Bruce Sterling's Blog, page 778

We will talk about ubiquitous products when we are ready to talk about products

*This is a ubiquity play. Intel and Nokia banding together? And they’re not saying

why? They’re not gonna build a sexier iPhone. They’re gonna spew wireless chips

all over the place.

*As they like to say in Teheran, “the city is there for you to riot in.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8114059.stm

*The dot-pdf of the action plan for the Internet of European Things:

http://tiny.cc/jUBDY

Annex

Internet of Things: A 14-point Action Plan (((direct from Brussels)))

Governance. The Commissio

Ruins of the Present

*We’ve long had a term of art for old buildings that are ruined: they’re called “ruins.”

*However, we lack a term of art for “ruins” that are actually buildings never completed.

Sometimes they’re completed buildings that are never sold, and therefore

they start falling over before they were ever inhabited. This would be the

American real-estate bust version of the phenomenon.

*Another version is the abandoned, incomplete high-rise. Commonly a steel and
cement framework is erected (because that’s

CNN, BBC as cyberwar aggressors

*You probably thought of CNN and the BBC as something like “news services” rather than red-hot cyberwar battlespaces, but hey, they’re electronic and they make trouble, right?  That’s good enough!

*Especially when they’re spending so much of their time *re-tweeting*

Iranian street rebels. That scene is looking pretty cyberwarriorish by anybody’s

standards.

*Really weird to see the Iranians hitching up their skirts and
coming out as the party of democratic-republican propriety here.
Yeah, Hezbollah,

I see that one faked email is enough to make Australian government implode

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/5601862/Email-implicating-Kevin-Rudd-in-Australian-scandal-is-fake-say-police.html

 

*Gosh, and here I was all worried that the Iranians had somehow gotten their hands on some downmarket German-Finnish version of the spy equipment that the USA has been using against its civilian population for eight years.

 

*Man, you can annul a free and fair election with a *single email* nowadays.

*”Email!  Resign!”  ”Fake email, YOU resign

TXT Island, a parable of economic development

*Where did he get that huge pegboard?

*I know where he found the time; he’s probably unemployed and

he also quit websurfing.

*Someday — maybe someday SOON — all my entertainment will look

like this, and my washing machine, constructed by the same postindustrial

practices, will look like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/3649200921/

*Also, my new home will look like this:

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13837400

*Probably because of, uhm, this:

http://gl

Extremophile microbes on Wired Science

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/extremophile/

*Pondering these gaudy images, I find it hard to believe that Mars lacks microbes.

Airport Stories From the Ethnically Indeterminate

*Okay, first try to imagine you’re a British hiphop guy self-named “S-Endz”

and you’re from a touring bhangra electronica band named “Swami”…

http://turimusic.com/blog/

“I’m gonna share a couple of anecdotes with you today

“The first one comes from the Swami tour of India in 2007. We were on a Kingfisher Airlines flight from Delhi to Hyderabad (the only airline in the world sponsored by a beer company?) and got to our seats when we noticed something hilarious. A little perspective first – I’m mixe

I’m back from Marseille and Lift France 09.

*I’d have to say this one was one of the more out-there LIFT conferences.

Although it’s hard to beat eating live Korean octopus.

An Italian steampunk mag.

http://www.carmillaonline.com/archives/2009/06/003083.html

Steampunk fantascienza. I hope they can get together with those Polish guys for some European joint steampunk fantastyka-fantascienza maneuvers. Imagine sitting down to whip out a Polish Italian steampunk story.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that’s doable.

Hey rich American guys: you’re gonna get sick and hungry, like everybody else

http://globalchange.gov/publications/reports/scientific-assessments/us-impacts

“Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow. Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alteratio