Sterling's seemingly meandering and occasionally infuriating talk at the annual Reboot digital culture conference in Copenhagen, Denmark this year attracted some notice, originally, but deserves a wider hearing, if only for his contextualization of Steve Jobs and Nicolas Sarkozy as gothic figures and his advocacy on behalf of expensive beds. Luckily, protoblogger Dave Winer recently re-uploaded and linked the talk.

Observers of the social networking wars should listen to Sterling's rundown on "favela chic," excerpted above. Rupert Murdoch, familial overlord of MySpace parent News Corp., is cast as the "remote, distanct, old-school Brazilian tyrant," while MySpace accounts are likened to "huts." Who knows: Maybe when you lose your job, an anonymous space in News Corp.'s online hellscape might start sounding a lot more fun than the prim, proper — and all-too-accountable — playground that is Facebook.

(Sterling pic: Daniel Barradas)

Photo by Dan Melinger
Most lines, quotes or no quotes, lifted right from his speech as he makes it.

5:03: The lights dim. Innocuous rock fades out in the background. Applause. Bruce says about himself, "I guess he needs no introduction." Bruce jokes about how the conference has scaled to "massive Google-sized cultural conglomerance (?)...I can level with a group of people I respect."

"Last year I was talking a lot about RFID. I could have gone on about that at great length here...but I just wanna offer you one little signifier, which is people at SXSW [music, which follows SXSW Interactive] now have RFID chips in their wristbands."

5:06: "This year video is ramping up. It's a stupid year and it's a stupid medium...I think it's kind of useful to see video metabolize on the net in this non-year."

Bruce goes on about how much he finds himself getting videoed. Yes, yes, you're a star. Now he mentions how Viacom just sued YouTube for $1 billion. Bruce thinks this sort of attempt to step on innovation will fail, because the new generation just won't let that happen.

"I don't like to use the word hope, because that's not the proper thing for a futurist to say," but he's seeing promising trends. He's reading a book, "The Wealth of Networks." "It reads a lot like Das Kapital." Another media theorist has been doing papers on "Creole media" and "hybrid media," which Bruce recommends. "In a lot of ways, these guys are the acceptable face of [free culture and GNU license co-author] Richard Stallman."

5:13: "You pitch Google and Wikipedia together, and it's time to say goodbye to the 80s."

Getting information is just not a struggle. Bruce compares it to the downfall of communism. "If you hang around the second and third world like I do...there's a new category emerging." The first world, he says, is global capitalism, the market world. The second world is all forms of governance. The new third world is commons-based peer production. It's not communism, the state, or the market. It's starting to profoundly affect culture: "Didn't you just Google that?" is an example of this expectation of using these tools.

The fourth world is, well, the old third world, but that's the fastest-growing part of the planet. Whoops, here's where Bruce pulls out the futurist's bogeyman: "This will become really evident in the next ten years." Why doesn't any glorious future ever take a number of years not divisible by 5?

5:17: When commons-based peer production comes into play, things that were a business are no longer a business. For example, Craigslist. "Craig [Newmark, founder] isn't interested in having a business. He's interesting in having five thousand friends."

The newspapers, meanwhile, are worried: "Why are we joining the global precariat [ha!]? Why are we worrying about who's writing what on Wikipedia? When these people who are working better than you aren't even working..."

5:20: "A peer-to-peer network will outship anything else without a dime changing hands." Bruce says this can mean there are lynch mobs, dunderheads — there are downsides.

There are downsides to fandom: "Fan art is terrible. It is not good and it's never gonna be good. Mary Sue stories by fan teens, who are so stricken that they must write Harry Potter fan-fiction...that's not good writing...there's no good way to tart it up."

5:22: "People on the Internet like to pretend mash-ups are really great...nobody's going to listen to mash-ups in ten years. They're novelty music. It's like magazine collage. But to pretend that's tremendous creative work, no! It's tremendous creative power, it has tremendous creative attention, but it's not tremendously creatively good."

