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- # inkdwell.vue.507 : **State of the World 2020: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky**
- ## [permalink #0](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post0) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Master of Ceremonies [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 6 Jan 20 09:08_
- Welcome to State of the World 2020, 21st century fruitcake edition.
- We hope to find the tasty maraschinos in the fruitcake sludge that
- surrounds the beginning of this new decade. Switching metaphors, we
- are approaching the Thundering Twenties ... thunder, rain, and
- lightning flashing - right through the middle of it, we'll go
- dashing, ignoring the heavy weather, the psychic storms, the
- confusion boats steering wild. (h/t Roger Miller)
- As always, Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky lead the conversation,
- reliable narrators working without spin, at a time we're told (by
- the anti-consigliere) that truth isn't truth. We'll be joined by
- musician/composer Holly Herndon and philosopher and digital artist
- Mat Dryhurst. Also various members of the WELL (our host platform),
- and others who follow the conversation and email comments or
- questions from time to time. (Send emails to inkwell-hosts at
- well.com).
- Bruce is a science fiction author, speaker, sometimes design critic,
- and culture hacker known for his many books, writings, and talks.
- Jon is co-editor of the Plutopia News Network, writer, and digital
- culture maven.
- If by following this conversation you find synapses firing, if it
- makes you get up and move, especially if you feel like dancing, then
- we've done our job. Gloomy as the future appears right now, our best
- way forward is in the Zimbabwean proverb: "If you can walk, you can
- dance, if you can talk, you can sing."
- The WELL is a seminal online community that has been around and
- active for 35 years. You can be part of ongoing conversations like
- this one by joining the WELL:[ https://www.well.com/join/](https://www.well.com/join/) - which
- you might want to do if you're tired of the drive-by posting formats
- of Facebook and Twitter and would rather be part of a real
- community.
- Onward we go, through the virtual fog...
- ## [permalink #1](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post1) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:45_
- MMXX, Year of the Rat!
- I'm grateful for our WELL State of the World tradition. Just
- imagine if we lacked the heritage of our commentary here, and we had
- to start yelling about the state of our planet's affairs,
- flat-footed, from a cold start.
- Anybody can spontaneously rant, but a ranting tradition is a
- different, nobler, more meaningful matter. It's like making a new
- friend, versus cherishing the dwindling number of your old, loyal,
- trusted, old ones. With an established tradition, you know who you
- are and where you stand -- even if you're in Ibiza.
- Which is where I am now, just like in WELL SOTW 02018 and 02019.
- ## [permalink #2](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post2) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:45_
- Are there any major differences between my activities in Ibiza in
- 02018, and here in MMXX, the mystical dawn of a new decade? Yeah,
- sorta.
- I used to roam the streets of Ibiza as I normally roam streets of
- any strange city, toting an efficient global-nomad shoulder-bag,
- crammed with electronics and travel-survival knickknacks. This year
- I just carry a floppy canvas grocery bag.
- Admittedly, it's a tote-bag from the distant "Bangalore Literary
- Festival," but nobody cares about branding. If you carry groceries
- around in a bag, nobody sees you. Because obviously you must be
- local.
- It's the foreigners and tourists who have those ergonomic,
- airplane-centric, efficient bags. They don't slop around with cheap
- canvas bags meant for onions.
- So what I'm sporting in Ibiza in MMXX is camouflage for our new
- era of ethnonationalism and "overtourism," a term recently invented
- in nearby Barcelona.
- ## [permalink #3](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post3) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:46_
- Torino, where I hang out rather more often, is boasting about
- their tourism this year. Their tourist racket is doing great.
- Huge, posh culture shows, hotels packed to capacity. They figured
- out how to chisel tourists in their municipal subway system, the
- restaurants shovel "Il Food" into the foreign gourmets, so they're
- doing fine. Turin is still haunted by the Crisis of 2008, so signs
- of lively popularity are welcome to them.
- Barcelona and Ibiza, by contrast, struggle to keep the jetset
- at bay. They don't build Trump Walls against the tourists, or
- confine them in Xinjiang camps, or cut their connectivity
- Kashmir-style -- but at basis it's the same phenomenon, just with a
- different victim-class.
- I'm never here in Ibiza during the big "season," where the
- foreign crowds get intense and obnoxious. I come to Ibiza to work
- on fiction. I write here without much distraction, because there's
- nothing going on in Ibiza this time of year except for road, wharf
- and hotel repair. Even New Years is muted: the native Ibizans don't
- party much, because they get paid to do that.
- That's why, in Ibiza in MMXX, I resemble an Ibiza
- construction worker who is out buying some cabbage. I wear gray
- nylon cargo pants and blue-striped Pablo Picasso sailor shirts. My
- shoes look a little weird, but most blue-collar people in Ibiza have
- some vague former-hippie cast to them. Grocery checkout girls have
- tattooed fingers, guys mending fishing nets have yin-yang figurines,
- suburban gardens have Buddha shrines, that's who they are. I don't
- mind that about them. I get it. I sympathize.
- Sympathy makes me dress as a guy who would never stay in an AirBnB
- or hire an Uber. These Silicon Valley unicorns have become the
- class enemies of Barcelona. Uber-using AirBnB lurkers are
- recognized as potential hostiles.
- ## [permalink #4](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post4) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:47_Barcelona hates the twenty-teens digital vanguard just as much
- as San Francisco does. Any allure that globalized network-culture
- once held is just over; it's well past the "New Dark" and the
- disbelieving malaise, and advanced into a subdued riot feeling.
- Anything that American technology tries to pull in Europe has
- Trump's face stamped on it. Everyone just assumes it's a lie, a
- fraud, a subterfuge and a grift, and they're gonna get rooked, if
- not murdered by drones. So far, in response, they can riot or
- strike -- in France, for over a year now -- but they can't
- accomplish anything administratively, because the entire political
- class and the oligarchs have all bought into it.This is not exactly fascist oppression, but it's gone well
- beyond mere discontent. It's an advancing cultural sensibility,
- like "New Dark 1.2," where everybody knows the lights have been
- turned out, but nobody thinks they're gonna come back on, because
- the guys at the fossil power plant want to make Darkness the
- standard.
- ## [permalink #5](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post5) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:48_People like to focus their attention on The Donald, because the
- actual media is in abject collapse, so there's nothing but demagogic
- social media and the right-wing TV machine, and The Donald is great
- at that. However, this sensibility I'm describing is not merely
- American or Trumpian, it really is the State of the World. Other
- nations have more advanced versions of it than Americans do.
- There used to be certain planetary regions and polities that
- were markedly different from the rest, but in MMXX, even though
- everybody claims they're antiglobal, sovereign and patriotic,
- everybody's very the-same.
- The BRICS for instance, Brazil Russia India China South Africa,
- it used to be modish to think that they were an emerging
- ex-Third-World bloc with radically different values, but they
- aren't. Brazil is Trumpistan with a Trump who is less sleepy and
- more predatory.
- Russia is anti-global but pro-oligarch -- they're the only
- nation-state that has tamed their rich people, because their spies
- eat them.
- India is doing its level best to become China, with a
- Trumpistan strongman leader. India is slavishly following the new
- Xinjiang model of naming, numbering, surveilling and confining the
- Muslims in vast regions of imposed Internet darkness. They're also
- sending out fascist squadrons of club-wielding Party operatives to
- beat up college students. India is polarizing fast, between the
- majority-ethnic ultra-nationalists and everyone else who doesn't
- want to get stepped on. Not a particularly Indian situation. It's
- a state of the world situation with some Indian characteristics.
