Bruce Sterling's closing SXSW keynote: disruption and destruction

In Bruce Sterling's barn-burning closing keynote for SXSW 2013, he confronts the realities of disruption -- that disruption leads to destruction. Our wonderful things destroy other wonderful things. The future composts the past. We roast the 20th century over our bonfire, let's not shamefully pretend that we did it by accident. Let's eat our kill.

Important stuff.

Bruce Sterling closing remarks at SXSW2013

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Audio • Business • futurism • happy mutants • science fiction • SXSW • web theory

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http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist

Be fierce, eat what you kill. Buy an Android tablet and
$ sudo cd /; rm -rf #THIS IS A JOKE, DO NOT DO THIS
your Linux desktop today!
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  I’ll get a tablet someday. For now . . . well, I’m a producer, not a consumer. I’m old fashioned enough to prefer a desktop (Linux!). One with a big-ass full-width keyboard and two HD monitors and gear for scanning and digitizing old meida.
  - http://twitter.com/amanicdroid Dr. Chronobiologist
    
    The only advantage a tablet has over my desktop is that it’ll be easier to throw in the trash as I walk back to my desktop.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

Thanks for posting this.

I read @jonl’s live tweet . . . still haven’t made the time to listen to bruces actual speech.
Timothy Moorehead

I look forward to Bruce’s closing rants (eloquent ramblings) every year for years now. It’s like a real holy day when I get a hold of the latest on mp3.
Timothy Moorehead

ALSO; re: SXSW 2013…JASH videos. The one that’s 5:01 is excellent. Uh, attempting a link was terrible. JASH. comedy.
Cowicide

Why, oh why didn’t they allow a download of the mp3 from SoundCloud?

Here… I’ll disrupt this inconvenience for those who want to put this on an iPod or whatever…

~~Downloadable link~~ edit: they already broke it… :(

Hopefully it’ll keep working…
- Cowicide
  
  Screw it, I went ahead and put it on SoundCloud and made it downloadable fer christ’s sake….
  
  Get it here:
  https://soundcloud.com/cowicide/bruce-sterling-closing-remarks
  
  Haven’t they ever heard of portable mp3 players? sheesh…
gtronsistem

yes we are all in decay, but TRYing to make things better in human systems that are clearly ridiculous and harmful to individuals, peace, other creatures, oneself, is not a crime against your logic.
if you accept that there’s no solving it, you get hedonism. hey, it’s all going to hell in a handbasket! grab a printed-gun and jump in!also, he’s one of the more respected, but he’s not really saying much – he’s just ranting with this dismissive ‘how could you not know this?!’ tone, which by minute 49 has wiped out ones attention, and you miss the point of his denouement. which is, for those who didn’t get to it, not really much.
http://twitter.com/kpkpkp Kevin Pierce

You can watch the keynote on YouTube, but the sound is echoey, so listen to the SoundCloud audio and sync the two (not that hard to do)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmsIQCgyz4s&list=PLdd0Sm28ghTJIz2cCPqHZ2sPj3wDPJFtX
AGC

Web 1.0 is still alive. It’s still as big as it was in the late 1990s, just proportionally it looks small compared to the growing web 2.0. Things don’t die, they just fade into the background.
DataShade

aggravated pastslaughter
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http://i.imgur.com/KyIQji3.gif