Bruce Sterling is blogging as Harvey Feldspar, a free-wheeling, globe-trotting geoblogger from the year 2017. There's a ton of eyeball-kicks here, vividly imagined and sharply critical visions of what a world built out of objects that know their location in space and time would look like. Look on the page for the material about Feldspar's Congressional testimony about the obsolescence of passports and the rise of the European cell-phone-based border crossings (and don't miss the trenchant commentary on the notional Berlin geohacker scene of 2017!).
The US should do what the Japanese do: track every foreigner's mobile. If he does anything freaky, jump on him.
"But Mr. Feldspar, suppose this international criminal doesn't carry a mobile?" demanded representative Chuck Kingston (R-Alabama). It would have been rude to point out the obvious. So I didn't. But look, just between you and me: Anybody without a mobile is not any kind of danger to society. He's a pitiful derelict. Because he's got no phone. Duh.
He also has no email, voicemail, pager, chat client, or gaming platform. And probably no maps, guidebooks, Web browser, video player, music player, or radio. No transit tickets, payment system, biometric ID, environmental safety sensor, or Breathalyzer. No alarm clock, camera, laser scanner, navigator, pedometer, flashlight, remote control, or hi-def projector. No house key, office key, car key… Are you still with me? If you don't have a mobile, the modern world is a seething jungle crisscrossed by electric fences crowned with barbed wire. A guy without a mobile is beyond derelict. He's a nonperson.
I didn't say any of that to the politicians. They don't want to be taught things by bloggers in public. They consider it an act of enmity.