- South Africa is going sideways, it's just a mess and has no
- solutions to offer anybody.
- Britain seems plausibly different because they've engaged in
- the most extreme act of frantic self-harm, but they seem to simply
- have the high-grade fever version of the some low-grade global
- disease that everybody else also has. I hope to get into some of
- Boris Johnson's activities later, because BoJo interests me a lot;
- he's a rare version of a political writer who is actually weirder,
- and makes up weirder stuff, than most science fiction writers. Hey,
- they elected him. Whatever noisome slurry that BoJo dishes out in
- their Oliver Twist bowls, they were begging for it.
- I used to closely follow Estonia and Dubai, because they were
- small, fast-moving countries, deliberately futuristic and keenly
- aware of their own outlier weirdness. Here in MMXX, I needn't
- bother. Estonia has caught the ethnonational disease, so, instead
- of lathering-on their sleek high-tech virtuality, they whine about
- foreign immigrants and their precious Estonian-ness. The autocrat
- sheik of Dubai had a sex scandal, and his Vanguard of Happiness got
- sour in a hurry when a defector concubine scampered out of the
- harem. It's bad. It's not "chop up dissidents with chainsaws"
- bad, but it's not good.
- ## [permalink #6](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post6) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:49_
- It's strange that there's so much unanimity in this new
- worldwide sensibility. Russia and the USA have never been so much
- alike as nations and peoples, ever. When American Republicans say
- they prefer Putin to Democrats, that sounds weird, but Democrats
- would probably prefer Putin to Trump.
- China is sort of exotic and different, at least they claim they
- have exotic and inscrutable "Chinese Characteristics," but they've
- got the huge septic sore of Hong Kong, and all they can do about is
- deceive themselves and lie to everybody else. Xinjiang, the Chinese
- high-tech AI solution to Muslim belt-bombs, is so direly unpleasant
- that the Han majority, eager merchants who should be flooding out
- along the New Silk Road to conquer the planet's Eurasian commerce,
- are packing up and leaving Xinjiang. The normal people are too
- disgusted to sell anything. They can't stand the everyday ugliness.
- In response to these self-made disorders, Xi Jianping, who is an
- engineer and used to have some grasp of measurable reality, decides
- to re-write both the Koran and the Bible, so as to align these
- foreign texts with state-approved Xi Jianping Thought. Okay, I'm a
- novelist with vague postmodern tendencies, so I wouldn't mind
- rewriting the Bible myself. But really -- you could ask Sun Tzu --
- what is the end-game of a politician attacking ancient scripture?
- Could there be any political gesture more blatantly phony,
- egomaniacal, self-parodic? Even Trump doesn't re-write the damn
- Bible, he just co-opts all the televangelists.
- ## [permalink #7](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post7) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:50_
- Also, while all this deceit, mummery, hucksterism and hubristic
- fooforaw goes on, mainstream cultural assumptions are quietly
- disappearing. Mainstream consumer capitalism is dying, fast and
- silent and for good, like its shopping malls. There aren't any
- "consumers," there are just oligarchs and the rabble.
- There's not a lot that's brand-new in MMXX, but under cover of the
- smog, old institutions and assumptions are disappearing. You can't
- just say, "let's go back and do it the old way," because there is
- nothing left to be old-fashioned with. The conservatives have
- destroyed everything they wanted to conserve. The liberals have
- nothing much to be liberal with or about, except gay sex and
- marijuana.
- The Republican Party used to be keen on the cultural bedrock of
- family values, balancing the budget, nitpicking the Constitution,
- global imperialism, military valor, arming the populace...
- right-wing, but American right-wing. In MMXX the Republicans are a
- basic ethnonational party; they're quite like Russians, Hungarians
- or Serbs, hicks who will put up with anything as long as it coddles
- their identity issues. Of course they lie about that, but since they're lying about
- religion and race, which everybody always lies about, they figure
- they've got a mighty fortress there. It's not all that mighty. The
- Confederacy lost. Even the Nazis and the Soviets lost.
- ## [permalink #8](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post8) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:52_
- It's just not the Republican apparatchiks who have abandoned all
- previous moral convictions for a mess of pottage -- all the US
- population is like that. The Americans used to be self-assured,
- mobile, visionary, inventive; now they're hunkered-down, dogmatic,
- disinterested in any consensus; they're 100% American-Dream-Free. The American life expectancy is in decline: they can't keep
- death at bay. The American health care system is so astonishingly
- bad that black Americans escaped being murdered with opioids,
- because the racist American sickness-industry refused to prescribe
- them any of the pills. This is the domestic narcotic biz version of
- voter suppression. That is an unhealthy polity.
- ## [permalink #9](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post9) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:52_
- The Russians, by contrast, have learned to drink less vodka.
- Their birthrate has even popped up a little. Physically, they're
- improving, and I'm glad at that news Yes, the Russians are
- diligently waging all kinds of asymmetrical warfare, they have built
- their own domestic Splinternet to subvert, repel and destroy the
- Internet, and they will pitch any dreadful thing over their
- firewall from nerve-gas to barrel-bombs, but I feel happier about
- them. They scared me, because I thought they would die en masse
- of sheer disillusionment, hapless spite, weltschmerz and morbid
- despair.
- Probably the Russians will manage. They're a great nation which
- is not suicidal. Their fearless leader will dump the wife of the
- children for a sexy gymnast, but they aren't kamikazes, and they
- don't need belt-bombs. The Russians in MMXX are Putin-Czarist hick
- fundies whose ultra-illusory worldview make literally no sense, and
- deliberately so, but at least they're not dead on their feet. Even
- a dopey GRU assassin from the backwoods of Siberia is less scary
- than a hollow-eyed zombie.
- ## [permalink #10](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post10) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:53_
- So in MMXX, we're in a world situation that claims to be
- post-global and post-Internet and post world-trade, where everybody
- wants to take back control, be great again, assure sovereign
- cyberspace, set tariffs, jail immigrant tots, beat up ethnic
- minorities, nurture billionaires, ignore science, and reduce
- education to assure that there are fewer brainy chicks -- but in
- practice, there's no big difference among the players. They ALL do
- that. There's next to no genuine cultural variety. They all use
- the same hardware, slogans and techniques.
- Also, there's no technological innovation in MMXX. Innovation
- and invention are out of style. The closest we've got to innovation
- is "capital moating," where you start some allegedly technical
- company to screw around with, say, hotels or taxis, and throw so
- many billions at the project that businessmen are awed. That's
- financially innovative -- sort of -- it's like the space-aviation
- biz staying aloft by angling subsidies. That's not Moore's Law,
- there's nothing amazingly great that is busting out of the garage to
- set Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon-Microsoft on their ear. There is
- no wonderment, because there is no reason to wonder.
- The fix is in. The Industry has consolidated. Best of the year
- lists from tech journalists have been replaced by lists of the worst
- things happening in tech. For the first time in my life, it's
- getting hard to find any genuine technical novelty.
- ## [permalink #11](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post11) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 01:53_
- Unless, that is, you play Holly Herndon records -- not that
- Holly makes "records" out of fossil-fueled vinyl, for that would be
- antique. However, I stream a lot of mp3s off the laptop into the
- Ibiza stereo here, and whenever I play Holly Herndon, that's when my
- wife stops whatever she's doing and demands "What is that? Where
- did that come from?"
