http://2007.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2007/03/14/bruce_sterling_s_sxsw_rant

an mp3 of Chairman Bruce's speech at SXSW Interactive the other day. it's primarily about the phenomenon of commons-based peer production. he also situates that in what he sees as the four major forces in the modern world: the Global market, national and local governments, commons-based-peer production, and the New World Disorder or Global black market in guns, drugs, slavery, etc. interesting stuff, as usual.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xyg7q_marilyn-manson-on-oreily-factor

and a video in which Marilyn Manson (in full regalia) defends his artistic choices against Papa Bear's objections on the O'Reiley Factor.

http://blog.wired.com/sterling/index.blog?entry_id=1503029

Pope Bruce on futurism and climate change denial.

I've been "predicting" changes in the climate since 1998. I even "prophesied" that in public forums. That prediction of the future wasn't "impossible." It was a lead-pipe cinch, because the climate was ALREADY changing in 1998. That wasn't "the future," it was the present. That future couldn't be admitted in 1998 because people were (and still are) way too heavily vested in the processes changing the climate.

It's eight years later now, and the climate's worse. Eight years from now? Worse still. You think I'm pulling that out of my hat? Every scientist in the world agrees with me. Every insurance guy, too. It still feels like "prediction" -- barely. Not because there's any real doubt about what's happening and what's going to happen, but because people don't want to believe it.

If your doctor predicts that your liver will blow because you're a raging alcoholic and you're obviously in denial, it won't help you to tell the medico that 'nobody can predict the future.' That is not a proper skepticism: that is a cop-out. Maybe you'll get Korsakoff's instead of cirrhosis, but if you're chugging a heavy narcotic by the barrel and case, heck yeah, of course ill health is in your future. Your doctor isn't a supernatural genius: you're a self-destructive fool. That little tremor in your hand? That's a futurist precursor of a big tremor in your hand. And the more you close your eyes to the future, the more of a prophet he becomes.

http://server1.sxsw.com/2006/coverage/SXSW06.INT.20060314.BruceSterling.mp3

mp3 of Pope Bruce doin some pontificatin' at SXSW this year. a really good speech; he discusses politics, ongoing global chaos, the internet of things, language as tagging, tags as theory objects, hope for the future, poetry.

( the poem he concludes with, which is great )

When you actually ignore reality for years on end, the payback is a bitch brother! ... We're seeing just frantic collisions of fundamentalist delusion with objective reality... We're on a kind of slider bar between the unthinkable and the unimaginable now, bteween the grim meathook future and the bright green future. There are ways out of this situation; there are actual ways to move the slider bar from one side to the other, except that we haven't invented the words for them yet.