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STERLING_DISTRACTED

                                                   February  9, 1999
                                             Rev:  January   6, 2004

It is not the job of
someone like Bruce                  The people who *are* in
Sterling to get                     positions like that get
everything right.                   frozen by the need to be
                                    responsible.
   Sterling at his best spews
   a stream of pyrotechnic
   ideas and insights; often
   new, sometimes useful...
                               Sterling is far better at this than
   He ranges widely            most, e.g consider Howard Reingold,
   through technical           a "futurist" who who appears to be
   and social trends,          making a living with a throwaway
   and unlike many an          idea from Sterling's novel
   American thinks             "Distraction": the smart mob.
   about things that
   go on outside the US...


   But part of his self-image
   is that he's the supreme
   hustler, the master
   manipulator, the ultimate
   culture hacker.

   He's the man who managed
   to put "cyberpunk" over,       GENESIS_OF_THE_CYBER-PUNKS
   with a one-page fanzine
   and a handful of writers.            Sometimes his "hustler" schtick can
                                        get out of hand: for example, the story
                                        introductions that he wrote for the
                                        (excellent) _Mirrorshades_ anthology:
Note that he often uses                 hype so heavy-handed that it's
huckster/diplomat figures               embarassing.
as main characters in his
novels.                                           If it was meant as some
                                                  sort of ironic joke, a
                        Schismatrix               satire of a shmoozy
                        Distraction               hustler putting over a
                        Zeitgeist                 con-job of a literary
                                                  movement... well, that
   Since "cyberpunk",                             wasn't obvious to me at
   it seems he's been                             the time.
   casting about, trying
   to Use His Powers
   as a Force for Good.


His writing on computer crime
("The Hacker Crackdown") seemed
to be designed to get the feds
to calm down and stop busting
people at random (e.g. they
were confusing game developers
with criminals).


And now: The Viridian
Design Movement...          (That's Electric
                            Green, get it?):

   A personality cult to
   combat global warming.                How's this for an
                                         a science fiction
                                         premise: Imagine a
     The medium this time is             future dominated by
     the moderated mailing               the fight between
     list (for the cyberpunk             the Viridians, based
     literary movment, the               on Sterling's work,
     medium was a little zine            and the Shining
     called "Cheap Truth").              Path, a group based
                                         on Gregory Benford's
                                         ideas for amelioration.


As of 1999 I don't think he'd written any
articles about the Viridians outside of
his mailing list, as of yet, though the
phrase "Viridian" had appeared in Wired's
tired/wired list recently.  Since then
there's been a number of things, including
an entire issue of The Whole Earth Review            GREENISH-TINGE
dedicated to it.


Irrespective of your opinion about
anthropogenic global warming, it really
probably would not be such a bad idea to
ease off on the carbon-emissions...               NUKE


But I've always found the Viridian
movement to be a bit disappointingly
conventional for someone like Sterling
to get involved with.

All of a sudden, he's being Responsible.



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