- In her most recent effort, "Proto," it came from Dr Herndon's
- deep-learner Artificial Intelligence that was trained to sing in
- chorus with human beings, and that is some chorus. We anticipate
- that Dr Herndon and her Significant Technical Associate, Matt
- Dryhurst, will join our chorus here in the State of the World. They
- may be on tour, or DJing, but whatever happens to musicians will
- happen to everybody.
- ## [permalink #12](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post12) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Lena via lendie [(lendie)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 06:14_
- What can one say after that bit of cheer but Happy New Year and
- Happy New Decade!
- ## [permalink #13](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post13) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 06:45_
- We're into overtourism ourselves, lately. Not the royal we, but my
- longtime spouse/partner Marsha and I. She's plugged into an array of
- travel networks, and planning trips has become her full-time
- preoccupation. Even as we travel, she's planning the next few trips.
- We spent some time in Miami Beach recently, a shiny place with
- creative spunk, great food, wild clothes, a graffiti aesthetic, hot
- cars buzzing the streets. All I could think was how it would all be
- under water in a decade. It felt haunted, in a way. When you live
- there, do you think about this inevitable future disaster? A few
- years ago we visited the Washington coast, destined someday to be
- wiped out by a tidal wave when the Cascadia subduction zone slips.
- We discussed the potential disaster with a woman working in a
- restaurant, and I mentioned evac signs and safety plans. She said
- there's no way we can escape when it hits. The safety plan is mostly
- to help children sleep at night, apparently. A park ranger told us
- she'd been living with the possibility all her life, yet she
- remains. She'd shaved her head, as if for frictionless escape.
- ## [permalink #14](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post14) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 06:46_
- Human extinction seems inevitable, at least on one level, but on
- another level we just keep living, moving, working, making,
- ruminating, traveling, entertaining, eating, sleeping, dumping - we
- don't think about the inevitability of extinction any more than we
- think of our very specific, inevitable individual demise, in my case
- not many years away.
- ## [permalink #15](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post15) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 06:47_
- On New Years' Eve MMXX we made the short trip downtown, where we
- stayed the night. We were downtown for the big Esther's Follies
- NYEve show, missing the fireworks, perhaps making some of our own.
- We toasted the transition with the reliably energetic, wildly funny
- Esther's troupe, including magician Ray Anderson, whose talent was
- to disappear grimness and woe. If only he could extend his magic....
- ## [permalink #16](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post16) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 06:47_
- Walking to the hotel, we saw diverse revelers crowding the streets,
- lined up for pizza and beer, waving transparent balloons, dancing,
- spinning, drunk with the moment. Outside the hotel, we saw a young
- girl in a deep blue party dress and wobbly heels, unable to stand,
- sitting in a puddle of ... some liquid, I won't assume. Thinking to
- myself, I hope that's not an omen. In the elevator, we ride with a
- twenty-something man wearing a bow tie and a blank drunken stare.
- Friendly, but barely able to string a sentence. Through the glass
- elevator as we ride up, we see sequined dresses and tuxedoes. For
- them, is it a night to remember, or a hope to forget?
- ## [permalink #17](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post17) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Umbaugh [(bumbaugh)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 09:44_
- Whatever happens to musicians ....
- So, yeah. What's happening to musicians next that we can expect to
- come for the rest of us? What does streaming look like, for
- instance, in other lines of work?
- ## [permalink #18](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post18) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Alan Fletcher [(af)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 11:11_
- Is it just me .. or is that the most depressing State of the World
- introduction we've ever had?
- ## [permalink #19](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post19) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Administrivia [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 12:07_
- Short link for the public view of this conversation is
- http://bit.ly/sotw-2020 - please feel free to share far and wide.
- Suggested hashtag: #sotw-2020
- If you're not a member of the WELL, and you want to make a comment
- or ask a question, you have two options:
- 1) Join the WELL and add directly to the conversation, or
- 2) Send your comment or question > Via email to inkwell-hosts at
- well.com.
- If you want to join the WELL, here's the link:
- https://www.well.com/join/
- ## [permalink #20](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post20) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 12:08_
- <af> It's not just you!
- ## [permalink #21](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post21) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Lena via lendie [(lendie)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 12:35_
- See #12
- ## [permalink #22](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post22) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Alan Fletcher [(af)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 12:47_
- Ah ... but <12> still implies some optimism for the year and decade.
- ## [permalink #23](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post23) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Matthew McClure [(mmc)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 13:02_
- Looking for green shoots in a bleak landscape.
- There may not be much consumer innovation, but battery technology
- seems to be screaming along - lithium-sulphur, Ryden dual carbon,
- etc.:[ http://bit.ly/2s4LE9N](http://bit.ly/2s4LE9N) has a breezy non-technical overview.
- And Mark Z. Jacobson at Stanford offers some hope with his analysis
- that we could provide 100% of energy requirements without fossil
- fuels.
- And Chris Anderson and TED and doing Countdown,
- https://countdown.ted.com/, so the word may spread a little.
- ## [permalink #24](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post24) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Matthew McClure [(mmc)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 13:03_
- Oops. "and doing Countdown" would read more sensibly if I'd typed
- "are doing Countdown".
- ## [permalink #25](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page01.html#post25) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): redraw Gantt charts in his head [(nanlev)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 14:06_
- Mark Jacobson's analysis is problematic, and overlooks some
- real-world issues with renewables, but it's good to see someone
- pushing that envelope to its farthest reaches.
- ## [permalink #26](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post26) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): ixak [(ixak23)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 14:09_
- "This is not exactly fascist oppression, but it's gone well beyond
- mere discontent. It's an advancing cultural sensibility, like "New
- Dark 1.2," where everybody knows the lights have been turned out,
- but nobody thinks they're gonna come back on, because the guys at
- the fossil power plant want to make Darkness the standard."
- To paraphrase a colleague of yours, Bruce, the "New Dark" is already
- here, it's just not equally distributed. I started my year in the
- Philippines and ended it in Chad, with stops in Uganda, Palestine,
- and Baltimore in-between. There is a fatalistic thread that I
- continue to encounter around the world - the assumption in most of
- the developing world is that the game is rigged to favor an elite
- minority, and much of the white middle class seems to be figuring
- that out only just now.
- The malaise is real, and the appeal of fascism (and other
- governments that rely on tribal/ethnic patronage for popular
- support) is it's promise that the lights will at least stay on for
- people like US. It seems to me that the path to countering this is
- to do our best to turn the lights on for everyone.
- ## [permalink #27](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post27) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Kevin Welch [(kwelch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 7 Jan 20 21:14_
- My global travels this year took me to France, where in my
- admittedly broken French I was unable to find a single fan of
- Macron, which is probably not surprising given said year of riots.
- It seems in our New Dark 1.2 each country has a choice between a
- neo-liberal overlord who will take your money and give it to their
- friends and a ethno-nationalist proto-fascist who will take your
- money and give it to their friends, with the only difference between
- the two being whom they're blaming for the grift instead of
- themselves. It's like a pan-nationalist version of the two-party
- system. Warren Ellis anticipated this phenomenon in
- Transmetropolitan when he talked about politicians being either The
- Smiler or The Beast.
- ## [permalink #28](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post28) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 00:38_
- In the last State of the World I made a passing mention of Bill
- Gates, so I thought I might briefly return for a glance at the
- Gates-ometer.
