital communication, the consonant flattening of hierarchies, the rise of net-based civil society, and the decline of the industrial base had simply been too much for the American government to cope with and successfully legitimize.”

“Knowledge is inherently precious even if you can’t sell it. Even if you can’t use it. Knowledge is an absolute good. The search for truth is vital. It’s central to civilization. You need knowledge even when your economy and government are absolutely shot to hell.”

Something new is happening

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As it becomes increasingly difficult to know what’s ‘true’ and ‘accurate,’ I find myself depending (not he right word but close enough) on how something is said. Am I just talking about style or tone here? Perhaps. Anyway, Bruce Sterling (On Social Media Jihads) never disappoints.

“People are gonna kill ISIS because they want those oil wells back, not because ISIS is sort-of okay at social media and pushing viral atrocity videos. […] When you’re a top terrorist, you don’t really want to “wreak havoc” anyway. Mostly, you want to create a failed state, a place like Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, where you can take over at gunpoint and live it up in the narcotics, weapons, and oil biz.”

And this gem on U.S. foreign policy:

“It doesn’t matter how much data the U.S. military or U.S. intelligence has: They attack the wrong people for made-up reasons and they’re also [a] terribly ineffective occupation power.”

As for the Internet as a global brain uniting all of mankind…

“People don’t realize that the old-fashioned global Internet of the 90s is segregating into radicalized filter-bubbles, but it is, and fast. People are used to the Free World idea, they think the huddled masses behind the Chinese Firewall and the new Russian firewalls want to get out and be rich and happy at the West’s shopping mall. But the Chinese, Russians, and even the Greeks tried that, they don’t like it, and that’s not what is happening any more. Something new is happening.”

The Blast Shack: Part 2

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Bruce Sterling has written a follow-up to his 2010 essay on Wikileaks. Here are a few of my favorite snippets:

The War on Terror has failed as conclusively as Woodrow Wilson’s League of Nations failed.

Even US Senators are decorative objects for the NSA. An American Senator knows as much about PRISM and XKeyScore as a troll-doll on the dashboard knows about internal combustion.

The authorities finally got around to convicting Bradley this week, of some randomized set of largely irrelevant charges. But the damage there is already done; some to Bradley himself, but mostly grave, lasting damage to the authorities. By maltreating Bradley as their Guantanamo voodoo creature, their mystic hacker terror beast from AlQaedaville, Oklahoma, they made Bradley Manning fifty feet high.

It’s incredible to me that, among the eight zillion civil society groups on the planet that hate and fear spooks and police spies, not one of them could offer Snowden one shred of practical help, except for Wikileaks.

Personal computers can have users, but social media has livestock.

Bruce Sterling’s State of the World 2012

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“The mid-century will be about “old people in big cities who are afraid of the sky.” Futurity means metropolitan people with small families in a weather crisis.”

Future Change as Seen by American Right-wing Talk Radio (2011-12)

  1. Existential threats to the American Constitution. Mostly from “Sharia Law,” which is sort of like the American Constitution for Moslem Islamofascists.
  2. Imminent collapse of all fiat currencies, somehow leading to everyday use of fungible gold bars.
  3. Sudden, frightening rise of violent, unemployable, disease-carrying “Occupy Wall Street” anarchists who are bent on intimidation and repressing free speech.
  4. Hordes of immigrants being illegally encouraged to flood the polls.
  5. Lethal and immoral US government health-care.
  6. Radical Gay Agenda / Litigious Feminazis (tie).
  7. God’s Will. Surprisingly low-key, considering what an all-purpose justification this is.

“I’ve got a soft spot for chemtrail people, they’re really just sort of cool, and much more interesting than UFO cultists, who are all basically Christians. Jesus is always the number one Saucer Brother in UFO contactee cults. It’s incredible how little imagination the saucer people have.”

“Space Travel people. There’s no popular understanding of why space cities don’t work, though if you told them they’d have to spend the rest of their lives in the fuselage of a 747 at 30,000 feet, they’d be like “Gosh that’s terrible.”

“Transcendant spiritual drug enthusiasts. You go into one of those medical marijuana dispensaries nowadays, they’re like huckster chiropractors, basically. The whole ethical-free-spirit surround of the psychedelic dreamtime is gone. It’s like the tie-dyed guys toking up in the ashram have been replaced by the carcasses of 12,000 slaughtered Mexicans.”

Original discussion on the Well.