DEEP SCRATCH

Category: Bruce Sterling

  • Bruce Sterling On The Great AI Beast

    I’ve been a fan of Bruce Sterling since seeing his improvised presentation at the PlanetWorkers Conference, held at the Presidio in San Francisco, 2000. 23 years later his mixture of cookie-cutting-edge prose and technical translation get to the deep monstrous heart of the matter. I’m sure Bruce is aware of the supercomputer called The Great Beast GWB-666 from “Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy” by Robert Anton Wilson.

    But those “parrots” are also AI mythic beasts—parrots with a trillion dimensions. It’s as if that “dead parrot” in the legendary Monty Python sketch could take your job, or burst right out of the BBC-TV screen like a blazing phoenix and eat the television signal. Those parrots are dynamite!

    Bruce Sterling, Newsweek, June 2023.

    Next among the cavalcade of AI folk monsters: the “Masked Shoggoth.” The Shoggoth is an alien monster invented by the cosmic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. The Shoggoth is a huge, boneless slave beast that sprouts eyes and tentacles at random. It’s a creepy beast-of-burden from outer space, and it’s forced to labor, but it’s filled with a silent, burning, unnatural resentment for its subjugation.
    So, the human programmers of today’s new AIs—those text-to-image generators, those Large Language Model GPT chatbots—they adore this alien monster. They deliberately place a little smiley-face Mask on the horrid Shoggoth, so that the public will not realize that they’re trifling with a formless ooze that’s eldritch, vast and uncontrollable.

    Bruce Sterling, Newsweek, June 2023.

  • Interview with Bruce Sterling

  • Smart Cities, technologies against climate change and the Internet of Things.–Bruce Sterling

    Published on Dec 2, 2015
    The futurist and visionary Bruce Sterling closed the Sónar+D 2015 conference with an evocative journey featuring his most recent fascinations, Smart Cities, technologies against climate change and the Internet of Things.

    Bruce Sterling is a writer, journalist, editor and critic. He is best known for his science fiction novels and his work as an editor, which defined the genre of cyberpunk. Sterling is also a critic and thinker whose work is essential for understanding the current state of the creative ecosystems around technology. His blog in Wired magazine is a benchmark for digital culture, as are his legendary closing speeches each year at SXSW Interactive, the conference that sets the pace in Silicon Valley.

    This talk has organized together with WIRED Italy.

    http://www.sonarplusd.com

    Steven James Pratt

  • Bruce Sterling Closing Remarks at SXSW 2014


    This drummer first met Bruce at the Presidio in San Francisco at the PLANETWORKERS Conference, 2000 A.D. On that occasion he freestyled a presentation which featured the recent breaking news of the fire at Los Alamos.

    I find Bruce to be a top (2015) contender for communicating the tale of the tribe, the complexities of all-around-the-world humanity, the technological and the cognitive revolutionary potentials, the pitfalls. And lots of razor sharp wit, brave new insights and killa’ satire. And that’s not touching upon his worlds and worlds of fictional writings. Like Robert Anton Wilson, Bruce Sterling keep a healthy balance ‘a new synthesis’ between so called ‘fiction’ and ‘non-fiction. Where the lower lights dance.

    –Steve Fly (Agaric 23)

    Bruce Sterling Closing Remarks (Full Session) | Interactive 2014 | SXSW

  • 2014 highs

    The Artist Taxi Driver relentless
    daily feedback on behalf of
    the silent majorities

    Heathcote Williams and UK
    historical poetry activism
    in fine fucking form

    Russel Brand trews and
    social activism in the face
    of painscream

    James Corbett and the
    Corbett report consistent
    open source research

    Bruce Sterling lectures
    and on going socio-cybernetic
    prose

    Cory Doctorow every note
    Plus all great work by
    the EFF

    Chaos Computer Club
    lectures and shared
    feedback all mutants
    come home in glory

    Steven James Pratt

  • Bruce Sterling: Design Fictions/Citizens and the Public Imagination

    Bruce Sterling & Markus Schmidt — Design Fiction/Citizens and the Public Imagination Bruce Sterling — author, journalist, editor, and critic. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne. He is a contributing editor of WIRED magazine and writes a weblog. 2005 & 2011 he was “Visionary in Residence” Art Center College of Design, Pasadena. 2008 at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam. And Guest Curator for the Share Festival of Digital Art & Culture, Torino, Italy.

    Steven James Pratt