5:24: "You're building stuff entirely out of effects." Anyone can do this, building everything out of effects. This means that media aren't converging. "They're all becoming different flavors out of the same mixing machine." Meh. Is Bruce really describing all media? Discuss.

5:25: "When Cuisinart came out, you thought everything you could eat should go through the chopper blades." Just because this mixing is now electronically capable doesn't mean it's good. "There's interesting stuff on Deviant Art — interesting. But not great." Again, the dude is going too far here. Is he really saying no fantastic work comes out of electronic media? "It's folk culture. And folk culture is for hicks."

5:28: Still on this anti-amateur-art rant. He just called blogs a "passing thing." Oh please, Bruce, you've lost me. Still, okay, almost all blogs are "'I did this I did this I did this' — it's like being beaten to death by croutons."

5:31: To wrap up that topic, "I'm very interested in generated art, but it is what it is. It's machine-generated, robbery and gibberish."

A friend of Bruce is making a plan to sell broadband spectrum: "basically a scheme to take away channels from broadcast TV, which nobody watches." It's "for the semi-educated, shut-ins...a lower end evil medium that debases even the poverty-stricken people who watch it." Really, Bruce? So, um, I'm not allowed to watch 30 Rock, The Office, or Arrested Development? Everything has to be a supersaturated whiny HBO series? These pithy lines do not speak the truth, dude.

5:38: Now let's talk about Yokai Benkler (is that spelled right? Probably not). Bruce is back on solid ground. "If you're wondering how these emergent Flickr-style Web 2.1 things work, what it takes to build them, Benkler explains how it's done:"

"Socially motivated commons-based peer production: how to do it.
1. Divvy up the work. Because it's a lot of work and no one wants to do it and you can't pay 'em and you can't draft 'em. The work has to be granular, modular, and integratable:

Granular: "If you can do it for five minutes, that has to advance the general cause." Then you can combine the five million little bits.

Modular: You have to divide it all into projects with a slider bar at the bottom — you can see people getting there.

Integratable: The project has to add up to one thing that achieves something.

And there's a further checklist: The project must be self-selective. It must be in-or-out so people don't have to get sucked in, but they can. You need deeper communication. You need humanization (which Bruce doesn't believe and thus skips). You need trust.

5:47: Bruce jokes about Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake. "Caterina, you've sold out!" her fans say. "Caterina, you're drinking white wine with the Google boys, chatting with Bill Gates while Bono floats by!"

Back to the checklist. Monitor: You need someone to watch the griefers, the hackers, the thieves. If you don't monitor, you'll be torn apart. You need peer review to find out who's good at working in the group. You need discipline. It's hard to do good work. "To discipline people who are not working for any money and not taking orders from on high..." Bruce describes the problem; he's not sure what could be the solution.

5:50: Did Bruce just mispronounce "intelligentsia"?

Now he's secretly making fun of Jason Calacanis (as well as all the other old-media-thinking guys) who act scared that Digg and Wikipedia aren't paying the people "doing the work." Oh please, he says, "as Rupert Murdoch pockets billions."

5:53: "Al-Qaeda is the #1 socially motivated commons-based peer production." Norm creation: Suicide-murder used to be for Jonestown whack jobs; now it's geopolitical genius. Discipline? Institutional sustainability? "They're pretty damn hard to kill. And the more you kill, the more come in through the cracks." They're existing proof of the potency of this form of organization. Also fourth-generation warfare groups; cells of the KKK.

Benkler: Computers are an unruly platform, not a well-behaved machine. Another C-BPP: Ubuntu, a form of the Linux operating system.

5:57: So Benkler opened a wiki about his book. Oh boy! Everyone could exchange ideas etc etc! But there's nobody there. It's easy to open a wiki, it's open to post to a wiki...but it's not easy to be as smart as Benkler.