- Bill informs his social media followers that he's gotten very
- interested in getting enough healthy sleep, and that he's deeply
- engaged in reading good novels. There's also a few of Bill's
- customary hobbyhorse remarks about nuclear power plants and averting
- senile decline.
- I can't blame Bill for sleeping through this one. If I didn't have
- the WELL State of the World to awake me from my dogmatic slumbers,
- I'd be sleeping more myself, and, hey, I sleep like a top. Also,
- I've got a stack of unread novels on the shelf, plus one I need to
- compose.
- Bill, though has become "Good Billionaire" in an era of Oligarchy.
- Life was more interesting to Bill when he was unique among
- billionaires. Now he's on the back foot, it's like he's stuck in a
- traffic jam of yachts.
- Bill Gates doesn't seem depressed or particularly anxious about
- current affairs. It's also good that he's not being all
- phony-upbeat or engaging in the cherry-picking game of
- "things-are-awful-but." Basically, Bill seems to be reserving his
- energies and trying to avoid dementia until he finds an era more
- hospitable to his vision of rationalist techno-philanthropy. Maybe
- in an Andrew Yang Administration -- but I dunno if he will ever
- again participate in public life in the dynamic way he once did.
- This is the first year when Bill strikes me as an old-fashioned
- figure, a Boomer outwitted by events, trending toward fuddy-duddy.
- ## [permalink #29](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post29) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 01:22_
- I’ve spent time in nations dominated by oligarchy. Oligarchy feels
- strange and different to Americans, but it’s by no means a new
- condition in the world. The condition of social affairs there is
- not “depressing.” It’s “humiliating.”
- It’s about humiliation, not sadness. Huge class differentiation and
- vast wealth disparity is about humbling people. People have to be
- taught there’s a lot they just can’t do that their betters can do,
- and they’re better off not asserting themselves or making trouble
- above their station, unless they’ve pledged fealty to some nobleman
- who commands resources. You can see the world fumbling itself
- toward this kind of social situation, in events like US Senators
- humbly sheltering themselves in Trump’s buildings, and talentless
- Trump children as de facto cabinet members.
- Americans are humiliated. That’s why they’re keen on personal-power
- fetish symbols like handguns. They cling to the Jeffersonian-yeoman
- seilf-image, but that’s not the world they’re in.
- ## [permalink #30](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post30) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 01:24_
- The world in MMXX is not in Crisis like it was in 2008, because it’s
- become Oligarchic. It’s a nascent oligarchy that is global in
- scope, but is unsure of itself and hasn’t written any rules. It
- lacks the palace etiquette of functional aristocracies. They’re
- like the rude-and-crude Oligarchs in the post-Soviet Transition, and
- who went to the same sauna bath-houses and knew the same call-girls,
- but lacked a rule-of-law to protect them from murdering one another.
- But they did have Putin, who got it about them and their issues,
- could out-murder anybody else because he was wrapped in the national
- flag. The siloviki clique of the Petersburg FSB set up a stable
- spy-based deep-state, which is now becoming Russian Sovereign
- Cyberspace. It’s not “rule of law,” but it is a stable surveillance
- state and a stable media-control state. Managed democracy.
- ## [permalink #31](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post31) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 01:25_
- Also, Russians don’t mind it that much. They’re upset if they’re
- intelligentsia or ideaiistic, but if you’re Ivan Sixpack, daily life
- seems doable, if not exactly truthful or reasonable. Moscow looks
- clean and shiny, your country is grabbing chunks of Ukraine in the
- teeth of the former international order and getting away with it,
- while Trump does whatever Putin says, mostly… So there are valid
- reasons for patriotic national enthusiasm, because the world is
- coming to look like you — much more than you have to conform to the
- world.
- So, yes, Putin is an oligarch spy autocrat and secret
- multi-billionaire, but compared to cheap upstarts like Erdogan,
- Muhammed bin Sultan, Trump, Boris Johnson, Viktor Orban in Hungary,
- Modi in India, Putin is visibly a seasoned statesman. He’s, by
- comparison, a classy, on-top-of-it guy. He poisons traitors, sure,
- but he’s KGB, so they’re suppose to do that. If you’re Russian,
- it’s actually fun to watch Putin joke about murder in public. Also,
- if you’re Russian and you imagine yourself being Putin, and
- wondering, well, what would I do in his place — yeah. They’d do
- what he does. They’d have to get a little narrow-eyed and cold at
- heart, but hey, James Bond. Enough said.
- Even the Central Asian gymnast mistress doesn’t bother them. Why
- that chick isn’t world-famous, I’ll never know. She’s like an
- Ivanka Trump who can twist herself into a pretzel. A more fantastic
- court-mistress even than Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and that’s saying
- something.
- ## [permalink #32](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post32) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 01:26_
- So in MMXX I don’t think Russians are “depressed.” If so, less
- depressed than normal for them. They may be getting a little
- spooked about Siberia being on fire and those springlike winters in
- Moscow, but since a lot of that is their fault, they’re especially
- motivated to lie about it. After all, they don’t burn all that much
- carbon themselves, they just sell it to other people who burn it.
- The world is remaking itself in their image, and after decades of
- abject moral, political, economic and military defeat they are a
- vanguard state in 02020. If you know a lot about them, you can
- kinda outguess how things are likely to go in this decade -- or, at
- least, the beginning of it.
- ## [permalink #33](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post33) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Administrivia - !Important! [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 05:44_
- We provided the WRONG EMAIL for sending comments and questions!
- The correct email is
- (((( inkwell at well.com ))))
- Shorter, easier to type, and it works!
- Apologies to all who got bounce messages...
- ## [permalink #34](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post34) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Brian Slesinsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 05:45_
- > Via email from Brian Slesinksy:
- I'm wondering if anyone wants to comment on the state of the Maker
- community? We might have had the last bay area Maker Faire last
- year, though I stopped going a while ago since it seemed like I was
- seeing the same stuff. The shelves at Fry's are bare, even here in
- Silicon Valley. But online, everything seems fine? There are useful
- vendors, you can order lots of interesting parts, and there are
- plenty of hacks on Hackaday, and lots of educational material.
- I just got into musical electronics last year and I'm personally
- having lots of fun. But it feels a bit like woodworking, kind of an
- eccentric hobby that some people are into but hardly world-changing.
- Attempting to make just one thing myself also got me reflecting on
- our utter dependence on the global supply chain. You can unplug from
- social networks, sure, but where are you going to buy your stuff? If
- you make it yourself, where do you buy parts and tools? Not to
- mention outsourced services like laser cutting and PCB board
- manufacture. It's hardly "buy nothing" day; I'm ordering more stuff
- than ever.
- People are down on world trade but I don't think anyone's really
- contemplated what it would be like to try to go it alone. A large
- nation with lots of manufacturing capability could maybe do it, if
- they're willing to do without on some things. Maybe China would
- manage it assuming Trump has convinced them to seriously try?
- (Probably not.)
- The nationalistic mood doesn't seem much in touch with globalist
- reality?
- ## [permalink #35](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post35) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Giorgos Georgiadis [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 05:52_
- > Via email from Giorgos Georgiadis:
- I, for one, enjoyed the introduction. Depressing? Most definitely,
- but I can do "depressing": twenty teens showed me how. But it also
- offers clarity, and that's both a high-quality drug and a solid base
- for discussion.
- What about institutions? Should we try to prop them up, like
- fortifications to help us weather the "political climate" change? Or
- should we let them crumble and build new ones in the midst of chaos?
