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1inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
2permalink #2 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:54
3
4    
5The end of 2018 found me doing more travel than I've ever done in my
6life.  I was in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles,  Berlin, Riga,
7Tallinn, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Bangalore -- and Austin of course,
8Turin of course, Belgrade of course.  I did these visits in no
9particular order, sometimes repeating them, plus a whole bunch of
10roadside burgs all over the American Southwest, because I couldn't
11resist driving in America.
12
13     So 2018  was an apotheosis of my live-out-of-a-bag,
14twenty-first century, digital nomad lifestyle.  It was sheer 
15Kerouac ON THE ROAD excess, even; I travelled so far and fast that I
16couldn't even take proper pictures.
17
18      I chose that kind of life,  and it suited me well, but I doubt
19that I will ever travel that much again.  I'm a person at ease in
20transit, I got useful things done on the road and I even felt
21energized at the end of it, but that was enough.   So 2019 marks a
22personal transition for me; I'm just not gonna lift and drop the
23bags that much.
24
25       I ended up here in Ibiza (not exactly a hardship posting). 
26It's the exact same place that I was during last year's State of the
27World, back in antique 2018.   I have no return ticket from Ibiza --
28and I've been here a couple of weeks and more -- so I should
29probably admit that I'm living here.  I'm getting some creative
30writing done,  in a contemplative, less antic fashion, and I feel
31perkier here than I do in my customary haunts of Austin, Turin and
32Belgrade.  
33
34     They are three cities that all suit my temperament, and I learn
35a lot about the state of the world by methodically comparing them. 
36But, frankly, their air pollution of all three of them is doing me
37in.  They're three energetic but rather dirty towns,  especially in
38winter.   I'm not yet reduced to the tubercular state of Robert
39Louis Stevenson retreating to Samoa, but I can see that prospect
40clearly.   If, as a man over 60,  I can no longer breathe tainted
41air, I'm not gonna lie about that.  That's a crass act of self-harm.
42That's like ignoring global warming; a sensible person just doesn't
43do that.
44  
45
46inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
47permalink #3 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:55
48
49    
50
51    So I travelled quite a lot in late 2018, but I found pretty much
52the same mood, spread worldwide.   It's the "new dark."   Tallinn
53and Bangalore were were  the brighter standouts -- more energetic,
54more sense of get-up and go -- but there's just not much twinkly,
55sparkly social energy out there.  
56
57      It's gray, it's becalmed.  It's not a fatal gloom, but it is a
58kind of learned-helplessness, a malaise and bewilderment. It's  very
59much the attitude of people who sign onto Facebook 'cause they can't
60yet figure out any other way to live.  They do that, because they
61must conform to the apparent need,  despite their vague oxlike
62awareness that they're being spied on, tricked, and defrauded.   
63
64      This is the resigned malaise  that fits the post-Snowden
65Internet and  tech industry's consolidation.  It's the funereal
66aftermath of Moore's Law.  It resembles a fat, sweaty guy on the
67couch snacking on poisoned cookies.  That's how it is.
68
69      With all that admitted, though, among this global weltschmerz
70there's a strange undercurrent of people who are personally having a
71pretty good time.  There's fire under the ash.  People are not in a
72morbid, overwrought despair; on the contrary, the streets look
73well-ordered, people are better-dressed, the birth rate is up a
74little....  They may not have dependable jobs, or a retirement plan,
75but they've hit on routines, of a sort.
76  
77
78inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
79permalink #4 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:55
80
81    
82      The street-scenes in Bangalore were extraordinary.  Indian
83life is still very hard-scrabble, but it's like the bazaars are on
84steroids.  That's not Western economic development, but it's sure as
85hell not abject Indian urban poverty:   it's novel,
86Post-Third-World, proletarian, tech-inflected energy, humble yet
87seething thickly, full of sustenance; its like watching oatmeal
88boiling.  Maybe it's  the relative youth of the Indian population,
89but if you compare that vivid sidewalk commerce to the storefronts
90in Europe now, it's like watching people selling gentleman's canes.
91  
92
93inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
94permalink #5 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:57
95
96    
97     I'm here in Ibiza with no plans to depart.  Thanks to the
98cut-rate tourist airlines, I can be  back in Turin for 30 bucks. 
99However, it's not like I'm ducking out on 2019 in a stoner
100Lotusland.  On the contrary, I'm figuring Ibiza for an economic
101blast-zone for Brexit, this March.   This Spanish island is very
102Briticized -- not as much as Gibraltar, admittedly, but right on up
103there -- and the British are about to place themselves under
104unilateral economic sanctions.  They've been at this weird ambition
105for years, and 2019 is when it comes due.
106
107     Since I do hang out in Belgrade, I have a pretty good idea of
108what economic sanctions can do to people and their societies.   And
109yeah, the lack of trade agreements will probably deal with that
110immigration free-movement problem they think they have.   That
111annoying flow of job-stealing migrants, and the free-spending
112tourists, are both gonna vanish like the dew, because there's no
113genuine difference: they're both human meat on the hoof.  
114
115       Sanctions against world trade are very effective, if you
116really, really want to carve a place like Yugoslavia into
117quarrelling micronational bits.  That this fate would happen, by
118choice, to a nuclear power that's a permanent member of the UN
119Security Council, well, that's pretty interesting.   Not the
120bureaucratic process, what is boring, but what it does to people
121inside: getting balkanized.
122
123      I sure wouldn't wanna be trapped inside that situation -- 
124because in 2018, the British were the gloomiest and doomiest that
125I've ever seen 'em.  They all know they're about to pound nails
126through their naked feet with big hammers.  I reckon that Ibiza will
127be an interesting ringside seat for that.
128
129      The markets are holding their breath for that development. 
130The markets are in bearish decline now, but it's no use getting all
131worked up during the preliminary phony-war.  The markets are waiting
132for the markets to stop being global markets.
133
134       That effect may not be as savage as the British Remainers
135want to paint it.  Plenty of small nations exist on the rim of the
136EU.  They don't thrive, exactly -- mostly, because they're so
137corrupt and parochial -- but they more or less get along in life.  
138It's not like the placid, elderly Europeans will bother to invade
139and kill you.  
140
141      Also, the World Trade Organization is about to collapse,
142because Trump can't be bothered to appoint anybody to it, and there
143are trade-wars spreading hither and you.  So Britain will not become
144an overnight economic leper -- the whole planet's gonna be screwed
145up.
146
147       The best-case scenario is that they somehow Brexit, and
148there's no coherent response from anybody -- just, nobody left to
149inspect all the lorries; the alleged hard Irish Border is as silly
150at the Trump Wall, the emigres cruelly forced out are thousands
151instead of millions, the restive banks decide to hang on  a few more
152years, and so on.
153  
154
155inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
156permalink #6 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:57
157
158    
159
160        The worst-case scenario for a modern European rim country is
161Ukraine.  That is the EU-Russia shatterbelt where the elderly
162village grannies, the last ones too poor to flee, are harvesting
163their turnips while  getting randomly pounded by mortar fire.  There
164is no true war-front there, with any genuine military tactics or
165strategy, no defeat, no victory.  Basically, it's covert operatives
166from hundreds of kilometers away pay jobless young men to blow up
167their own country with loaned heavy-weapons.  Very like
168election-meddling, but with howitzers.
169
170       I'm not predicting that Britain will become a bloody
171shatterbelt of car-bombing mini-Irelands, but that is a scenario. 
172Nobody expected that from the Ukraine, either.  Or Yugoslavia.
173
174       I would point out, if it helps any, that this worst-case
175scenario is, historically,  not that severe.   If you compare the
176Russia/Ukraine "Hot Peace" to the massive depredations there of one
177hundred years ago, the Czarist White Terror, Trotsky on the armored
178propaganda trains, it's mild.  
179
180       People die, in thousands, but people in that war aren't
181starving.  They don't even die of typhus or Spanish flu.   There are
182no mass liquidation camps, the populations aren't ethnically
183cleansed, Cossacks are around yet Jews go unnoticed, even (sort of).
184
185
186      Ukraine's unsought war has been forced on it for half a
187decade, but it's a more ulceration compared to a great world war.  
188Syria is much crueller, because there are angrier crabs in that
189basket, but Ukraine is typical of our times.  It's the patient zero
190for the actual trouble.  The prospects for real peace there are very
191slim.  The prospects of that kind of offshored Violence Lite
192appearing elsewhere, those are high.
193
194     This is especially true if the USA transforms into the Trump
195Towers All-White Gated Community.  Then the Bush New World Order
196will look in the mirror and see itself as it is nowadays, merely a
197Trump branded, dodgy, break-the-bank hotel and casino project.    I
198don't wanna go on and on about The Donald this year -- because he
199bores and disgusts people now, which is a good sign -- but if
200"everything Trump touches dies," then American military hegemony is
201a likely casualty.  And where does Hot Peace break out after that? 
202Pretty much anywhere.
203  
204
205inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
206permalink #7 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:57
207
208    
209        I do have one self-set task for the SoTW this year.  What is
210the forthcoming shape of the 2020s>   Moore's Law is dead, there's
211no Singularity, the fix is in tech oligarchs of (take a breath) 
212Google Apple Facebook Amazon Microsoft Baidu Alibaba Tencent Netflix
213Samsung.  They're in charge, but they're sitting on heaps of cash
214with nothing much to do with it.  