6:00: And we're closing. Last year he finished with a poem. This year, he says, the poem will not be about the downtrodden and how horrible it all is. Who's it by? A politically persecuted dissident from Poland. He wrote it in Berkeley. Here's this poem about serenity by Czeslaw Milosz, "Gift." [Full text here.]

And we're done. Come back next year!

Bill Gates' Road Ahead
Now here's a punch in the face. Microsoft's founder predicted a world of "wallet PCs" that could make everyday transactions, hold personal info, and work as little phone-computers in his 1995 book The Road Ahead. The book came with a CD-ROM, which included video of people using these wallet PCs to, say, pay for ice cream in the park.

Gates was looking for a version of convergence, the idea that technologies will meet and the gadgets we carry around will take over each other's functions until one convergent device can do everything. That's arguably what happened with the desktop computer, which can mix sound and video, send letters, calculate budgets, and all those other things John Hodgman and Justin Long do in the Mac ads.

Gates figured all this activity would take place on MSN, Microsoft's network (which included Hotmail and MSN Messenger). But then came the internet, in which Microsoft is just another player. Meanwhile, phones have gotten cameras, media players and internet access, making them the convergent device. And the most sublime of the smartphones? The Apple iPhone, a media-playing wifi-enabled computer-that-happens-to-be-a-phone made by Gates's nemesis Steve Jobs. The bonus: Apple's iPhone will use applications from Microsoft's other big competitors, Google and Yahoo. [Background]

The Semantic Web
The granddaddy of stillborn internets, the Semantic Web was supposed to be machine-readable, so that computers as well as humans could understand relationships between information. This would rescue humans from the tasks of categorizing and searching for data.

This involved a lot of "metadata," which is now enriching Web 2.0 sites (see below) thanks to — wait for it — humans categorizing and searching for data. Flickr tags, Facebook relationships, MySpace favorites — these all in some way fulfill the dream of the semantic web. [Background]

Cyberspace
One conceit of hacker sci-fi (and the Hollywood movies that dumbed it down) was that the internet would become a virtual world full of hip hackers wrangling with metaphorically represented data. Author William Gibson dubbed it "cyberspace" in his book Neuromancer.

The problem is that hackers enjoy the exact opposite: typing white text on black screens. The closest anyone's come is Second Life, a virtual world that mainly gets hacked through replicating objects. Methinks the sci-fi authors of ages past weren't hoping for flying dick attacks. [Cyberspace]

Bruce Sterling's Magical Spime World
Sci-fi author Bruce Sterling coined the term "spime," meaning an object that can be tracked through space and time thanks to embedded technology. The best way to visualize it is like this: Imagine googling "Where are my shoes?" and getting an answer. (I blogged one of Sterling's spime speeches last year at the SXSW conference.) Sterling may seem like the L. Ron Hubbard of futurism by buying into his own sci-fi, but give him another decade or two. RFID technology could make spimes a reality. [Background]

Web 2.0
Okay, Web 2.0 — the collaborative iteration of the web that lets users treat it like a platform, as explained by tech publisher Tim O'Reilly — only "never happened" in the sense that philosopher Jean Baudrillard said, "The Gulf War did not take place." Web 2.0 is not being built so much as it is evolving out of Web 1.0 as site-makers make their tools more sophisticated and internet users fill it with content.

Also like the Gulf War, reporters are mucking up the history of Web 2.0. The companies making Web 2.0 possible aren't just Flickr and its partners in a Newsweek cover story. Sites like Craigslist, Metafilter, and thousands of internet forums have been doing this stuff since the 90s. And what internet nerd didn't have a Geocities homepage back in the day? Other Web 1.0 sites have "upgraded" too: Amazon now uses tagging, wikis, and an ecosystem of commenters to add value to its sale pages. [Background]

Kyle Bunch puts two and two together when Calacanis becomes "Calacnis":

He's trying for the Esthr Dyson thing; dropping an 'a' in your name is the new dropping the 'e'.

valleyvoyeur pours gas on the Winer fire:

Who in Silicon Valley HASN'T gotten into a flamewar with Dave?!?!