- (I left the term deliberately undefined. Could be
- benevolent-looking, like Temples of Knowledge AKA libraries,
- universities and the like, or
- oligarchy-targeted-by-oligarchy-for-subversion like parliamentary
- democracy, or anything in between or sideways.)
- ## [permalink #36](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post36) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 06:48_
- "News" isn't what it used to be.
- The daily newspaper and end of day news broadcast were the limited
- and often ignored sources of news in my youth. Most people had no
- idea what was happening in the world. They were engaged in work or
- in various ludic endeavors - living their lives without much thought
- of the rest of the world. At the end of the day my father sprawled
- on the couch supposedly reading the Wall Street Journal, but he
- didn't read much before snoozing.
- ## [permalink #37](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post37) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 06:49_
- Mass media evolved and brought more of the world into our homes -
- the fifteen minute news recap at the end of the day extended to
- thirty minutes. We would glance at the newspapers and background the
- news broadcasts. We didn't think enough about the news to questions
- whether it was effectively vetted, whether it was biased, whether it
- was "fake."
- ## [permalink #38](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post38) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 06:49_
- Flash forward to my reality du jour in MMXX: flooded with
- personalized news feeds, not so much biased as tailored to my
- biases, as interpreted algorithmically by newsbots operated
- variously by Apple, Google, Facebook, et al. 24/7 news via the
- Internet and via cable news left (MSNBC), right (Fox), and center
- (arguably CNN, though if you're far enough right of center, CNN is
- on your left).
- News is delivered in crazy-quilt stacks via Apple News or Google
- News - aggregators that deliver constantly-updated news feeds. And
- it's weird: the news stacks include in close proximity hard news of
- politics and disaster, op-eds tailored to the bot's interpretation
- of my opinion states, glamfest reports (e.g. the recent Golden
- Globes - what were they wearing?), crime reports, reporting on the
- latest Saturday Night Live (now apparently newsworthy), latest
- thinking about health and nutrition - subject to change from one
- study to another, food recipes, news of climate emergency and
- environmental collapse, advice for entrepreneurs, business
- calculations, sports reports, market reports, superhero updates,
- streaming schedules, more politics, more and more politics...
- ## [permalink #39](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post39) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 06:49_
- It appears that many have cable news running nonstop in their homes,
- at least while they're awake, possibly while they're sleeping. The
- cable channels news channels aren't delivering news as we usually
- think of it, diverse reports of global happenings as you might hear
- from still-reliable NPR. The present an endless stream of political
- updates and opinions, usually delivered by a moderator with 4-5
- pundits on call to provide echoes of opinions. While cable
- journalists may aspire to deliver real political news, in prime time
- the shows tend to be more opinion than news. Arguable propaganda -
- washing the brains of millions of people whose opinions are also
- reinforced by tailored news feeds and social media memes. In the US
- and probably elsewhere, populations are politicized like never
- before.
- It's a mess. Solutions are hard to come by. Some of us who have
- been involved with the Internet throughout its evolution saw the
- potential danger in manipulation of the information ecosystem by
- unscrupulous actors, and we often advocated teaching digital
- literacy and critical thinking as an antidote to widespread
- misinformation and disinformation campaigns. So far as I know,
- that's never happened.
- ## [permalink #40](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post40) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Kevin Welch [(kwelch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 07:06_
- I think an endless drumbeat of credulous skepticism as the only
- recipe to prevent getting fleeced in this world is behind a lot of
- people's inability to discern information from disinformation.
- Intellectually milquetoast poobahs have spent the better part of a
- century telling people via non-sequitur allusions to such works as
- 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, hell, even The Illuminatus
- Trilogy, that everything they're told from any source of authority
- is a lie, regardless of the actual evidence. It's the same credulous
- skepticism promoting such a bizarre internet phenomenon as Flat
- Earth. People in power say the Earth is round, and they never tell
- the truth, so it must be flat.
- ## [permalink #41](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post41) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 07:47_
- A "Message of Joy," posted 24 hours ago by Max Casacci, the lead
- guitarist of Turin's best-known rock band "Subsonica." Things seem
- to be pretty lively in Max's digital recording studio, which has
- walls paved with screens the size of movie posters.
- https://soundcloud.com/maxcasacci/messaggio-di-gioia
- ## [permalink #42](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post42) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 08:34_
- > everything they're told from any source of authority
- > is a lie, regardless of the actual evidence
- Tim Leary famously encouraged his followers, and anyone else who
- would listen, to "question authority."
- (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Question_authority)
- The counterculture of the sixties and seventies was skeptical of
- traditional authority, but accepted "alternative facts" and
- theories, including conspiracy theories. This thinking preceded and
- fed into the alt-right/alt-light movements and the current supposed
- "post-truth" political landscape.
- At this point, who can you believe? Best to be skeptical of
- everything and have a well-tuned critical faculty. It's unfortunate
- that grifters have seized political power and popular attention, via
- methods for undermining institutional trust. But undermining that
- trust started a long time ago, it's just drifted from healthy to
- unhealthy skepticism.
- ## [permalink #43](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post43) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Angie Coiro [(coiro)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 09:07_
- Good questions from Brian Slesinksy. The makers' credos ("If you
- can't open it, you don't own it" is one example) posit them in
- defiance to throwaway culture and the massive machines that
- encourage and enable it.
- It's overboard to say that to be a maker today is a revolutionary
- act, but there's at least a drop of truth there.
- ## [permalink #44](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post44) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 10:03_
- I agree that makers can be part of a revolution, along with co-ops.
- Make me think of voluntary simplicity, which never quite became a
- movement:
- http://simplicitycollective.com/start-here/what-is-voluntary-simplicity-2 We need that kind of thinking now, more than ever.
- ## [permalink #45](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post45) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Richard Lawler [(richardl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 19:16_
- I'm involved with the local maker movement in Sebastopol, the former
- home of the former Make Magazine and former Maker Faire. It doesn't
- feel revolutionary. We help people fix their things (lamps usually).
- We teach people how to use some new tech (laser cutters, CAD, CNC
- and microcontrollers) and old tech (jewelry making, welding and
- woodworking). If feels a lot like what local government used to
- provide as community enrichment at libraries and recreation centers
- before Prop 13. And big tech no longer wants anything to do with
- Maker. The code camp movement better watch their back.
- ## [permalink #46](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post46) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Gary Gach [(ggg)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 8 Jan 20 19:49_
- Are those who hastily rebrand these days "The Roaring Twenties"
- ill-advised? ( Remember how the original ended. ) How long does it
- take to brand a decade when one's in it?
- Meanwhile, what shall we call the decade past?
- Or are decades an entrenched formality superceded by digital time?
- I remember the seismic shock in the business cycle when early Java
- issued an upgrade twice within the same quarter. How long before
- the Singularity? etc.
- This year, I’ve observed the slow insinuation of AI into writing.
- Whole articles are now being written and published by program.
- (Probably ads too. Maybe also tv-series? ) And it's not just
- reading. Handling my correspondence for me, Google Mail offers me a
- small but nuanced thesaurus of choices with which to respond,
- automatically.
- I can personally attest to the benefits of voluntary simplicity,
- Jon, to the degree I’ve embraced this in my own life. (I prepare my
- own meals. Driven a car for but three months in my adult life, San
- Francisco being walkable, and with great public transportation. No
- tv. See no need for a cell phone. Is vegetarianism part of that
- too? ) And I know I’m not the only one. We recognize & respect each
- other.
