(2006-03-30) Sterling Sxsw

A transcript of Bruce Sterling's SXSW talk from this year. (Plug for Visionary In Residence ISBN:1560258411 )... Commons-based peer production as an industrial method is getting it's legs under it... FlickR is not a copy of anything else. It is not a hippie knockoff of a commercial product. Wikipedia is not like anything else. A Wiki is like nothing known to mankind. Collaborative web filters are very spooky things. They are without historical precedent. Websites that throw their API's open, and turn themselves into Platform-s, rather than sites - it is a little hard to explain the significance of that to everyday people who are not techies and programmers, but that is a major development. The Net community is no longer hanging on the coattails of Gates...

Serbia has one of the most dysfunctional societies on the planet. It's a kind of world capitol of the New World Disorder. They're burying Milosevic this week. It's a total circus. I've got a ringside seat. People ask me, have you moved to Belgrade now, is this permanent? No, it's not permanent. It's just that some of my shoes are there, in a closet. I live out of my Lap Top, now. That's how I live. And so do increasing numbers of my colleagues. (Nomad)... I no longer need to be a resident of any particular city. I don't make any money in any foreign state. Nothing enters or leaves Belgrade except for ones and zeroes, that's all. I never stay there long enough to become permanent. I don't even do permanent. National borders, they're like speed-bumps. (Nations-Lite)... You know, now I finally get it, about the difference between actual war and global guerrilla war. Because what we've got now is not conventional shooting war, with military honor, military ranks, military activity. This is Culture War. We've got The Troubles. We've got The Disorder. And now I really know how that works. No, when The Disorder is over, you don't get to say: "I proudly served." It doesn't matter which side you were on.... When it finally burns out, even the victor is despised and distrusted.

(Plug for ShapingThings ISBN:0262693267 - Uh, it's a weird and innovative book, with a really weird and innovative book design. It's actually a visionary book, in a lot of ways, I would urge you to look at this, just for the graphic design in it, because it's going to shock you and annoy you, and you need that done. Because you are a philistine, and you have no taste.)... But, you know, a book is a book, and a speech is a speech. But the term, "SpIme", is not a word. I only realized, two weeks ago, that it's a tag (MetaTag). It's a Theory Object. It's different (from present-day objects), in basically 6 important ways, none of which existed, in the 20th century (which make each a Platform)... So, I called it a "SpIme", because it's trackable in space and time... I mean, why would we even want to do such a weird thing, I mean what problem are we solving, by doing this? Well, we want to do it, so we can build an Internet Of Things. Not an Internet of data, an Internet of things, objects. So that we can engage with material objects much better, during their Life Cycle... The primary advantage of an internet of things, is that I no longer inventory my possessions inside my own head... And as long as machines are there to crunch the complexities, the interfaces make my relationship to objects feel much simpler, and more immediate. I am at ease in materiality in a way that people never were before...

The Semantic Web is turning into the WetLands of language. Because a word placed in the semantic web is not just a word. It is a Theory Object. Which is a tagged idea. Which is not just a meme (Memetic), or an intellectual conceit, or a literary Neologism, it's a whole cloud of associated commentary and data. Which can be passed around, from mouse to mouse, by people - and linked to, by people. A Theory Object is a word that's a Platform for development... This term, Theory Object, is itself a kind of Theory Object. If you understand what a Theory Object is, you can create Theory Object-s... Its just a different method of social Activism. And others, that do not buy into this, newspapers, for instance, ink-on-paper? A legacy medium. And more importantly, the people who read newspapers and television, and don't engage in this other activity, and they believe that's reality? Those are legacy people.