Adam Michela prefers his Web 2.0 logos to be sad marsupials:

This whole thing is bizarre. All the way down from the vague announcement at Under the Radar to the cagey smirk on that ugly little blue kangaroo.

Blackjack figures that's how SketchUp got split up:

Let me guess, Google kept the engineers and ditched a bunch of the non-engineers. I'll put on my shocked face now.

Anonymous wants Bruce Sterling to be a spime:

If Sterling's so cutting edge, why didn't he liveblog himself?

To which Spastic Colon says:

liveblogging is for sissies. when you're cutting edge, someone else liveblogs it for you.

Join the party. Write something witty to tips@valleywag.com, earn a comments pass.

5:31: "I no longer keep an inventory of my possessions inside my own head...I don't hunt for my shoes in the morning, I just Google them."

Photo: Dan Melinger [Flickr]
More after the jump.

5:33: Every word isn't just a word, it's a "theory object."

Sterling is halfway between a political commentator and drunk.

"I'm dropping lit matches into the wet bog of language."

5:37: "If there's one thing I've learned from hanging out with the European dissident crowd, it's this: Make no decision out of fear." One schlub claps and a smattering of mercy applause spreads. Like most of Sterling's lines, it's either brilliant or inane or both.

5:41: He's talking about Serbian nationalist resentment. Somehow, SOMEHOW, that's related to ubiquitous digitization.

5:43: "When you can comprehend poetry, it means your heart is not broken." Bruce! Bruce! Are you still with us on this plane of consciousness, Bruce?

5:44: Serbia isn't Europe because it doesn't "deserve to be Europe." But it's improving. "Even the pirates are in retreat." Whoa — Bruce just slammed media piracy at a conference full of netheads. Starting to hear nervous coughing in some corners.

5:46: Bruce breaks down while reading a historical manifesto. "The people yes! The people will live on."

5:48: "The people march. Where to? What next?" A moving conclusion to a timely speech, perfect for this age of 1999. I mean 2004. I mean 1937. I mean...damn, Bruce has used one speech since he was five, right?

ETech 2006 rolls on, and Scott Beale keeps photographing the folks who make the Internet. Tuesday's highlights include Tim Bray's Indy outfit, Esther Dyson's spelling, and Jen King's primal scream.

Wired futurist Bruce Sterling Sun Microsystems demigod Tim Bray pops in from his Indiana Jones 4 audition.

Tribe.net's Chris Law isn't a friend of Kevin Burton. He just plays one on the Internet.

After the jump, Gob Bluth visits ETech. (Not really.)

ETech 2006 Photos [Laughing Squid, used with permission]
Earlier: Geeking out: ETech 2006 [Valleywag]

"And my Starbucks? Can you merge a tag folksonomy into my Starbucks?"

Simply Hired's Dave McClure: "Does your Google interview story involve a Rubik's cube and an attack dog? Yeah, everyone has that story."

Flickr'ing futurist "Esthr" Dyson: "A pleasre to meet you, I'm chrmed."

Designer Derek Powazek looks like a younger, taller Paul Giamatti. Just sayin'.

Technorati engineer Kevin Marks: "Well, if you don't like the new bubbly look, we'll just change the — no — no, shut up, I'm doing it now — we'll just change the site right back."

Weblogs Inc's Jason Calacanis is not just making a sign; he's worried and would like some peace, please.

Metafilter founder Matt Haughey: "If you bought the Segway to get laid, um, why'd you bring it to a tech conference?"

At the Yahoo party: "Heehee...hi, Mr. Semel? Mr. Terry Semel? Do you have Prince Albert in a can? WELL YOU'D BETTER GO OUT AND CATCH IT. Wait, wait, I messed up. Can we start over?"

Scott says, "[Berkeley student] Jen King's reaction to hearing web 2.0 for the 1000x time."

"Going Overboard Hair Club for Men.com. Works wonders, and it uses Ajax."