Bruce Sterling’s closing remarks from SXSW Interactive: who isn’t in the room?
As ever, Bruce Sterling’s closing remarks to the SXSW Interactive festival
were a barn-burner; in them, Sterling rattles off a list of people who
should be in the room, either because they know something that is lost
on mainstream geekdom, or because they serve as examples for what not to
become — from GCHQ spies to Italian net-politics ninjas, from the
Dread Pirate Roberts to Barrett Brown. Sterling dips into the future
(“the future is full of cities full of old people who are scared of the
sky”) and wonders where Silicon Valley will decamp to once California is
destroyed by climate change.