Sterling Rant Goes Viral

I posted back during the Webstock conference about the Bruce Sterling presentation where, depending on your point of view, Sterling either crushed some Web 2.0 deities, or proved himself once and for all an arrogant bore.

One of those deitites who came in for Sterling's criticism was the father of Web 2.0 (at least the term anyway) Tim O'Reilly, tweeted after reading the full transcript on Wired.

Over on io9 they reviewed the speech also - I commented there but my comment mysteriously was attributed to someone else so here it is in all its glory;

Well... I was watching the tweet stream and looking at the faces around me during the preso and one thing Sterling definitely achieved was a polarisation of the audience. While I believe he was correct to try and deflate some of the self-referential hype that invariably goes on at these events, to do so with the knowledge that the entire audience knows that you make your living, at least in part, by being flown around the world to give these presentations at Web conferences all seems a little duplicitous. One could perhaps go so far as to say that Bruce Sterling is as much a buzzword that needs (or in any case will) descend into its own black hole when the web Armageddon comes. Sterling, if you like, is a self-aggrandised ponzi scheme that feeds off the controversy he creates. I sent a tweet to someone during the event saying that Sterling was a pompous bore - upon reflection that is perhaps a little unfair. He is arrogant and enjoys revelling in the hype his arrogance tends to cause, boring he's not.

Go and read the transcript for yourselves and leave a comment here ith your own thoughts of Sterling's rant.

I dunno - I thought he made a lot of sense. It certainly didn't strike me as particularly arrogant or boring to point out that things in the world of networked computing aren't nearly as stable or as quantified as they often appear. In an industry prone to hubris, at a time when huge changes are afoot and no-one really knows how things are going to turn out next week, let alone next year, a word or two of caution seems more than appropriate.

I've been interested in the differing opinions about Bruce Sterling. For my part, I thought him a bit of a waste of time. His speech was obviously well-written and well-rehearsed - probably at the circuit of web conferences he attends, as you point out - but I didn't see much substance. It was a sermon. It was full of increased volumes at bits he really wanted you to agree with, and truck-loads of empty rhetoric: A is a bit like B, and B does this, so therefore A does too. All I really got out of his talk was that Web 2.0 is cool and all, but it isn't perfect and won't last forever. Maybe I missed something, but it didn't floor me.

Sterling Rant Goes Viral

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