gigadread

Katie Chatfield recently asked Where did the future go?

She was following up on Bruce Sterling's closing speech at Reboot 11 - Sterling also runs a blog on related topics courtesy of Wired.

Some reflections & responses:

• The talk was a half-digested stream of ideas - some awesome, some dumb, some both.
• Many of themes that BS touches upon mirror the obsessions of early 90s CCRU (incl. Mark K-punk Fisher & Steve Hyperdub Goodman). Cybergothic, inhuman technology, undead capitalism, the swarm. CCRU's ideas were heavily influenced by Deluze & Guattari, Jungle and the writings of... cyberpunk authors such as Bruce Sterling.
• "High-Tech Gothic" is a great phrase but it applies more to system than to individuals. Zombie banks. The financial system as out-of-control Frankenstein's monster. Financiers as parasitic vampires. Capitalism has reached its Gothic phase. It is epitomised not by Steve Jobs but by Dow Jones Index or a CDO contract sitting in someone's email - something that may once have had its origins in human behaviour & needs but no longer "human" or "alive" in any meaningful sense.
• "Dark euphoria" is another great phrase but it feels wrong. We're not entering a period of euphoria or depression but dysphoria. You can try to cushion the dread rush with shopping at the endless sales ("For a limitless time only") or alcohol or religion (Islamic, Christian, Environmental) but it just won't go away.
• Gen X are not goths - but I can see how we may look that way to Baby Boomers who salved their dread of nuclear war with the bounty of consumer culture. What happens when the cure becomes the new disease?
• "Favela Chic"is a great way of both celebrating & critiquing "open source" culture. Everybody code before the police come! No civil rights. No protection.
• The "great grandfather" crack is misplaced. Consuming less than we do now does not make us dead. It just makes us thinner. Bruce Sterling or Mr Creosote?
• The final point about keeping a small amount of good stuff and getting rid of the rest is a very sensible idea of which I am a massive fan.