- Co-ops, in my book, are great, 'tho I've yet to be engaged in any,
- so can't speak personally. Meanwhile, I subscribe to Platform.Coop,
- which I find a great bunch of futurists. Here's their year in review
- [ https://platform.coop/blog/the-year-in-platform-cooperatives/](https://platform.coop/blog/the-year-in-platform-cooperatives/)
- And, along with your ever-buoyant, refreshing, eclectic, vital and
- needful annual notes in general, Bruce – thanks a bushel & a heap
- for the amazing music links. ( Do you maintain an online playlist,
- or channel to subscribe to? Or is that now a retro concept. ) Here
- are two note-bending, mind-opening renditions of a Gnossienne by
- Satie that might lend new meaning in our times to what was known
- "world music." They nourish my aspiration to live in a world that,
- instead of being more and more a monoculture ( Satie as Muzak ), is
- as open to imagination and creative possibility as the clear blue
- sky is wide – bringing us closer together in our diversity –
- Van-Anh Vo
- [ https://youtu.be/nyUk4O5hrc4](https://youtu.be/nyUk4O5hrc4) [ 2011 ]
- & an even more simple rendition[ https://youtu.be/-WgLCn6VN-8](https://youtu.be/-WgLCn6VN-8) [ 2012
- ]
- ( would you call the camera position more of a close up ?
- I believe the Russian call that "bigger" rather than closer. )
- &
- Arturo O'Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra
- https://youtu.be/QwzdYaP2x7k [ 2013 ]
- ( Maybe your wife will ask, "What's that!"? )
- They're not from the past year – but the past decade – which, again,
- I'm still just starting to try to wrap my midget head around.
- ## [permalink #47](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post47) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:08_
- So, on the subject of geopolitics of the 2020s, how do you
- figure out how things are likely to work during this decade?
- Well, military theorists have been talking about "plutocratic
- insurgency" since 2011, but once you're reached today's condition of
- oligarchy, it's no longer an "insurgency," it's a genuine political
- arrangement which has to create new social norms after buying or
- hollowing out all the old ones.
- So the most interesting new institutional innovation is what the
- Russians call the "curator" figure. The world's foremost "curator"
- is the guy known as "Putin's Cook," Yevgeny Prigozhin. The 2020s
- are pretty much at the feet of this guy. He's doing great.
- Prigozhin is a former Saint Peterburg gangster who swore fealty
- to Putin, early on -- he ran Putin's favorite restaurant and owned a
- Petersburg grocery chain. Now Prigozhin supplies a lot of Russian
- army chow and has become a state-supported mogul.
- Also Prigozhin deputized to run all kinds of wildly damaging
- offshore operations. He's got a private mercenary army called
- "Wagner" which has been very busy in Ukraine, Syria and Libya, as
- well as a cyberwar outfit called "Internet Research Agency" which
- employs hundreds of trolls to disrupt elections. Along with other
- holdings.
- Of course Prigozhin takes his orders directly from Putin, but
- he's never been in the Russian government and never will be.
- There's no reason for Prigozhin to be in Putin's government, because
- the government is a stumbling block for oligarchic dominance. A
- "curator" doesn't belong to the state, he is private and belongs to
- an oligarchy, and he's informally licensed to use huge sums of
- billionaire money to raise as much hell as possible, anywhere
- outside the nation-state's formal boundaries.
- Also, if he's caught performing this global piracy by some
- other government, the government simply denies that they have
- anything to do with him, and tells them to go pound sand.
- ## [permalink #48](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post48) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:08_
- The Iranian general who just got blown up, Qassim Soleimani, is
- pretty much a picture-perfect "curator," except the Iranians put a
- uniform on him. Other than that, he did everything Prigozhin did,
- in the same way, and even on the same battlefields with the same oil
- derricks.
- Eric Prince of Blackwater aka Akademi, the brother of Trump
- Education Secretary Betsy Devos, is a "curator." When Trump was
- trying to shake down the TV comedian who currently runs Ukraine,
- Giuliani had the "curator" offshored henchman role.
- Oligarchs lack other good ways to get stuff done, because the
- normal mechanisms of governance belong to what they dismiss as the
- "deep state." They are old-fashioned and too much trouble, which is
- why Trump can rub-out General Soleimani even though the USA at the
- moment has no Director of National Intelligence, no Homeland
- Security Secretary, no head of Customs and Border Protection , no
- head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, no State Department
- Under Secretary of Arms Control, and no Navy Secretary. These
- officials were all in the way, and even though they were linchpins
- of American global military-industrial supremacy, they're also,
- just, clutter in the 2020s.
- ## [permalink #49](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post49) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:09_
- The World Trade Organization is about to collapse because Trump
- won't appoint anybody to serve in it. Trump prefers Oligarch
- trade-wars where the children of Chinese tech dynasties are
- kidnapped. In Oligarchy, you don't want tiresome negotiation through
- global bureaucracies: you want other billionaires to kiss the ring
- and bow the knee.
- ## [permalink #50](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page02.html#post50) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:09_
- "Curators" do a lot of the work that covert intelligence
- services used to do, but they're not covert, they're just
- privatized. It's become difficult to hide spies in the 2020s,
- because there is so much casual, yet ubiquitous surveillance going
- on. Everybody knows the names, ranks and faces of the spy-soldiers
- that Putin sent to poison people in London. The USA's covert
- operations have been devastated, mostly by Chinese cyberwarriors who
- mopped up all the federal recruitment records. So it's very hard to
- remain actually secret. Instead, you have to use privatized
- cut-outs, and also, you just have to deny. You can get impeached for
- massive legal misbehavior; but then you just shrug and say, fine, so
- what? Stonewall it. Lie about everything all the time. Guerrillas in the mist.
- ## [permalink #51](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post51) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:10_
- "Curators" are illegal and even war-criminals, but if nobody
- can enforce the former laws, it becomes a realm of Machiavellian
- maneuver among the super-rich. If you're a veteran of the New York
- real estate biz, the law is a series of suggestions. New York real
- estate has been around a long time. It's older than the USA.So modern "curators" are more like privateering warlords than
- spies or political operatives, but a basic geopolitical problem
- arises when they try to legitimize their activities and hold on to
- whatever they stole. Nobody has set up any system to allow that
- yet, and privatized global marauding goes against the Westphalian
- Order. Even if you conquer Ukraine, you can't get named "Lord
- Conqueror Duke of Ukraine." Embarrassingly, you have to fake it
- indefinitely.
- ## [permalink #52](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post52) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:10_
- At the moment there's a big to-do in Libya as rival warlords
- are backed by the Turks and the Russians. In theory, this ought to
- lead to de-facto offshore Ottoman and Czarist colonies in Africa, a
- source of oil and cheap labor, or whatever they imagine they are
- getting there.
- The Libyans are so screwed-up by their Curse of Oil that they'd
- probably be better off as colonial slaves of the rapacious Turks and
- cruel Russians; at least they could get to the grocery store without
- being shot by snipers, and they could probably get some potatoes.
- However, even though Libya's getting sectioned off and
- colonized by curators -- apparently -- the UN, NATO, the usual
- power-payers, China even, they all say nothing about it. Putin and
- Erdogan confer privately about it, while everybody else looks in the
- other direction. Nobody else wants to risk conquering and pacifying
- Libya. They all figure, probably correctly, that it's a quagmire.
- So in MMXX, poor Libya is supposed to get pacified through the
- actions of curator warlords, packs of hired mercenaries, and fleets
- of killer drones. Okay: assuming that somehow works, what will
- Libya use for postage stamps? What kind of money will they have?
