Bruce Sterling on 2008
Posted Jan 04, 2008
From the WELL, Bruce Sterling came through for his 9th Annual "State of the World" thoughtform, and there were a number of gems:
Some people still think that there's an "Islamo-fascist tyranny" somewhere that hates our freedoms and can organize Islam-dom into a coherent fascist state... There's just no way. Al Qaeda and the Taliban aren't true "fascists." Fascists can at least make trains run on time. Even Communists were better-organized. The mujihadeen have no organized army and no industrial policy and they don't know where to find any. Because God was supposed to handle all that for them.
It's nice to see that other humans percieve the lunacy and lies behind the Islamic "threat" -- America is one big gaping security hole. If terrorists actually existed as a massively-funded international conspiracy with thousands of suicidally dedicated soldiers, the United States would be paralyzed today under the weight of actual terrorist attacks. Further realism:
Now the Americans have clearly lost the thread... the Americans are really just horribly out of it, they're like some giant fundie Brazil, nobody takes their pronunciamentos seriously or believes a word they say... Whereas the world is much more seriously global now. China and India are real players, they're part of the show and they matter.
Serious-minded people everywhere do know they have to deal with the resource crisis and the climate crisis. Because the world-machine's backfiring and puffing smoke. Joe and Jane Sixpack are looking at four-dollar milk and five-dollar gas. It's hurting and it's scary and there's no way out of it but through it.
As always, for more current data about the ongoing international financial apocalypse, keep up with Cryptogon. For some inspiring thoughts about the future, Sterling channels Hakim Bey and envisons some decentralized innovation and real-deal community spirit being the seed for positive transformation. I agree with Sterling 100%, having seen the Vermont Secession Movement grow from an Anti-US program of rejection, to a pro-Vermont community of action. Nobody is still thinking in terms of leaving the USA, but everyone is thinking in terms of building a stronger local community. Thus do humans evolve.
I'd be guessing there's a pretty good chance that cities will lead.
>Nation-states seem bewildered by the contemporary political and economic climate. Still, there are lots of urban areas that seem lively. New York looks downright dynamic. There are a lot of words to describe Los Angeles, but "quaint" certainly isn't one of them.
Here in Italy the national government is the despair of the populace (to judge by the press coverage), but Torino's got a lot going on as an urban center. They're not going to lead in national politics -- at least, I don't *think* so -- but in terms of grabbing an aging, vacant, screwed-up industrial infrastructure and retrofitting it successfully for new conditions, Torino really *does* lead. Torino's full of opportunity.
I don't think anybody wants to become a Chinese Communist any more -- except for a few cocaine-crazed Maoist weirdos in the Andes -- but there really does seem to be a Chinese model-of-development now. In the Balkans, in Europe, you can see it at work. It's very street-level, very under-the-legal-radar -- it comes out of car trunks and off the backs of bicycles, and the labels are dodgy and its all sold for the "china-price."
Torino's got the biggest outdoor market in Europe, a place called the "Porta Palazzo" -- Chinese, Rumanian emigres, Arabs, a few Nigerians and Eritreans and such... the economic vitality there is awesome. Turin is a chilly, Alpine-foothill kind of place... and there are a lot of poor people here, mostly the emigres... yet *nobody is cold.* Nobody's blue and shivering. Because they're all warmly dressed, in new, cheap, Chinese clothes. Boots, hats, gloves, mufflers, they're crazily cheap.
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Filed in: 5GW Project 2008
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