215
216         So what does post-disruption, post-Moore's Law,
217tech-industry consolidation look and feel like?   What kind of world
218is that, what matters to people who live then?  What happens when
219there's no Next Big Thing, and you live in a New-Dark Hot-Peace? 
220What do people do with their time, their ambitions -- just tremble
221at the Greenhouse thunderstorms?   They're bound to be up to
222something.
223  
224
225inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
226permalink #8 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:58
227
228    
229
230      I'm somebody who was close to pioneers in this multi-decade
231effort to digitize our planet, but I know that it's old-fashioned
232now.  I can even perceive my 90s-style, live out a laptop bag
233lifestyle as a major component of today's social problems.   I don't
234wanna scourge myself for  being an unconscionable Uber-AirBnB
235cosmopolitan-globalized troublemaker, but I don't have to.  I can
236just scourge all the rest of em, because I see 'em wherever I go.
237
238      Austin, Turin, even Belgrade, and Ibiza, of course, 105
239percent Ibiza -- the global nomads there are thicker than fleas.  
240This is what the Left (especially the Spanish Left over in
241Barcelona) calls "overtourism."  For everybody else, it's just
242common-or-garden Build the Wall ethno-nationalism.   A typical,
243contemporary, visceral emotional reaction to a world where money and
244data flow around through crooked laundries and human flesh finds
245strange methods to follow.  The Westphalian order doesn't like that.
246It really got under their skin.
247
248     Nobody seems to have a clue about what to do about it, except
249maybe the Chinese, who do have a clear strategy: tightly controlled
250National Sovereign Cyberspace complete with Moslem digital
251tracking-camps, with a network of Belt and Road tentacles to sop up
252global resources and markets.  
253  
254
255inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
256permalink #9 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:58
257
258    
259
260      Not everybody else can do as the Chinese do, though.  They
261lack China's boldness and huge resources.  Our world's very crowded
262in 2019.   There are sixty million refugees, nobody flings opens
263their arms to new settlers of a nonexistent wilderness.  
264
265    The wild card in the migrant panic is the  huge internal
266population displacements from climate change.  Just: whole towns
267gone overnight, Paradise California; swarms of Neo-Okies leaving the
268dustbowls in their Teslas.  
269
270     The true bitterness in today anti-migrant, anti-tourist
271sentiment is people's fearful awareness that they might become a
272refugee, whether they like it or not.  And, once you're uprooted,
273your baby's heading for baby jail, because you built one yourself.
274  
275
276inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
277permalink #10 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 1 Jan 19 06:59
278
279    
280     So, I hope that sets the stage.  What seems to  me to be
281missing now is not more technological solutionism -- we've kind of
282had enough too-clever disruption stunts -- but some humanistic
283concurrence on what a modern civilization ought to look like when
284nobody's  much impressed by the hardware any more.  
285
286     One of the few guys I know who is effectively chipping away at
287this conundrum is James Bridle.
288
289      That's why I requested Mr Bridle to join us this year.  James
290Bridle is an artist, editor, publisher and the author of "New Dark
291Age: Technology and the End of the Future," a tome I pored over with
292keen interest because, at its basis, it's a book about knowledge:
293the difficulty of figuring out what's going on.  Its title may sound
294a tad cyberpunk-dystopian, but I have to say that the prospect of
295James's "New Dark" actually cheers me up some.  Given that you know
296there's a "New Dark," and what aspects of novelty that darkness has,
297that implies the cheery potential of a New Light, assuming that you
298could figure that out, somehow.  
299
300     The new enlightenment for the new dark age; even if it's just a
301modest puddle of candlelight, next to the newly squeegeed window,
302that's not such a bad thing.  Makes you want to unstack the
303injection-molded plastic chairs and set out a plate of legalized
304hash brownies, since that's the kind of thing grandma eats nowadays.
305
306
307Let's get right after it, shall we?
308  
309
310
311
312inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
313permalink #16 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 2 Jan 19 02:00
314
315    
316
317https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018
318
319Here in 2019, there are more Americans alive over 60 than Americans
320who are under 18.  So for a brisk, road-ahead, forward-looking
321viewpoint,  it might be time for us to check in with that
322widely-noted retired guy, Bill Gates.
323
324Despite his advancing years, Mr Gates hardcore grinds it out more in
325a week than I ever do in a year.  And, although he's not a facile
326TED-talk optimist, he's always got his eye on the deliverable. 
327That's why it's a little weird to see him tacitly admitting so much
328defeat in his recent screed.
329
330To begin, Bill quotes his best pal Warren Buffett, claiming that the
331bottom line of human good behavior is "Do the people you care about
332love you back?"  This seems an odd scheme to promote, considering
333the Sage of Omaha's polygamous lifestyle.  Buffett's motto should
334have been, "If your wife leaves for California and sends her best
335friend over instead, go for that." Let's hope they were all happier.
336
337Then there's this prediction: "software will be able to notice when
338you’re feeling down, connect you with your friends, give you
339personalized tips for sleeping and eating better."  Something
340downright ominous here, because obviously Gates is tacitly conceding
341that it's not your nearest and dearest but rather  the *software*
342that ought to be caring about you and loving you back.  
343
344First, I don't think that's ever gonna work.  Second, I'm getting
345concerned about Bill's mood.  Is he so personally unhappy now that
346he would want to digitally monitor his own mental state?
347  
348
349inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
350permalink #17 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 2 Jan 19 02:01
351
352    
353
354Then Bill frets at length about Alzheimer's Disease, and although
355that's indeed a huge scourge, malaria-sized, and obviously the sort
356of thing that a medical philanthropist ought to tackle, I get the
357impression that Bill is mostly worried about *his own* Alzheimer's. 
358He talks about boosting the brain's mitochondria, while there's
359about a zillion neutraceutical pills on the market already that do
360this  right now.  I have to wonder if maybe Bill's eating those
361pills.  Not, like, big Ray Kurzweil double-handfuls of them, I hope.
362
363Then polio, which ought to be as extinct as smallpox, only it's
364making a resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan because the Terror
365is winning the Global War on Terror.  "The global health community
366is finding creative ways to work in war zones."  Is that good news
367for everybody, Bill?
368  
369
370inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
371permalink #18 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 2 Jan 19 02:02
372
373    
374
375Then, since Bill's never been stupid, he gets it about global
376warming.  But then, for some reason, he's suddenly keen on nuclear. 
377There's lots of tech guys keen on nuclear, for decades.  Not a lot
378of 'em left in Fukushima or Chernobyl.  
379
380Also, pitching a lot of nuclear into a world beset with Balkanized
381ethnonationalism -- in particular, American nuclear, Bill says. 
382Donald Trump doesn't have enough nukes?
383
384      I'm not, personally, like, hot under the collar antinuclear,
385but if Bill wants to dream big about this, why not cold fusion?  
386That way he wouldn't have to fret about people demanding that he
387store his spent fuel rods in Redmond.
388  
389
390inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
391permalink #19 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 2 Jan 19 02:02
392
393    
394
395     Then Bill wraps up the year 2018 by speculating that Spanish
396flu could briskly kill half of everybody, and also that rampant
397off-the-books gene-editing is busting loose all over.  
398
399        Then, finally, "Melinda and I are working on our next Annual
400Letter. The theme is a surprise, though it is safe to say we’ll be
401sharing some positive trends that make us optimistic about the
402future."  
403
404     Why does Bill even have to say that bullshit?  It's because
405he's got nothing that he's genuinely enthusiastic about, that's why
406he says it.  Whenever people are truly positive, they never whine
407about how, just any minute now, they're gonna lift their sorry heads
408and  say something positive.   "I'm not gonna be depressed about it,
409I'm gonna say something really upbeat here," that never works!  It's
410like a poker tell, something Bill ought to get since he plays so
411much poker.
412
413     You can't scold yourself about not talking properly, you have
414to take action in some aspect of life that actually makes you
415enthusiastic.  Then you don't have to tell people that you and the
416wife will be cheerful any minute now.  If you're really making any
417headway, people will show up on their own.  You'll have to chase 'em
418off with a stick.
419
420     In any case, this new-dark malaise I was talking about earlier?
421He's got it.  Yeah, even him.
422  
423inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
424permalink #33 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 3 Jan 19 06:07
425
426    
427*Here in the WELL SoTW, we’re not alone in our apparent urge to drop
428Facebook and flee headlong to the polar tundra.  Check out this 
429recent WIRED magazine article.  When even WIRED doesn’t wanna be
430wired any more, man, who is left to cheer on the tech-scene?
431
432https://www.wired.com/2017/01/how-i-got-my-attention-back/
433
434
435“I want my attention back.
436
437“Did I really have it before Facebook? Thinking back, the early
438versions of Facebook were adorable. Benign. No tagging. No
439timelines. Just The Wall. A way to say — Hey, what’s shaking dorm
440buddy? Poke. No algorithms. A human scale.
441
442“The more I thought about my attention the more I thought about the
443limits to human scale. How technologies inevitably amplify ourselves
444— the best and worst parts — in a way that is almost impossible for
445us to comprehend….”
446  
447
448inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
449permalink #34 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 3 Jan 19 06:10
450
451    
452
453
454*Call me sentimental, but I really hate to see WIRED writers suffer.