- What passports? Will Amazon do deliveries? Are they stateless
- Somalia with better-equipped white-guy marauders? What gives with
- that? It's so interesting.
- ## [permalink #53](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post53) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 01:11_
- Also, "curators" don't have to be huge; they can be a fast,
- dinky two-man operation. Carlos Ghosn, who is just a mere common
- automobile millionaire, hired an ex Green-Beret and a Lebanese
- militiaman to escape the Japanese rule of law and smuggle him off to
- Lebanon. And that worked -- he got smuggled away in a pirate chest,
- yo-ho-ho.
- Millionaires didn't used to do brazen stuff like that, because
- they were afraid of the international order. No big reason to fret
- about that now.
- ## [permalink #54](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post54) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 11:41_
- In this new reality of "all power to the billionaire oligarchs,"
- Donald Trump's ascendance seems to fit, but he's got a problem.
- You can see that he's a wild bull, because he's so intimate with
- bullshit, but his supporters LIKE having a wild bull tearing through
- the house. The didn't like the decor, they wanted an excuse to
- redecorate. Tear it apart, and we'll rebuild it.
- But what happens when he's wrecked the refrigerator, uprooted the
- plumbing, torn through the walls, broken all the windows? He's
- taking out the decor you didn't like, but he's tearing through
- everything else. He's destroying the stuff you still want and need.
- You can look the other way, but sooner or later the food's spoiling
- and the rain's getting in.
- To hold power, a boss bull like Trump has to do one thing: he has to
- make his people feel safe. The problem with this wild bull is that
- he's goring everone and everything in sight. He demands loyalty but
- he's never loyal.
- Sooner or later, he's gonna be Lonesome Rhodes. It just seems
- inevitable. The best teflon coating wears away, sooner or later.
- (See[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Face_in_the_Crowd_(film](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Face_in_the_Crowd_(film)) if you
- don't get that reference.)
- ## [permalink #55](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post55) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Angie Coiro [(coiro)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 11:56_
- Lonesome Rhodes needed that one person willing to turn the
- microphone up. I don't know if anyone around Trump is willing to be
- that person.
- ## [permalink #56](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post56) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Kevin Welch [(kwelch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 12:05_
- The microphone has been turned up plenty of times around Trump, see
- the infamous Access Hollywood tape. The problem is it's never been
- turned up on anything that was a deal-breaker for his base.
- Although, I've grown so cynical and morbidly impressed with his
- base's ability to resolve their cognitive dissonance around the man
- that I truly think Trump could get hot-mic'ed saying that he's
- secretly handing America over to communist antifa Muslim atheists
- and his followers would applaud this brilliant 4-D chess move that
- owns the libs, somehow...
- ## [permalink #57](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post57) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 17:11_
- I'm sure there's a line, even for his followers. But the real
- question is what it will take for the Senate and Justice Department,
- currently in his pocket, to say enough is enough.
- ## [permalink #58](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post58) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 17:18_
- Meanwhile, we should yank the trunk of the elephant in the room:
- climate change.
- "Is it wrong to be hopeful about climate change?"
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200109-is-it-wrong-to-be-hopeful-about-cl
- [imate-change](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200109-is-it-wrong-to-be-hopeful-about-climate-change)
- "No individual will bend the emissions curve alone. No writer,
- modeling team, no forest firefighter, no environmental lawyer will
- carry the day. But if you’re looking for hope, there might be a
- space in constructing something together – in responsive hope. No
- single coral restoration programme will heal the wounds inflicted on
- reefs around the world, but perhaps networks offer a way forward.
- That collective goal, and the space of uncertainty in that
- 'perhaps,' is our hope."
- ## [permalink #59](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post59) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Andrew Alden [(alden)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 9 Jan 20 19:04_
- When it comes to climate, we're all Lilliputians, but together we can lasso
- Gulliver.
- ## [permalink #60](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post60) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 02:55_
- > Via email from Brian Slesinksy:
- "I'm wondering if anyone wants to comment on the state of the Maker
- community? We might have had the last bay area Maker Faire last
- year, though I stopped going a while ago since it seemed like I was
- seeing the same stuff."
- This subject of the Maker Movement is of keen interest to me
- personally, because I was a columnist for MAKE magazine and curator
- of the "Casa Jasmina" maker house-of-the-future in Turin.
- ## [permalink #61](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post61) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 02:56_
- "Movements," as opposed to institutions, tend to go somewhere, and
- then they stop. So "Making" was an eclectic tumbleweed of a lot of
- moving novelties that I enjoyed learning about, such as Web 2.0,
- open source hard ware, 3Dprinting, artisanal electronics,
- shareables, fabrication labs, public hacker events, sneaking weird
- cyberpunk DIY personal projects into dead Italian factories, and
- even more!
- I'm happy I was involved with that. It was truly illuminating, and
- worth every minute. Thanks to Making, I'm much more at ease with
- topics and activities that would likely have been forever closed to
- me as a career novelist. I know a lot more about material culture
- now, and I'm even far more personally handy than I once was.
- However, fifteen years is a rather long time for any "movement."
- Nobody talks about "Web 2.0" any more; the Internet was famously
- "built with O'Reilly books," but Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon,
- Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, those vast post-Internet
- entities are not built with O'Reilly books, and O'Reilly was the
- source of Make, the way Whole Earth was the source of the WELL.
- ## [permalink #62](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post62) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 02:58_
- Even the Maker Movement had to meet some bills, it couldn't
- run just on raw joy and sweat equity. For Make that was the
- magazine, selling some tools and tie-ins, and throwing big,
- profitable public events quietly underwritten by tech companies.
- Eventually they suffered a cash crunch when their discreet alliance
- with the corporations broke down.
- In MMXX, if you're a tech company enamored with making, you
- just build your own fab-lab in the basement and give it to the
- engineers as a playroom/R&D lab. You don't need hand-holding from
- MAKE magazine columnists.
- https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/this-monogram-appliance-began-as-a-b
- [right-idea-in-a-makerspace](https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/this-monogram-appliance-began-as-a-bright-idea-in-a-makerspace)
- These big-time sponsors figured out that they could have
- trained professionals tinkering. They don't need a massive popular
- movement of random tinkerers tinkering -- that doesn't convey to
- them any genuine research and development benefit. Nobody tinkers
- up a functional and legal mass-market stove or refrigerator.
- Makers are hobbyists and popular-mechanics people, they mostly make
- toys, games, collectibles, costumes, and Burner-style FX
- knick-knacks that approach technology-art, device art, and machine
- art. Activities dear to my heart, but they're not heavy industry
- and they rarely scale.
- ## [permalink #63](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post63) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 02:58_
- Then there's the experience of the "Makers" themselves -- as
- in, what are accomplishing here, what is your own end goal? Is this
- something you do on the weekends, like building ships in a bottle,
- or are you a designer/engineer light-manufacturer who is at it all
- day? If you're a professional craftsperson, you'll need to
- manufacture instead of tinkering --- because"real artists ship."
- You want inventory, patrons, a customer base, maybe a brick and
- mortar shop -- maybe you use some digital tools, but you're a
- self-employed skilled laborer, and good luck with it.
- If you don't ship any product, and you're a professional
- tinkerer, then you're actually into "Makertainment" rather than
- making. You want to record and sell your process as a form of
- monetizable performance-art.
