An Indo-Pakistani nuclear war might conceivably take a *back page* to the fiscal crisis.
I always knew the “War on Terror” bubble would go. It’s gone. Nobody misses it. It got no burial. I knes was gonna be replaced by another development that seemed much more burningly urgent than terror Terror TERROR, but I had a hard time figuring out what vast, abject fright that might be.
Now I know. Welcome to 2009! […]
As Orlov accurately points out, in the Russian collapse, if you were on a farm or in some small neighborly town, you were toast. The hustlers in the cities were the ones with inventive opportunities, so they were the ones getting by.
So the model polity for local urban resilience isn’t Russia. I’m inclined to think the model there is Italy. Italy has had calamitous Bush-levels of national incompetence during almost its entire 150-year
national existence.Before that time, Italy was all city-states — and not even “states,” mostly just cities. Florence, Milan, Genoa, Venice. Rome. They were really brilliantly-run, powerful cities. (Well, not Rome — but Rome
was global.) Gorgeous cities full of initiaive and inventive genius. If you’re a fan of urbanism you’ve surely got to consider the cities of the Italian Renaissance among the top urban inventions of all time.
Tagbruce sterling
So, what made Mondo 2000 so special? It was, in my opinion, the best alternative culture magazine that America ever had. They wrote about smart drugs, brain implants, virtual reality, cyberpunk, Cthulhupunk and cryogenics. They covered Laibach and Lydia Lunch in the same issue. The pantheon of writers was a force to be reckoned with: Bruce Sterling, Robert Anton Wilson, and William Gibson all lent their talents, and there was even a Burroughs vs. Leary interview face-off. Then there was the famous U2-Negativland interview, in which Negativland, disguised as reporters, interviewed U2 into a corner to reveal the band’s hypocrisy over their lawsuit against Negativland over sampling. All in all, the magazine took risks. ‘The good dream for me and Mondo,’ said editor R.U. Sirius in an interview with Purple Prose, ‘is overcoming the limits of biology without necessarily leaving sensuality or sexuality behind.’ Issue after issue, Mondo 2000 threw a sexy dystopian bash and invited the decade’s best thinkers.
Full Story: Coilhouse. And be sure to read Joshua Ellis‘s comment!
See also: My 2002 interview with R.U. Sirius.
Bruce Sterling talks about J.G. Ballard:
To me these late-Ballard pieces, these Shepperton pieces – Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and so forth – really seem like gentle chiding from somebody who’s recognised that his civilisation really has gone mad. They’re a series of repetitions that say, “Look, we’re heading for a world where consensus reality really is just plain unsustainable, and the ideas that the majority of our people hold in their heart of hearts are just not connected to reality”. I think that may be a very prophetic assessment on his part. I think we may in fact be in such a world right now – where people have really just lost touch with the “reality-based community” and are basically just living in self-generated fantasy echo chambers that have no more to do with the nature of geopolitical reality than Athanasius Kircher or Castaneda’s Don Juan.
Full Story: Ballardian: ‘Child of the Diaspora’: Sterling on Ballard
The latest issue of Shift profiles their selections of the ten most important “green innovators” – people who are using technology to better the environment. Some of these people are doing some pretty cool projects. And yes, they include Viridian Design founder Bruce Sterling:
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