455The thing is, though -- I’m not sure it’s all that hard “to
456comprehend.”   I’m thinking that maybe we’re just unwilling to do
457the work of comprehension.
458
459*Once the tech-glamour novelty fades, it’s kinda easy to comprehend.
460Pretending that it’s all Singularity-like and brain-boggling is a
461cheesy evasion.   It’s like comprehending Virtual Reality.  VR seems
462more important than the discovery of fire the first time it’s
463clamped on your head (especially if you’re on acid).  But that
464thrill fades about as fast as the thrill of 3D movies.
465
466*It Tiffany is right and Facebook has become a thing of “dismay and
467hideousness,” then what part is the dismay and what part is the
468hideous?  You can get over the dismay.  The hideous, that really
469lasts.
470
471*So I’m thinking the aesthetics is the key here.  Because if “the
472hidden beauty will rematerialize,” which is a lovely rallying slogan
473that I like quite a lot,  what would that beauty look like?  When it
474came out of hiding, how would we know it was beautiful?  We don’t
475exactly need a “new aesthetic” to know that, because wrinkled old
476Dorian Gray Facebook isn’t all that new any more, but we do need an
477aesthetic, because an aesthetic is how you convince other people
478that the beauty has arrived. 
479  
480
481inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
482permalink #62 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 4 Jan 19 02:01
483
484    
485Boy, we have got some mental firepower happening in the discussion
486this year.   Wow! I’m tempted to knock it back for a few days to
487just eat popcorn and take  notes.
488
489Actually, I’m gonna try to grind up some kind of text on the need
490for new aesthetics, and what they oughta look like, while I know
491that James Bridle is watching.  It’ll take me a while.
492  
493
494inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
495permalink #63 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 4 Jan 19 02:02
496
497    
498So yeah, I’ll just peaceably watch with folded hands here….  
499However. 
500
501I always knew, that when I got older, I’d see my contemporaries
502whine about how great things were when they were young and had
503libidos.  I’m kinda immunized to that, though, because this
504attitude:  “Boy, things were so groovy back then, you wouldn’t
505believe how they ruined everything” is a super Austin, Texas
506attitude.  It isn’t even a Cosmic Cowboy baby-boomer thing —
507Austinites have been full of annoying, nostalgic Weltschmerz since
508at least the 1930s.   Maybe even the 1830s.  When it’s all around
509every day, you get to understand how sickening it is.
510
511So you know, I have to scold that.  Even when things truly *are*
512objectively worse in many ways, it’s just so corny!   “We had it
513great when I was young, but the Bad Guys took it and that’s why we
514can’t have nice things” — when was that ever not so?  Has any
515generation, ever, failed to blather that stale sentiment at people? 
516
517
518You’re eliding your own participation in history!  “Only the young
519die good!”  You’re not stuck in a bad traffic jam with your good
520dune-buggy, your dune-buggy is always a part of the traffic!
521
522It’s like watching Scarlett O’Hara say “fiddle-de-dee” while
523Atlanta’s on fire.  
524  
525
526inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
527permalink #64 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 4 Jan 19 02:35
528
529    
530*Massive political leak/hack apparently transpiring in Germany at
531the moment.
532
533Julian Röpcke
534‏
535Verified account
536 
537@JulianRoepcke
538
539
540The leaked data, which was illegally collected until October 2018
541and released December 2018, but just found now, is still publicly
542available.
543
544I searched through it 5 hours last night, read maybe 3%of it  and
545already found cases of corruption and bad political scandals.
546#BTleaks
547
548The scale of the attack is unprecedented
549Mobile phone numbers, addresses, private family conversations,
550vacation pictures, bills, communications between politicians, work
551emails etc. were leaked
552
553In most cases, Outlook was hacked, in some cases also Facebook,
554Twitter etc.
555#BTleaks
556
557#BREAKING
558Germany faces the biggest hacker attack in its history.
559Private data of almost 1000 German #Bundestag, #Regional Parliament
560& #EU delegates was leaked.
561
562I worked through the leaked data all night. It's shocking!
563Not affected so far: #AfD.
564
565https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/politik-inland/hacker-angriff-daten-von-pol
566itikern-gestohlen-und-veroeffentlicht-59349480.bild.html …
567#BTleaks
568
569
570*Also includes some German artists, which is sort of amazing.
571
572Also hacked were around 40 German public TV journalists and 10
573artists, most of them known for their left-leaning political stance.
574Also from the artists, comedians, moderators etc partially very
575private data was leaked, in some cases nonetheless only mobile
576number.
577#BTleaks
578  
579
580inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
581permalink #83 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sat 5 Jan 19 12:56
582
583    
584To have a Singularity, you're supposed to have searingly fast
585advances in processing power, memory and bandwidth that go on
586indefinitely.  It's not going to happen.
587
588On the plus side, I was watching AlphaZero play chess an entire year
589ago during the previous State of the World. Now I'm still doing
590that, there's better analysis of what the thing is up to, I'm
591enjoying it more than I did and I'm even starting to appreciate its
592beauty.
593  
594inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
595permalink #87 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:18
596
597    
598
599I watched rather a lot of chess videos last year, and not because I
600like chess.  I watch the games because I’m seeking out aesthetic
601principles for generative art systems.
602
603People sometimes call chess “The Drosophila of Artificial
604Intelligence.” However, it’s not the long computer-science history
605of AI and chess that interests me.  I don’t play chess, and I’ll
606never be good at it.   Mostly, I want to understand why AlphaZero,
607the neural-net super-chess player — currently undefeated by any
608person or any engine — plays in such a pretty way.
609
610To start, I have to make an aesthetic argument that AlphaZero indeed
611plays “beautifully.”  I don’t want to just declare that, de gustibus
612non disputandum — I’ll try to shore that up with some evidence.   
613
614So, well, at least the thing’s famous: it’s a hit.  AlphaZero is
615genuinely popular among chess fans.  The more conventional chess AIs
616—  the “engines,”  in fan-speak— can certainly kick the ass of any
617human player.  However, human chess fans never clamor to see their
618games.  The engines bore people; their games lack grace.  
619
620AlphaZero, though, has some major admirers.   Chess masters even
621like it.  They praise its play in public.
622  
623
624inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
625permalink #88 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:19
626
627    
628
629Also, you might try comparing AlphaZero’s games to the recent human
630world chess championship between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana.
631
632
633These two guys, Carlsen and Caruana, are excellent modern chess
634players and very erudite professionals, but they play more like
635conventional chess engines than AlphaZero does.  In their recent
636head-to-head match, Carlsen and Caruana ground it out in endless
637draws.  They never blundered: they were inhumanly consistent.
638
639So, they had to decide their world championship in sudden-death
640matches, where there’s very little time to devote any human
641intelligence to the state of the board.  Then Carlsen then won
642promptly because he’s got a well-known knack for playing rapidly.
643
644None of those Carlsen-Caruana games are beautiful “immortal” games.
645Those game are world-class, but they won’t be fondly remembered
646decades from now.
647  
648
649inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
650permalink #89 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:22
651
652    
653
654I’m no chess pro, so a lot of the stamp-collector subtleties are
655bound to pass me by.   However, I can tell if the events on the
656board would make a live audience gasp and applaud.  Chess does have
657an aesthetics; people get a frisson from it; they’re thrilled, even.
658
659
660Chess has been pretty for a long time.  I’d even argue that there
661are  aesthetically “prettier” games that date from the old-fashioned
6621800s, at least in the kinetic-art sense of the way that pieces
663elegantly swoop and move around.   
664
665Years ago, chess people had very little theory. There weren’t a lot
666of book openings or book endings to memorize, so grandmasters were
667bashing it out like sword-fighters.   So in these much older,
668historic  games there’s lots of crowd-pleasers, the too-bold
669strikes, the head-exploding unnecessary complications, deliberate
670tricks, traps, cunning swindles — psychological operations even,
671where one grandmaster knows he’s got the other on the ropes, so he
672moves in for the kill with dazzling stunt moves that he knows will
673upset the opponent.
674
675AlphaZero doesn’t do any of that.  It doesn’t even do what its
676best-known public opponent, the engine “Stockfish,” does.   It never
677plays like a human, but also,  it doesn’t play like  any standard
678computer code “engine”  with its motor-like sets of specialized
679component subroutines, and its value-weighting system.
680
681It’s hard to describe what it does, in the arcane computer-science
682realities of neural-net back-propagation, but, well, it’s still just
683software, all right.  AlphaZero is the winningest chess engine ever,
684but it’s not an AI god, it's not getting insanely better.  It’s not
685an amazing, mystic Singularity that is accelerating off the charts;
686its game-skill seems to be leveling off.  
687
688Also, AlphaZero’s play, once you get used to watching it, is a bit
689same-y.  AlphaZero wins all the time, but it is not brilliantly
690inventive.  It doesn’t toss off an endless bravura series of
691super-complicated, brain-scrambling gambits.  It’s just dazzlingly
692unorthodox by the previous standards of humans or non-neural AI
693engines.
694  
695
696inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
697permalink #90 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:23
698
699    
700
701Some people say that AlphaZero's play is “beautiful” in a
702mathematical way, in the way that math is “beautiful” when it’s
703simple and true.   But I doubt that AlphaZero has actually “solved”
704chess, in the sense that its neural net method of play is the one
705“true” method, and the only method that henceforth will ever win an
706AI chess game.
