Bruce Sterling's story on the merger of blogging and scientific discovery

Bruce Sterling has a short-short story in this month's Discover, "In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging." It's part of an Ellen Datlow-edited series on fictionalized future discoveries. I've written one for a forthcoming ish in which a neuro shortcut to creating empathy for fictional people is created and abused by advertisers, destroying all forms of narrative fiction (I originally pitched one about a world in which the cure for obesity turns out to be a turd-transplant from people with "skinny" intestinal flora, but nevertheless the formerly fat are still shunned by the naturally thin; but "eat shit and live" was too gross for the series).

• Can I really make major science discoveries just by reading "nonsense poems"?

You bet you can, and that's why we're so glad you're at our Web site! If you can read a popular-science publication (and enjoy it), then you most likely have enough brainpower to help us make massive scientific breakthroughs.

• How do I know if I qualify for making these "mysterious discoveries"?

By displaying your linguistic comprehension of our stochastic scientometric ontological schemata!

In the Future, Doing Science Is Like Blogging

• [Wryneck Studio]

  Excellent story by Sterling and great illustration by McKean!

  Much like the FunSAT crowd sourcing link you posted July 29th: http://funsat.eecs.umich.edu/ ,it seems natural to me that pattern recognitionists will have plenty of sifting – and therefore – plenty of valuable brain power to contribute to new scientific frontiers, as well as the rediscovery of heirloom technology.

• [Beanolini]

  a turd-transplant

  aka faecal bacteriotherapy.