Author Bruce Sterling, who needs no introduction, just invited all of us to his house tonight for free beer, free wifi, and 100% guaranteed free electric power. No food, though.
His points follow, filtered through my ears, brain, and clumsy fingers.
Most sci-fi authors are moving from "steam-punk" and "cyber-punk" to "now-punk."
These are dark and interesting times - most people can't stand this Department of Justice guy but I'm a big fan of Rummy. Job 1 of this administration is to get it spun - if you get it spun you don't have to get it done. They didn't invent this, it's a long term-development.
This administration's approach to science is like that of the old Soviet Union, but groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists are starting to counter this effectively.
In 2004 Austin declared itself the clean energy capital of the world and that cheered me up - I'm willing to suffer a lot for that particular benefit. I've got 3kW of solar power on my roof. I could power my entire neighborhood and drench it in wifi using South African army surplus microwave horns.
Anyone who's got a lot of oil coming out the the ground has no incentive to foster the creative class - every nation with lots of oil has significant problems (Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and so on) - even those places in Canada with lots of oil are the most screwed-up parts of Canada.
2004 is a very cheerful year for some people - India is waking up all over right now. As a futurist, I spend a lot of time trend-spotting India. They're making amazing progress in living standards for a billion people.
Freaking out over Indian offshoring is a short sighted point of view. If you want to keep a large number of people ignorant and backwards, try it out in your own country instead.
The interesting thing about Indian offshoring is that even some Indians are opposed to it. Gandhi made his own clothes as a way of frustrating multinational corporations, in part to "be the change" he wanted to see in the world. India has tried this approach in general for almost 50 years and never prospered, but then a new party came into power and has shown the world India can compete.
Take the protectionist shell away and they're doing ok. They're even doing well creatively - Bollywood is forming new structures to generate movies. Look at the web to get a better look at the Indian moviemaking.
Chinese and Indian have a huge global diaspora. We talk about globalization as if it's Americanization but it's not. Other cultures are spreading widely.
The Brazilian Minister of Culture is a traveling musician. He wants to preside over the "tropicalization of digitalization." What do third world people want to do with the Internet? They outnumber us in the developed world and their interests do not coincide with ours.
There may not be a way to commercialize the interjection of the internet in the third world but that doesn't mean it won't be done. It alarms me to see Brazil as the world's most politically innovative country - Brazilians say that it is the "country of the future and always will be." They're setting a lot of trends. They have a lot to gain and little to lose.
Is it successful to have foreign policy to alienate all our economic and military allies and do things that a majority of people in most countries think is the wrong thing to do? Do we want more policies like this? [Ed. - depends on if you think popularity is the goal of foreign policy]
I spend a lot of time thinking about computer security. Under this administration, security has gotten steadily worse. Viruses, phishing, torrents of porn, pharmaceutical fraud is reaching unprecedented rates. About 1/3 of the spam online is being sent from people whose unsecured computers have been enslaved. Because it's impossible to secure a Microsoft system. "Outlook is a flaw with a mailer attached to it."
It's bad on the Internet now - it's coming apart at the seams. We're used to the social disorder pouring into our machines. But what happens when the third world comes online and plugs into a global assault of the world's most malicious computer users?
The U.S. is pushing the internet as the crown jewel of our culture. But when someone from a more sedate society opens the window to see what we see, they would be appalled.
Everyone on the world is being savaged - even us Mac guys have to weed out the cruft from those who have been victimized. But the Bush Administration could have done something to prevent this. Make corporations responsible for their products. There's a white paper detailing what can be done. But the administration has no intent of actually fixing anything. But they're not even stopping the Nigerian 419 scammers. Our government has completely failed to protect us from this real threat, failing to listen even to their own hand-picked experts on the question.
This problem will take political will to fix, and that's not happening.
Before the war, Scott Ritter openly warned that there were no WMD's in Iraq - they were too incompetent to make them even thought they wanted to. But no one listened.
The Spanish election turned on lies and spin - when the recent attacks got blamed on Basque separatists, and it eventually got revealed as Al Quaeda, voters were fed up with the lies.
Martin Rees thinks our civilization has a fifty-fifty chance of making it to the end of the twenty-first century. I am cheered up by his optimism.
I'm also watching microbial threats like SARS - they hit old people the hardest and old people are think on the ground every where. Unless bird flu gets loose, we're going to be an increasingly top-heavy society.
Also looking at "global red light district" phenomenon. Globalization doesn't lift all boats. You can rise like China or India, or become a criminal state that can't compete. They spend all their time exporting criminal services to the rest of the world. The only difference between a criminal state and an oil state is that an oil state still has its oil. Once it runs out, they move to the criminal state.
Somalia has 14 years of massive failed state - 14 years of warlords. And they're coming on line at an alarming rate, wiring up as fast as they can go. Everyone who can earn a living from Somalia has already left, and they're sending cash home and running it by remote control. This won't make Somalia a better place, it will just turn it into a wired anarchy.
This trend expends beyond Somalia. Some places succeed at globalization, some don't. Those fester. Intervention won't work any more than it has in Haiti. I don't regard this as hopeless - I think there is some kind of solution but I don't know what it is.
It's good to live in a city [Austin] where you feel that if more people lived as we do it would be a happier place.
Posted by wasylik at March 16, 2004 12:36 PM | TrackBack