707
708I believe that, oddly, because I’ve got more faith in AI than that. 
709I’m a big AI skeptic, but the defeated Stockfish has got heaps more
710AI in it than AlphaZero does.   “AI” has not conquered chess,
711because AlphaZero is just a modestly-sized neural net.  As an
712“engine,” AlphaZero’s not all that big, not powerful in processors,
713not ultra-fast  in code execution and it doesn’t have heaps of Big
714Data about chess-game databases.   
715
716I’m inclined to surmise that gangs of very specialized AIs with
717databases of all of AlphaZero’s games would be able to gang up on it
718and defeat it.  Also, new neural-net architectures are waiting.
719  
720
721inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
722permalink #91 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:24
723
724    
725
726I may be wrong about that last part; maybe the phase-space of chess
727has been exhausted by AlphaZero, and it’ll always be the greatest at
728chess, forever.  But would it be the greatest at some variant that
729wasn’t chess, a super-complex game that was a million squares
730across, instead of eight?  Probably not.  That means that we can put
731aside a hushed, amazed respect for AlphaZero.  It’s okay to pick at
732it critically.  Like you might analyze other beautiful, nonhuman
733phenomena. 
734
735    Snowflakes, maybe.  Human artists can’t draw a billion beautiful
736snowflakes in ten minutes, but it’s pretty common to have them fall
737out of the sky.  Sometimes a snowfall is very pretty, even
738enchanted-looking, other times snow is damp, gloomy, ugly and
739oppressive, and it’s all right of us to look out the window and
740assess that — “pretty snow.”  That’s not presumptuous of us, it’s
741more like a pleasant statement of our willingness to live in the
742world we're in.
743  
744
745inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
746permalink #92 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:25
747
748    
749
750
751    AlphaZero is not an intelligent human, though it would do well
752at a chess Turing test.   Chess masters usually know when they’re
753blind-matched against engines.  AlphaZero, though, plays with such
754dazzling efficiency that it would probably be world-famous if nobody
755knew what it was.  It would slaughter all other human players with
756its naive brilliance, but it might be taken for a child-prodigy.
757
758     I appreciate the public commentary that chess analysts offer
759about AlphaZero, but they always attribute intentionality to it,
760which I dislike.  “AlphaZero wants to do this, it plans to do that,
761it wants to avoid doing this…”. 
762
763      That certainly happens in human chess, and even engine chess
764has some kind of value-driven routine where it’s “trying” to
765“achieve” some state of the board, in some sense of “trying.” 
766Watching AlphaZero play is more like watching frost forming on the
767the window.  “The frost has plenty of moisture over here but it
768‘wants’ to invade the part of the window over here where it’s not as
769damp,” that remark seems illegitimate to me.  It gets in the way of
770properly appreciating the beauty of what’s going on.  It’s a
771tooth-fairy explanation.
772  
773
774inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
775permalink #93 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:27
776
777    
778
779
780     I do have some ideas about why AlphaZero’s play looks so
781pretty.  If it was an artist asking me for advice as a critic, this
782is the helpful feedback I would offer to young Alpha.  “You’ve
783clearly got a gift for that part — you should do more of that!”
784
7851.  Since AlphaZero taught itself to play, its play is free of the
786human installed base, so it’s liberated to do things that surprise
787humans.  It has a kind of charming wunderkind naivety.  That element
788of surprise is beautiful — it has a gosh-wow factor — but I don’t
789think it’ll last.  Ten years from now, people will be talking quite
790knowingly about neural-net play.  The sense of wonder has a short
791shelf life.
792
7932.  It doesn’t value the pieces.  It’s not emotionally or
794algorithmically attached to them; to “throw away” a valuable rook
795for a cheap knight is no problem.  This looks very daring and even
796ethereal by human standards.  Even engines won’t do that because
797they tend to hoard everything, rather like Apple mopping up profits.
798
7993.  AlphaZero always plays the whole board — it never gets tangled
800up in the hot corner where all the action seems to be.   So it’s
801continually “retreating” to distant areas of the board where the
802bishops, rooks and queen are just as powerful, but it’s hard for a
803human eye and brain to stay focussed.  
804
805     After you see AlphaZero do this twenty or thirty times, though,
806you’re like: “Huh.  It’s doing that bishop-way-over-yonder thing
807again.”  I think this is the new aspect of AlphaZero’s native play
808that human masters will pick up pretty quickly.
809
8104.  It’s very tidy.  It makes small, rather feline movements to
811adjust its positional structure, rather than bulldozing in to crush
812all resistance.  It commonly does these little grace-notes at the
813exact time that a human player would be getting really excited and
814bashing-in for the kill.  There’s something really pretty about
815these small, neat moves — they’re like blue-notes in jazz.  Or,
816rather, it’s just got its own swinging tempo; jazz defeating
817chamber-music.
818
819There’s something oddly gracious and feminine about this machine’s
820apparent attention-to-detail.  These apparently small and irrelevant
821housekeeping moves often turn out to be keys to victory.  So you
822can’t dismiss that as “tidiness” - it’s like complaining that your
823neat-freak Mom does the laundry too often, while next door they’re
824all dying of typhus.
825
826 AlphaZero’s refined, delicate chess play feels like an advance in
827civilization, rather than just an advance in the game.  It’s like
828it’s figured out table manners and washing your hands — it makes the
829previous era of chess look like feudal life in a barracks.
830  
831
832inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
833permalink #94 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 6 Jan 19 04:29
834
835    
836
837
838So, well, I enjoyed that.  An engrossing game, chess.  Been around
839quite a while, and in 2019, particularly interesting.  
840
841 However — what does chess imply for the aesthetics of other,
842seemingly very different forms of algorithmic expression?  Is there
843some kind of Artificial Artistic Intelligence lurking here, which
844might have broader applications for other things that get diligently
845wound-up and seem to run on their own, such as code art, motion
846graphics, device art, installations, techno music?
847
848I’m still working on that issue, in a Drosophila lab-style, but I do
849think about it differently than I did just a year ago.   And when
850this year 2019 is over, well, maybe I’ll get somewhere.  We have to
851hope, even if AlphaZero can’t and doesn’t.
852
853As special brain-candy for hardcore chess fans, here’s Napoleon
854Bonaparte getting his ass kicked by the “Mechanical Turk.”
855Allegedly, anyway.  I admit it: I wasn’t there.
856
857http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1250610
858  
859
860nkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
861permalink #105 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 7 Jan 19 00:41
862
863    
864
865As a creative class, American authors are rapidly going broke.
866
867https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-survey-shows-dras
868tic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/
869
870That’s great news from a New Dark perspective, though.  It means
871we’re on a much more level playing field with writers who don’t
872publish in English — since we’re all in the dark, and nobody’s got a
873megaphone.  So if you’re looking for arcane, resolutely
874noncommercial literary fiction, how about some Finns or Latvians? 
875Or you might try the Bangalore Literary Festival, where they all
876read English, yet they long to write and be heard in their 22
877official Indian regional languages.
878
879The imminent downfall of the Great American Novel might even raise
880hopes for  creative expression from whales, gorillas, elephants and
881chess-playing neural nets, who have been all cruelly sidelined in
882the sweepstakes for the Pulitzer.
883  
884
885inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
886permalink #106 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 7 Jan 19 01:33
887
888    
889The Centaur chess thing is indeed interesting (and even has some
890roots in a science fiction novel). 
891
892 I also think that Centaur Chess illustrates the  big problem that
893any “new aesthetic” for algorithmic or device art tends to founder
894in a bad metaphysics.  Especially, the bad metaphysics of AI, which
895has been a tarpit for decades.
896
897Centaur Chess has the Walter Benjamin “aura” problem of “who” gets
898the credit credit for the game.  If the artist is a mythological
899beast (and basically a figure of speech), rather than some
900metaphysically identifiable entity, that’s gonna be major problem. 
901You can see from the Wikipedia entry here that the problem of
902distributing credit is all over the map.  The debating parties have
903no basic concurrence on what they’re talking about.
904
905https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess
906
907Garry Kasparov is gonna stay Garry Kasparov, even if he drops chess
908and goes into politics, while “Stockfish” is a radically unstable
909entity.  It’s been Stockfish 1,2, 3, 4, currently 10…. “Leela,”
910which is the open-source sister of AlphaZero, is crowdsourced and on
911GitHub.  
912
913So instead of being a mythic guy crossed with a horse, a modern
914“centaur” is gonna be more like a guy — or even a large group of
915programmers — crossed with a moving cloud of bees.
916
917http://lczero.org
918
919These metaphysical problems have real-world consequences, because if
920you don’t know “who” is doing art, you don’t know who to encourage. 
921And it’s unrealistic to think that an artist, even a “centaur” one,
922will reach a creative peak without years of focussed effort, a
923community of practice, and a sustaining audience.
924  
925
926inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
927permalink #107 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 7 Jan 19 01:34
928
929    
930
931I wonder what would happen if somebody programmed a system to play
932the “prettiest possible chess,” without necessarily winning a
933victory — a king-free fairy-chess variant, played for sheer glorious
934wow-factor.  Is that even possible?  Would anybody watch that?
935  
936
937inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
938permalink #108 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 7 Jan 19 02:10
939
940    
941*Noah Raford on line one.  Google and Amazon may be exterminating
942American literature, but the WELL's got the talent in 2019, folks.
