The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things

by Bruce Sterling

It would mean intense palace intrigue, an endless jostling for public esteem and self-actualisation. That’s what the people in this third category are interested in doing. They like fame and glory, they like being seen and heard, they like making a difference. They would like to see a society arranged so that this is all they ever have to do. I enjoy the company of people of this kind, being by temperament one of them myself, but they are problematic. The late Steve Jobs was the Napoleon of this tribe. Steve Jobs was intensely anti-materialistic – Jobs could scarcely abide to have a possession around him. Jobs didn’t care for wealth either, until he realised that he could upset the status quo by seizing a well-nigh infinite amount of cash. Never once did Jobs have the prudent habits of a proper steward of great fortune. Jobs was a mogul, a titan, cruel to his intimates, exploitative to those he employed. His real ambition was to dent the universe, to be insanely great, to be forever remembered. These aren’t necessarily cultural values that a civilisation wants to promote. If you take a guy who loves the sound of his own voice and give him power, he becomes a demagogue. If you give him money, he becomes a show-off. Give him the internet, and he’s a ceaselessly flaming activist; give him an Internet of Things, and he becomes a wrangler, a guy for whom every possible relationship to any possible object or service is some ever-ramifying, well-nigh metaphysical hacker session. ...