Frequent readers probably know that I’m a Bruce Sterling fan. Every year he does this totally old school thing over the The WELL (now a Salon joint – how weird is that?) about the next year. For all the cloud automation tape-jockey job-loss worrying, off-shoring, and whatnot, I really like this opening type-up:
Okay, you’ve treated your future as an “unpredictable lurching
thing…” and now you’re all morose about that… You and your
generation CREATED that situation! Ever heard of “disruptive
innovation,” “disintermediation,” “offshoring,” “small pieces loosely
joined,” “de-monetization,” “plug and play,” “the network as a
platform”? Of course you’ve heard of all that crap, because you’ve
been tub-thumping it your entire adult life, but what the hell did you
think that was all about? Did you think you were gonna bend every
effort to virtualize reality, and then get a gold railway-retirement
watch and a safe place to park the cradle? Guys with stacks of gold
bars and working oil wells don’t have any stability now! Much less
guys like you, who move their fingers up and down on keyboards for a
living.
What I really like here is the overall thing it point to: thinking about the human side of computer and technology spread, the effects both negative and positive. I don’t mean to get all Utne Reader on you, but there does tend to be a lack of that going on.
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