943
944From: Noah Raford
945
946Hey guys,
947
948Loving the SOTW this year on my last days of holiday in France
949before heading back to the desert tomo. 
950
951Just wanted to add one thing via email since I’m not a WELL member.
952I don’t have Jon’s email, so you guys will have to suffer my musings
953(thank you). 
954
955While I am deeply sympathetic to the whole “things are breaking and
956getting dark” theme of the moment, I do want to throw in one bit of
957counter perspective.
958
959Bruce kicked it off this year (as he does so well) with a brief log
960of his travels. A lot (but not all of it) was in Europe and North
961America. One of his two bright spots was in India, however. 
962
963This year took me to China several times, Taiwan, Korea, India,
964Thailand, Singapore, and of course Dubai (where I live) and its
965surrounding neighbors.  The one thing I have to say is that the vibe
966is quite different than that reflected in the convo so far in some
967of these places. 
968
969I mean China just landed a space ship on the moon for God’s sake!
970Yes, things are getting weird, but for those outside the walls of
971Europe and North America, they’ve been weird for decades. 85% of the
972world lives outside Europe and North America. 
973
974It’s hard to understand what life is like in double digit growth
975terms, but most of these places have been going full blast into the
976unknown for years, often with barely more than a pair of headlights,
977a cigarette, and a strong cup of coffee as their guide. 
978
979Everything is challenged all the time around here. Breakneck swerves
980to avoid certain death are common and exhilarating leaps into the
981void is an everyday experience. So is struggling with less than you
982need against unknown forces out of your control, suffering defeat
983frequently, but producing miracles often. 
984
985From this angle, none of this feeling of “uh oh wtf?” should be
986surprising. It’s what most people feel most of the time in most of
987the rest of the world. 
988
989Yeah the future is unclear (“dark”, in James’ lovely words), but
990hasn't it always been? Maybe we’re just starting to wake up to what
991most of the rest of the world has been dining on for decades. You
992don’t lay in bed in these places worrying about the world not making
993sense. You get up in the morning, throw yourself into the fray,
994fight like hell, do your best, and pray you make a little progress
995at the end of the day towards improvement in your circumstances,
996whatever those may be. And that’s ok. That’s just life in an
997uncertain world. 
998
999Also, history. This holiday I read several books about the Ismaili
1000Assassins, the Crusades, the Malmuks, Stalin’s gulags, Ghengis Khan
1001and the Mongol Wars in China. You think things are weird now? Try
1002living back then! Empires were literally springing up and crashing
1003down around you. Dozens of people were asserting conflicting claims
1004of being God’s messenger (the Mahdi; the rightful guided one); at
1005the same time and often in the same city. If that wasn’t bad enough,
1006an unstoppable horde of literal barbarians was coming your way and
1007if you didn’t submit to them, they would destroy your entire city,
1008enslave your wives, kill your sons, burn your buildings, and leave a
1009pile of bones 50 feet high to send a message to your neighbors. 
1010
1011I mean, you think we’ve got it tough? Girl, life is a dream compared
1012to that. How about we all just enjoy the fact that most of us don’t
1013have to worry about psychedelic religious chameleons living in our
1014apartment building, poised to murder us with a poisonous golden
1015dagger to claim their place in heaven. Or fighting Cossacks every
1016night to avoid working the worst shifts in an open pit gold mine at
1017minus 50 degrees Celsius in a Kolyma prison camp. 
1018
1019I know this might sound dismissive of the suffering many of us feel
1020as we struggle to get to terms with how our lives are changing. It
1021isn’t meant to be. Stalin was right when he said “the death of one
1022is a tragedy but the death of a million is a statistic.” 
1023
1024I guess all I’m trying to say is that there is already an ocean of
1025candles out there in the dark, with billions of people around them
1026who are vastly more experienced at dealing with weird, traumatic
1027things than we are. And that is reassuring, to me at least. 
1028
1029An example; I had Christmas dinner this year with a guy who walked
1030from Eritrea to Libya after the government burned his village,
1031crossed to Italy in a wobbly boat captained by pirates, skipped
1032trains and boats to get to Norway, got kicked out, and is now a
1033pastry chef at the local boulangerie in my mother in law’s village
1034in France. The dude showed up to dinner on an electric bike, was
1035happy as a clam, and couldn’t stop laughing about the Gilets Jaunes.
1036“Those guys have no idea how good they’ve got it. It’s hilarious!” 
1037
1038Again, I find this attitude deeply reassuring. Things really aren’t
1039that bad, they could be a lot worse, and they are generally getting
1040better. Yes, there will be train wrecks, genocides, and injustice.
1041The climate is falling apart and many of us could become homeless or
1042jobless or worse. But compared to dealing with messianic crypto
1043zealots trying to slit your throat or crossing the Sahara by foot,
1044I’ll take first world anxieties any day. 
1045
1046All best and keep it up!
1047
1048Noah 
1049  
1050
1051inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1052permalink #109 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 7 Jan 19 02:57
1053
1054    
1055*There’s a neural-net deep-learner teaching itself to use a
1056cockroach-like robot crawler to “walk.”  You can see how this ties
1057my interest in AlphaZero to my interest in kinetic art.
1058
1059https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/this-ai-teaches-robots-how-to-walk/
1060
1061*It’s kind of endearing how “badly” the thing walks at first.  After
1062it starts waling more “efficiently,” it’s movements are rather less
1063interesting.
1064
1065*Now imagine a deep-learner robot that can beat a cockroach at
1066walking.  Just, you know, outdo an insect in some unpredictable,
1067previously undiscovered way, much like AlphaZero baffles human
1068players.  Not monster AI, not a Singularity, just, like, a walker.
1069
1070What kind of world is that?
1071  
1072
1073nkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1074permalink #119 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 8 Jan 19 01:03
1075
1076    
1077*I like it when a pundit predicts a bunch of stuff, and then looks
1078back later and gleefully praises himself for his own acumen and
1079accuracy.  There's something touching about it.  It's like a guy
1080tying trout flies and then he brags that he caught some actual fish,
1081somewhere, sort of.
1082
1083https://battellemedia.com/archives/2018/12/predictions-2018-how-i-did-pretty-d
1084amn-well-turns-out
1085  
1086inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1087permalink #120 of 226: Cory Doctorow (doctorow) Tue 8 Jan 19 05:56
1088
1089    
1090@bruces/105: "As a creative class, American authors are rapidly
1091going broke."
1092
1093I think that you're giving a pretty limited survey (and patchy
1094analysis) more credit than it deserves. Here's what I wrote on BB:
1095https://boingboing.net/2019/01/07/nonrepresentative-surveys.html
1096
1097"Blame authors' fortunes on monopolism, not university professors,
1098booksellers and librarians"
1099
1100 The New York Times weighs in on an Authors Guild survey that shows
1101a "drastic 42% decline in authors' earnings over the past decade.
1102John Scalzi offers some important perspective.
1103
1104Here's the summary:
1105
1106* Authors Guild: authors' incomes are way down, thanks to Amazon's
1107monopolism, which is crushing indies and traditionally published
1108authors alike; universities are relying on fair use and Google Books
1109for coursepacks, and big tech overall is "devalu[ing] what we
1110produce to lower their costs for content distribution."
1111
1112* New York Times: yeah, it's mostly Amazon.
1113
1114* Scalzi: This isn't a very good study. They surveyed 5,000-ish,
1115self-selected authors (and the Science Fiction Writers of America
1116didn't participate). Comparing the fortunes of authors today to
1117Hemingway may not be very representative -- think instead of writers
1118like John Brunner, who lived a writerly life that's pretty
1119recognizable to writers today. Was there really ever a guilded age
1120of writerly incomes, or just a bunch of survivor bias?
1121
1122My take: Amazon and the other monopolists are a huge problem. But
1123big tech isn't uniformly culpable. Facebook and Twitter are
1124certainly big social problems, but, they're not hurting authors. The
1125idea of "devaluing what we produce" by letting people talk to each
1126other for free is incoherent, intellectually bankrupt nonsense,
1127ripped from the pages of "Home taping is killing music" and "Home
1128cooking is killing restaurants."
1129
1130Also a problem: consolidation in publishing (we're down to five big
1131publishers, and rumor has it that Simon and Shuster will be a
1132subsidiary of Harper Collins within a year). Consolidation in
1133bookselling (letting the chains merge until only B&N existed was
1134great for looter hedge-fund sociopaths, not so much for
1135bookselling).
1136
1137The Authors Guild recommendations are a mixed bag. Letting authors
1138unionize and negotiate for good rates with Amazon is a great idea.
1139
1140Establishing a lending right that charges libraries for the right to
1141lend books is a terrible idea. If we're going to fund authorship
1142through state grants (which I totally, absolutely support), let's
1143break up digital (and publishing!) monopolists, make them pay their
1144fair share of taxes, and fund the NEA and other institutions. But
1145attacking libraries' funding in the midst of the human race's
1146neoliberal extermination crisis is an attack on literally the only
1147institution left in the country where you are welcome even if you're
1148not spending money or praying.
1149
1150It's not just libraries that the AG is taking aim at, it's also
1151booksellers. The AG is worried about returned books entering the
1152stream of new book sales. This is, as far as I can tell, not a
1153problem. Making life harder for indie bookstores will not win the AG
1154any friends. Librarians and indie booksellers are authors' class
1155allies, as are university professors. Our adversaries should be the
1156tax-dodging, Fortune 100 Big Tech/Big Content vampire squids with
1157their blood-funnels jammed down our collective throats.
1158
1159This is a category error that is often made by copyright maximalists
1160when they argue over "piracy" and tech: they locate the problem with
1161readers, technology, public lending, etc -- not with monopoly
1162capitalism that reduces the competition for our works and starves
1163the public coffers of the social safety net that has made a career
1164in the arts survivable in years gone by. The problem with Big Tech
1165is "big," not "tech." 
1166
1167==
1168
1169References:
1170https://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/01/07/author-incomes-not-great-now-or-then/
1171
1172https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-survey-shows-dras
1173tic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/
1174
1175https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/books/authors-pay-writer.html
1176  
1177
1178inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1179permalink #136 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 9 Jan 19 02:27
1180
1181    
1182Jane Hirshfield (jh)
1183
1184As an aside, Bruce, I have trouble imagining how a person would
1185experience the "wow" moves of your proposed no-goal chess game. What
1186conveys the 'wow,' if there is no arc of direction-intention to the
1187moving? Never seen before? In dance choreography, novelty of
1188movement brings pleasure, sure, but not least because the limitation
1189of the human body is being challenged, and also because the history
1190of dance sits behind our acts of witness. In the case of a computer
1191playing a board game, wouldn't it all become entirely arbitrary and
1192meaningless? Constraint's breaking is a kind of pleasure--but only
1193if the constraint's presence is felt. The serotonin dopamine
1194explosion of aesthetic pleasure is dependent on there being *some*
1195context of customary expectation's transcending.
1196
1197
1198*Thanks for indulging my aesthetic issues here, Jane.
1199
1200The problem you’re describing here —  the “arbitrary and
1201meaningless” issue —
1202was once rather nicely summed up in 1986 by noted musicologist
1203Morrissey of The Smiths, who wrote:
1204
1205“Burn down the disco, hang the bloody DJ, because the music they
1206constantly play, has nothing to say about my life.”  
1207
1208And indeed I get where he’s coming from.  Clearly there’s not much
1209direction-intention, or even physical instrument-playing virtuosity,
1210in a highly technical form of music that lacks emotional lyrics and
1211is mostly made of repetitive loops, samples and the occasional
1212innovative sound-design honk, beep or squonk.  
1213
1214However, I listen to rather of lot of techno dance music and its
1215associated minigenres of house, neurofunk, drumnbass, jungle, etc
1216etc, mostly because I’m trying to figure out what you could say
1217critically about them that might be broadly helpful.  Given how much
1218human element they’re missing, why and how are they good?  Because,
1219even though they’re not Morrissey, they’re plenty popular, and
1220lastingly so.  They’re supporting Ibiza’s economy, even — there are
1221discos here 50 years old.
1222
1223Very similar problems apply to abstract motion graphics based in
1224code art, like say the visual code-art works of “Lia.”  Why don’t
1225you just watch a real movie, where the boy kisses the girl and
1226there’s some cool action scenes? Where's there's conflict, something
1227that matters?
1228
1229Well, we’re very keen on the creative work of Lia at Share Festival
1230in Turin, so the natural question is, like, why her and not somebody
1231else?  Is she “good?”  Yeah, she is, but why?  She’s never up on
1232stage emoting like Morrissey.
1233  
1234
1235inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1236permalink #137 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 9 Jan 19 02:28
1237
1238    
1239
1240
1241One compelling reason might be that Lia’s just plain there.  She
1242exists. “Lia” is that rare creature, a professional code artist. 
1243She quit her day job teaching new-media in an Austrian design school
1244and now Lia survives on… well… embossed coffee-cups, lecture fees
1245and kickstarter, I guess.  She does derive some revenue from
1246“SeditionArt.com,” which is a commercial gallery for works of
1247digital art.
1248
1249*So here are the commercially available code-art works of Lia.  I
1250myself “own” a lot of these, or at least I paid modest sums of money
1251so that I have the rights to display them on devices.  Lia gets a
125250% royalty, and I’m keen to keep the former professor busy in her
1253code-art racket.  It gives me something nice to think about.
1254
1255https://www.seditionart.com/lia
1256
1257I do like these artworks, just in the simple sense of my sincere
1258fondness for abstract motion-graphics.  But I own lots, mostly so
1259that I can enjoy trying to figure out which is the “best” one.  
1260
1261I’m pretty sure I could sit down and rank them as my personal
1262favorites, from 1-44, in half an hour.  Not a big problem — I know
1263what I like.
1264
1265But what would I *say* about them that would justify that? What kind
1266of aesthetic argument can I make?  “If you want to own the best Lia
1267work, wow, you should buy that one.”  That’s possible, am I right? 
1268People can assess Jackson Pollack canvases. It’s “action painting,”
1269you know, you want the splatters.  Any proper gallerist ought to be
1270able to advise you on that.
1271  
1272
1273inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1274permalink #138 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 9 Jan 19 02:29
1275
1276    
1277
1278
1279So the business with the chess analogy is me attempting to strip
1280this problem down to something more conceptual, less human-centric. 
1281
1282
1283So imagine you’re in a big dark installation, like, say, a big disco
1284that Morrissey just burned down.  And there are big columns of
1285colored light in there, from the disco’s light-show special FX.  And
1286the tall, glowing lights move around you in the space.
1287
1288The first time, they just float colorfully and randomly.  But the
1289second time, they begin in two neat ranks, and then they make
1290various different short motions on what seems to be a grid.  
1291Sometimes, two collide and one vanishes, until they’re almost all
1292gone.  
1293
1294Even if you didn’t recognize this display as a chess game, it would
1295surely be prettier than the random, arbitrary and meaningless
1296lights.  If you had those two graphic motion displays going in two
1297adjacent rooms, the audience would leave the random room and go into
1298the chess-simulation room.  Because it’s just more engaging, there’s
1299more to talk about, it’s cooler, it’s got more frisson, it’s just
1300more artistic.
1301
1302Eventually, you could run a hundred different light-show chess games
1303in a row, and the unwearied and always-interested viewers ought to
1304able to declare, “Wow, #47 was pretty awesome while #32 just wasn’t
1305as good.”  Without knowing that #47 is Capablanca Vs Alekhine 1927
1306while #32 was Carlsen vs Caruana 2018.  
1307
1308They’d come up with a new aesthetic for this generative art
1309experience, in other words.  But what aesthetic is that?  What’s it
1310about?
1311
1312Special bonus: me, way back in 2013 trying to give a pep talk to
1313media artists who do code graphics.  Basically it’s me riffing at
1314them, “Well, I sure take you guys seriously; can’t quite tell you
1315why, though.”  
1316
1317People in an unusual and innovative line of work appreciate a
1318back-patting, but really, I ought to be able to tell them why.
1319
1320https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1636630114/clouds-interactive-documentary
1321
1322  
1323
1324inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1325permalink #139 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 9 Jan 19 06:01
1326
1327    
1328*More from Noah Raford, who offers a music recommendation.
1329
1330From: Noah Raford
1331
1332The other thing I wanted to add is man, this revolution is going to
1333be funky. All the best parties happen in the dark. 
1334
1335All you need to do is listen to some of the music coming out of the
1336cracks right now to get a feel for the celebration that is coming. 
1337
1338Yes, times are tough and will get tougher, but when the going gets
1339tough, the tough start to party (to paraphrase good old Hunter S.).
1340
1341Have a listen to some of the crazy amazing music coming out these
1342days. It’s the sound track to the crumbling 20th Century and will
1343gives a hint at all the fun, grey market things to come. 
1344
1345Nyege Nyege Festival 2018 (in Uganda)
1346https://youtu.be/QMtobL0TwLQ
1347
1348If the future looks like Nyege Nyege, bring it on, baby! The worse
1349it gets the funkier it will be. 
1350
1351Let’s not forget that even woolly old Dark Mountain started as a
1352festival and all the best house parties happen in squats. 
1353
1354Unlike the US (where Bruce rightly points out that more people are
1355above the age of 60 than below 25), the opposite is true in the
1356places where the future is really happening. Half of the continent
1357of Africa is under 16 and boy, are they going to want to party. 
1358
1359There will still be rocket barons and space sheiks making grand
1360plans, but for most of us, we either succumb to VR intoxicated self
1361pity and prescription  or rip off the headsets and join the bonfire.
1362
1363
1364The future is going to be one big squat party. In times of sorrow,
1365what else can we do but sing? 
1366
1367Best,
1368Noah 
1369  
1370
1371inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1372permalink #150 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 10 Jan 19 00:51
1373
1374    
1375
1376"Life is not two-person, nor is all information known."
1377
1378*That’s entirely true, Pamela, and yet deep-learner AIs can beat the
1379crap out of people in games that have lots of human players and also
1380big random and hidden elements.  Doesn’t seem to be any deal-breaker
1381for 'em; Deep Mind’s other engines can’t play “Capture the Flag” as
1382well as their AlphaZero engine plays chess, but they can play it
1383quite well, and even brag about it in the ol’ blog here.
1384
1385https://deepmind.com/blog/capture-the-flag/
1386
1387*Bots, even pretty modest and simple ones, can play all kinds of
1388video games that are formally impossible to solve, computer-science
1389wise.
1390
1391https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/29/a-look-back-at-some-of-ais-biggest-video-ga
1392me-wins-in-2018/
1393
1394*There are even people who enjoy watching AIs playing multiplayer
1395shoot-em-up games on social media.  
1396
1397*I can remember when it seemed a little weird that people would
1398passively watch a role-paying game rather than participating in it,
1399but now “Twitch” is major-league media.  There are armies of sports
1400fans on the couch for sports that are played on the couch.  Makes
1401you wonder, eh?
1402
1403https://www.twitch.tv
1404  inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1405permalink #151 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 10 Jan 19 00:52
1406
1407    
1408
1409*The European Parliament still likes to do some broad, across
1410the-board “office of technology assessment” riffing with their
1411“European Parliament Research Service.”   If you’re into that,
1412here’s a whole bunch of it for 2019.  Very deliberately trendy: it’s
1413got  trade wars, ocean plastics, income disparity, Brexit, potential
1414Euro finance crises: all kinds of stuff you’ll find this year in
1415European newspapers, if there are any newspapers left.
1416
1417http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2019/630352/EPRS_IDA(2019)63
14180352_EN.pdf
1419
1420*And this is the way they talk, which is a very lucid and
1421well-educated Euro-English Brussels bureaucratese.  You know they're
1422in government because they use the term "cyberspace," which has
1423become a very dignified, somberly-serious and governmental word
1424nowadays.
1425
1426“The  digital  revolution  has  transformed  our  lives,  offering 
1427huge  opportunities  but  also  presenting challenges,  such  as 
1428how  to  protect  people  from  risks  and  threats inherent to a
1429digitalised world (see issue 10). Cyberspace represents a perfect
1430playground for criminals: the number of cyber-attacks is increasing
1431and they are becoming ever more sophisticated. To give just two
1432examples: every day  more  than  6 million data  records are  lost 
1433or  stolen  worldwide  and  over  4 000 ransomware attacks   are  
1434launched.   These   attacks   affect   our   critical  
1435infrastructure,  such  as  hospitals,  transport  and information 
1436systems,  and  cost the  European  economy  hundreds  of  billions 
1437of  euros.  In  some  EU  countries,  half  of  all  crimes 
1438committed are cybercrimes.  
1439 
1440“Not only is  cybercrime on the rise, but traditional crime is also
1441going digital. Organised crime groups use the internet for multiple
1442activities, such as drug trafficking, counterfeiting of means of
1443payment and  credit  card  fraud,  trafficking  in  human  beings, 
1444etc.  Despite  some  major  takedowns  by  law  enforcement, illicit
1445marketplaces flourish on the darknet to sell drugs, weapons,
1446counterfeit goods, fake identity documents or cybercrime 'toolkits',
1447that are ready for use by less experienced attackers ('crime  as  a 
1448service').  There  is  a  high  risk  that  terrorists  may  use 
1449these  easily  available  tools  to  perpetrate  a  cyber-attack, 
1450e.g.  in  order  to  target  critical  infrastructure…. “ 
1451  
1452inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1453permalink #159 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 11 Jan 19 00:36
1454
1455    
1456
1457*When you’re a philosopher who’s way into video games you get into
1458stuff like “procedural rhetoric.”  
1459
1460https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_rhetoric
1461
1462 Because there are, like, procedures… or processes… or maybe
1463algorithms… and when the game designer puts these procedures into
1464the experience, that’s expressive.  You’re involved in my game world
1465now, and even though the apparent “world” is really just a stark and
1466simplified 2d bunch of linked processes, it’s perceived as a world
1467by the gamer.  Like reading a novel that’s “just a bunch of
1468sentences,” but, you know, the perception of a world emerges there,
1469and it matters to people.
1470
1471So, clearly my problem with the aesthetics of generative art is tied
1472in with this Ian Bogost idea somehow, only I’m less interested in
1473the “persuasive rhetoric.”  I’m more interested in “what is it that
1474the processes are doing that gives the artistic frisson.”  My
1475feeling is that the process itself has an aesthetic that we might
1476call “processuality,” as in, wow, what a pretty process.  And why is
1477the process pretty?  Well, it’s got a certain frost-forming
1478loveliness about what happens with kinetic elements deployed in
1479space and time. 
1480
1481 And if we had algorithmic new aesthetic, we’d be able to make
1482useful critical judgements about processuality.  This chess game is
1483prettier than that one; this Lia code art piece is better than that
1484one; that robot dances better than the other robot.
1485  
1486
1487inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1488permalink #160 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Fri 11 Jan 19 00:38
1489
1490    
1491
1492
1493Up to this point in tech-art development, there’s been a whole lot
1494of hacker-value involved in the artwork, because  technology art is
1495hard to describe and think about, and also technically difficult and
1496expensive to create.  You get into the Prof Casey Reas territory of
1497“the thing that makes the thing is more interesting than the thing,”
1498and while I don’t have a big problem with MIT hackers getting way
1499into the hacker-ness, I also know that eventually the interest of
1500technical novelty itself must wear out.  
1501
1502The cutting-edge tech coolness will become corny and old-fashioned,
1503and then you have to find some critical merit in the artwork as
1504artwork.  Like, what’s inherently interesting about it?  If it’s
1505“generated” by an algorithmic process, rather than directly inscribe
1506by the hand, why is it an artwork at all, why is it life-enhancing,
1507why is it nice to be in the room with it, what is the nature of the
1508appeal?
1509
1510In the case of kinetic art, I think maybe the stripped-down
1511proof-of-concept is not the chess-game but the desk toy.  Desk toys
1512are not games, you don’t win them, there’s no contest or
1513scorekeeping,  they’re not rhetorically convincing you of anything,
1514they’re not political (unless they’re like, annoyingly expensive
1515capitalist “Executive” desk toys)….  I don’t think they’re even
1516“fun,” for more than a few minutes.  They just do kinetic stuff, the
1517little desk-toys; they’re a consolation of some kind.
1518
1519The decorative hourglass, the little steel globes on the wires that
1520click each other, the multicolored drippy gel frames, the chaotic
1521wheel with the magnet in the base, maybe the baby wind-up crib
1522mobile (since baby doesn’t have a desk-job yet)…. Something about
1523them cheers me up; they’re the existence proof that people are
1524beguiled by process, by a non-human choreography.    
1525
1526And the truth is, there’s gonna be a whole lot of autonomous stuff
1527going on around us that’s not performed by humans.  A megaton of
1528“procedural rhetoric,” really beating us over the head.   We
1529certainly need a better perceptual grip on all that.  We need to
1530know when it's ugly.
1531  
1532inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1533permalink #166 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sat 12 Jan 19 01:18
1534
1535    
1536
1537*Meanwhile, on the sculpture front of the New Aesthetic, here’s Prof
1538Golan Levin’ s  course on algorithmic, generative, parametric
1539objects, from 2015.
1540
1541http://golancourses.net/2015/lectures/parametric-3d-form/
1542
1543*So, okay, these generative “objects” are not chess games, desk
1544toys, motion graphics, expressive video games, dancing robots or any
1545of those other more or less arty phenomena that I’ve been going on
1546about for days now.  These are physical objects, robot-chiseled out
1547of wood, melted  and spewed toothpaste-style, whatever.
1548
1549*And they’re analog, material, permanent.  Some of them could last
1550centuries.  So how do you assess them aesthetically?  Like which
1551ones are kinda cool, and the inventor deserves an award, and they
1552oughta be sold on Kickstarter… and which ones are dispiritingly
1553hideous, resource-consuming “crapjects” that shouldn’t exist in the
1554first place?  A kind of physicalized email-spam.  That’s what you
1555get when production costs are low or free and there’s no standards
1556of production.
1557
1558*Even if you have a rather educated taste in this subject, and you
1559have some pretty strong intuitions about it, because you’ve been
1560standing next to smelly 3DPrinters for 15 years — how could you
1561compose a reasonable aesthetic manifesto that would convince other
1562people? 
1563  
1564
1565inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1566permalink #167 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sat 12 Jan 19 01:30
1567
1568    
1569
1570*Of course I’ve got a vested interest in all this, since I am the
1571art director of Share Festival, the Turinese technology art fair. 
1572Pretty soon our jury will be meeting, and this year it even includes
1573“Lia,” who has agreed to join us.  If you want to propose an artwork
1574for our fair, there’s the link.  The theme this year is “Ghosts.”
1575
1576https://www.toshareproject.it/tshr/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Share%20Prize%20
1577XII_Ghosts_eng.pdf
1578
1579
1580*So when we’re in these tech-art jury meetings, even if there’s only
1581five or  maybe six of us at the table (if you count the ghost), we
1582have to tackle some severely abstruse questions.  Such as: “Which of
1583these is better for our Italian public — this politically satirical
1584design-fiction video about an imaginary form of social media, or
1585this 3DPrinted open-source Swiss pocket watch?”  
1586
1587Actual money and artistic credibility rides on this.  Not a whole
1588lot, but you know, some.
1589
1590I’d certainly like to get better at it.  Who knows, maybe some day I
1591might have to teach it.
1592  
1593
1594inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1595permalink #175 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:45
1596
1597    
1598“Bruce I’d be very interested in any thoughts you might have about
1599posts 84 and 85.”
1600
1601*Well, it’s pleasant to address those issues of enhanced human
1602capability, ubermenschen, and, basically, “having to get good about
1603being as gods because we seem to lack alternatives.”
1604
1605As it happens, last year, I was teaching on this subject.  I was a
1606class advisor for an Art Center College of Design course on
1607“Posthumanism.”  Art Center College of Design (from Pasadena, CA)
1608are my favorite design school, my design alma mater really, and the
1609ones who first gave me my cherished title of “Visionary in
1610Residence.”
1611
1612So I dropped by Berlin a few times to lecture with Art Center.  And
1613I did some offshored video consultations with the teams of students
1614as they worked on their portfolios.
1615  
1616inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1617permalink #176 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:45
1618
1619    
1620
1621Of course this was a futuristic “design fiction” effort.  I’ve been
1622writing science fiction about “posthumans” for most of my career,
1623but design fiction works best when it’s got some sharply defined
1624design constraints.  It’s that struggle with the grain of the
1625material that makes it into “design.”
1626
1627So this “posthuman” design class was divided into three
1628posthuman-technology groups: the genetics group, the AI/robotics
1629group, and the neural-intelligence group, as in the famous Bill Joy
1630categories of contemporary technologies that might make humanity
1631obsolete.  (We left out “Nanotechnology” since nano has currently
1632gone out of style as a threat to human existence.)
1633  
1634
1635inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1636permalink #177 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:46
1637
1638    
1639The design-fiction venue was Berlin, fifteen years in the future,
1640the year 02033.  The scheme was to create imaginary Berlin start-up
1641companies who had latched on to some specific aspect of a
1642“posthuman” technology, and were trying to mainstream it in Europe. 
1643
1644
1645So these were small, newfangled European companies (or nonprofit
1646groups) of 02033, who clearly needed some design services.  Besides
1647their imaginary “posthuman” hardware and services, they needed
1648branding, a logo, a typeface, a market strategy, a killer app,  an
1649elevator pitch, a convincing promotional video to demo the most
1650attractive features of their businesses: the skills they want to
1651teach you in design school, in other words.
1652
1653And, especially, those imaginary enterprises had to be in Berlin and
1654of Berlin: a specific neighborhood, a park, a real, existent street.
1655So the students (mostly Americans) had to leave the Google searches
1656and the Photoshop and mix it up in the cityscape — they had to
1657Berlin-ify their design-fiction portfolio, and then demonstrate that
1658to a live audience of actual, skeptical Germans.
1659  
1660
1661inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1662permalink #178 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:47
1663
1664    
1665
1666I think this constraint helped a lot.  To say “we are as gods and
1667have to get good at it,” is quite a cool, visionary thing to say,
1668but to say “We are as Berlin gods, and we have to make a go of that
1669right here in the goth-kid quarter of Charlottenberg,” well, that
1670wakes people up to some of the consequences of such a declaration.
1671
1672I wouldn’t claim that the end-products of this class were great
1673design fictions.  Those students are apprentice designers who
1674travelled to Berlin to learn their craft, and design-fiction is
1675quite hard to do well; it’s rather rhetorically delicate, and we
1676can’t all be sophisticated global mavens of speculative design, like
1677Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby.  
1678
1679However, some ideas emerged from this course that  might be of
1680general interest.
1681  
1682
1683inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1684permalink #179 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:48
1685
1686    
1687
1688First, we never asked the students to do “ethical design” — we just
1689asked them to mimic genuine European start-up people. But then we
1690debated which of the proposed programs was the most ethically
1691sinister.  Which had the most abuse potential?
1692
1693  Everyone agreed that it was the most public-spirited one, which
1694was based in compassion and wanted to help people “be their best.” 
1695It was using Facebook-style biometric monitoring to “improve”
1696people’s emotional states, and, by the nature of their pitch, you
1697just knew these tender-hearted service providers were gonna make
1698Facebook tons of money.
1699
1700   The best-designed one was done by a dark-side hacker group of
1701“grinders,” who were up to all kinds of DNA mischief with
1702implantable human flesh.  Everybody knows what gooey Black-Mirror
1703postcyberpunk stuff is supposed to look like nowadays, so even the
1704Germans nodded in knowing agreement: ja, that’s some dystopian
1705futurism, all right.
1706  
1707
1708inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1709permalink #180 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Sun 13 Jan 19 01:48
1710
1711    
1712
1713    The most interesting one was an out-of-control neural net
1714implanted in a German urban gardening machine. The idea of the
1715“machine in the garden” is pretty standard, but the key idea here
1716was that this ultra-advanced robot had an Alpha-Zero style
1717“understanding” of ecology that no human being could ever match.  It
1718was half-mystical AI computer that was much “closer to nature” than
1719any human being could ever become.  And the humans who supported it
1720(who were stricken with German Green guilt because of environmental
1721crises) had sort of *given up;* they had deputized their love of
1722nature to this bizarre, all-knowing device; they kinda followed it
1723around worshipfully like it was the Great God Pan.
1724
1725    I’d never heard of such a notion.  It felt a bit
1726nextnature-dot-org — they’re very Dutch, at “Next Nature” — but it
1727was a truly original and strange idea. It’s the kind of speculative
1728idea that you can’t cook up alone in a room, with screens, and books
1729— instead, you simply must go out and look around at the state of
1730the world. 
1731  
1732
1733
1734inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1735permalink #185 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Mon 14 Jan 19 10:39
1736
1737    
1738This is the reaction of Jean-Paul Sartre when he visits an artist's
1739studio in 1947 and there's a weird network of things moving around
1740in there.
1741
1742
1743http://www.artnews.com/2017/06/30/from-the-archives-jean-paul-sartre-on-alexan
1744der-calder-in-1947/
1745  
1746inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1747permalink #191 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Tue 15 Jan 19 01:38
1748
1749    
1750Well, if you’ve got a “crisis” that goes on for centuries, then
1751“dark age” is a pretty good coinage.  I mean, it’s an age, and
1752things are dark.  Where’s the problem?
1753
1754It’s mid-January, and I’m getting writing assignments and people
1755asking me to travel.  It looks like 2019 is turning into another
1756year of my lifetime.  Maybe rather standard, and not so shatteringly
1757diistinct from the many other ones.  
1758
1759I can remember certain energy-crisis and impeachment episodes in the
1760“No Future” 1970s, when it felt like the wheels were coming right
1761off civilization.  They didn’t, though.   It felt like they oughta,
1762for any number of good reasons, but if you caught those cues and
1763scrammed for your fallout-shelter in the hills during the 1970s, to
1764raise goats and grow your own cabbages, it didn’t take all that long
1765to come sheepishly tip-toeing back.
1766
1767Imagine if The Donald had taken office and then immediately declared
1768a Climate Crisis State of Emergency.  He would have had all the
1769facts at his back, but I can only imagine the weird political and
1770economic mayhem that guy would have wreaked. He might still do that
1771— just, tear up everything he said before, and launch a whole new
1772set of lies.  All it would take would be a hurricane through some of
1773his favorite properties.
1774
1775Would his fans get all upset about his intellectual inconsistency,
1776or would they just applaud him and say they'd been all-for-it all
1777along?
1778  
1779inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1780permalink #204 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 16 Jan 19 00:31
1781
1782    <scribbled by bruces Wed 16 Jan 19 00:31>
1783  
1784
1785inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1786permalink #205 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 16 Jan 19 00:33
1787
1788    
1789
1790*Yeah, I was also at that Whole Earth 50th thing, sandwiched between
1791Wavy Gravy and Mountain Girl, and and although Wavy’s pretty frail
1792now, I have to say that Mountain Girl cheered me up.  She’s quite
1793the indestructible Bohemian matriarch, full of sturdy gravitas. 
1794There’s something timeless about Carolyn Garcia: she was like Robert
1795Louis Stevenson’s Californian girlfriend, the indomitable soul who
1796pitches in when it looks like he’s coughing his lungs out and then
1797trucks right along to Samoa and world artistic fame: hey, long
1798strange trip, no big problem.
1799  
1800
1801inkwell.vue.506 : State of the World 2019
1802permalink #206 of 226: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Wed 16 Jan 19 00:35
1803
1804    
1805
1806*This is what the Whole Earth/WIRED/CoolTools electronicized scene
1807looks like when you’re not from around here.  
1808
1809http://justinmcguirk.com/cool-tools-kevin-kelly
1810
1811
1812This cultural analysis may seem kinda condescending and maybe a
1813little British and snooty, but it’s nice that it grounds California
1814counterculture in a larger historical process.  As I said at the
1815Whole Earth 50th, you might well blame Henry Ford for a traffic jam,
1816but to blame Henry Ford for today’s self-driving cars is a category
1817error.  Tomorrow composts today.
1818
1819There’s a melancholy in learning that your dreams and intentions get
1820packed down in the mulch of the passing years; that a crystalline
1821gesture loses its sharp edges; that historic fame turns famous
1822people into cartoon parodies of themselves.  
1823
1824On the other hand, there really is a lot of mortal rubbish around
1825us, and the passage of years transforms that rubbish into a rich
1826vitality.  There’s always some fresh, naive, un-jaded guy coming
1827along.  He can stick a pitchfork into a stack of high-weirdness like
1828that, and holy cow, look out.
1829
1830I gotta get to some typing now; I’ve got some deadlines, and, well,
1831happy to have the schedule, it's good to have marks on the calendar.
1832I’ll be back next year, with any luck.  So long for now.