- ## [permalink #64](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post64) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 02:59_
- Maker-entertainment is quite a different animal than the "Maker
- Movement," because there's a lot more money and fame in it. This is
- Adam Savage pulling down Starbucks sponsorship money for harnessing
- an aeolopile gizmo with liquid nitrogen.
- https://youtu.be/aNTq7qOAFeg
- Okay, that monetizable Youtube stunt is super-entertaining if
- you ask me, but it's not "making," even though Adam shows you
- exactly how he makes it. It's a paid commercial for Starbucks by
- other means, and also, if you yourself screw around with liquid
- nitrogen, you're gonna get frostbite scars. Adam, by contrast, is a
- globe-trotting veteran TV star with numerous employees.
- Here in MMXX, this is the post-Maker state of the art here:
- Adam Savage, pro entertainer and special FX dude. I have to say I
- learn a lot from him, and I actually pay money to be a member of
- "Tested."
- It doesn't much surprise me that the show-biz aspects of Making
- would turn into show-biz. That was always the most Californian
- thing about it.
- ## [permalink #65](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post65) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 03:02_
- As for our own"Maker House of the Future" in Turin, man, that
- was super. So much fun. You would not believe the free, adulatory
- publicity we reaped for that, especially my spouse, "The Jasmina of
- Casa Jasmina," the feminist maven of the "Internet of Women Things."
- Jasmina became famous in Turin, almost a mythical figure, because
- she was the hostess of this avant-garde local house "Casa Jasmina."
- That house was the only aspect of the Via Egeo ex-factory
- complex that was much frequented by Italian women. We had female
- astronauts and female museum curators in there. The female mayor
- dropped by. Some great parties, too. All of the Torino Great and
- Good were trying to sit on our squeaky plywood furniture. It went
- on for years!
- Today that factory complex is civilizing, normalizing, almost
- gentrifying. Via Egeo 16 used to be more or less a squat that
- everybody ignored, but it got extensively renovated and is earning
- money, so it makes no legal sense to have a place that is basically
- a weird hotel room inside the middle of a design-office space. The
- legal contradictions of trying to do too much at once got in our
- way, and also, Turin is getting rather sensitive about the
- out-of-control AirBnB thing. So, in Jan 15, Casa Jasmina ceases to
- exist.
- A clean exit is never that bad a fate for any act of futurism.
- Casa Jasmina was becoming a showplace of aging Maker gizmos from
- five years ago. Also, Via Egeo still has a so-called "Fab Lab" down
- in its basement, but I'm not sure why they need that MIT
- nomenclature in 2020. They could just buy the robots, routers,
- laser-cutters, 3DPrinters, for they've become pretty standard.
- ## [permalink #66](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post66) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 03:03_
- At "Casa Jasmina" we never made any profit, because we also had
- a covert alliance with a corporation. In our case, it was the
- open-source hardware outfit "Arduino," with CEO Massimo Banzi as our
- maestro, theorist and gray eminence. Like a lot of hobby startups
- Arduino had some rough times, but they've pulled through, and at CES
- in Vegas this year, out came the first mainstream industrial Arduino
- product, the "Arduino Portenta."
- https://blog.arduino.cc/2020/01/07/arduino-goes-pro-at-ces-2020/
- The "Portenta" is not a maker-style "innovation platform," it's an
- open-source heavy-duty industrial device, and why not? I dunno if
- it'll sell, but in terms of where the maker movement went as it
- developed with the years, that makes sense to me. You "innovate,"
- and you either write down the experiment and close the lab, or else
- it turns into something commonplace that is no longer "innovative."
- That's what the calendar is all about. Don't cry if it's gone,
- rejoice that it was ever there.
- ## [permalink #67](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post67) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 06:53_
- "Casa Jasmina" is over, but in the meantime, Internet-of-Things
- industry booster Stacey Higginbotham says today that the entire idea
- of a "smart home" has to be abandoned. If they're run in the
- surveillance-marketing fashion that they are today, no sane person
- ought to trust one.
- https://mailchi.mp/iotpodcast/stacey-on-iot-ces-madness?e=10392a4747
- *Sometimes it's better to pleasantly waste some time on cool Maker
- hobbies than it is to toss billions of dollars in VC money out the
- window.
- ## [permalink #68](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post68) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 10 Jan 20 08:27_
- I was never a committed maker, though I had connections to Make
- Magazine and was part of an installation, at the first Austin Maker
- Faire, on the "DIY house of the future." Mostly smoke and mirrors,
- that installation had nothing to do with the Internet of Things
- smart home/wired home mythology. It was focused more on making than
- information systems: with advances in building technologies and
- materials, we could have user-configurable homes, flexible modular
- structures. Art generated from resident brainwaves. Consoles for
- user-configured electronic murals and music. Movable walls and
- configurable rooms.
- But I was more drawn to the culture than to the practice of making,
- which had its beginnings with Whole Earth ("access to tools and
- ideas"). The Whole Earth project was my most compelling influence as
- an adult. It brought me here, to the WELL, and it encouraged my
- eclectic, generalist mindset. I miss the Whole Earth/Point
- Foundation organization and its many outputs, but I see the "tools"
- aspect reflected in maker culture. We need a project to manifest,
- again, the spirit of self-directed experimentation and adventure. A
- framework for the curious, discarding passive consumerism for active
- tinkering.
- Bruce also mentioned Stacey Higginbotham's piece rightly
- acknowledging that much of the "Internet of Things" framework has
- been out of whack. What was missing - a strategic understanding of
- what users would want in a smart home, vs a bunch of gadgets wired
- together without a clear overriding concept of the value of that
- integration. I like that I can control my thermostat from my smart
- phone, but I don't need my thermostat to talk to my refrigerator or
- my stove. It would be more useful if my home could gather data about
- the environment and manage energy use based on some set of
- user-guided parameters, and do that with complete security and
- trust. Also Pliny Fisk and I were talking years ago about building
- just that kind of home, and networking it with the neighborhood, so
- that there would be cooperative targeting of energy goals, and forms
- of sharing so far undefined. There could be a gamification aspect,
- as well. As a by-product, you would have a more robust relationship
- with your neighbors. I don't see that happening anywhere, at least
- not yet.
- My last post mentioned climate change, and I'll repeat part of the
- bit I quoted from a BBC article: "... if you’re looking for hope,
- there might be a
- space in constructing something together – in responsive hope. No
- single coral restoration programme will heal the wounds inflicted on
- reefs around the world, but perhaps networks offer a way forward."
- Maybe we could deploy maker energy and IoT innovation, and build
- popular networks of response to the crisis. I say popular as
- distinct from government: it's clear that world governments are
- failing to respond, so it's up to the rest of us to address the
- problem.
- ## [permalink #69](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post69) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Fox [(brucefox)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 11 Jan 20 16:31_
- Hi Folks, Some newish things coming up in the last couple of weeks:
- The Americans know who you are. The Americans listen to what you
- say. The Americans know where you are. The Americans can smite you
- from afar with no warning. These are characteristics that only used
- to be ascribed to the gods. The Americans are doing these things
- (for good or ill) on a regular basis in this last decade and pretty
- much no one else in the world can put the combination together.
- But, like the gods of old, the leadership doesn't seem to have the
- best outcomes for mankind as the central goal.
- And the Iranians, trusting in their god, shot off what must have
- been the entire year's budget for ballistic missiles in one go, with
- a 26% failure rate and managed to not actually hurt anyone. So some
- anti-aircraft unit got "buck fever" and took out an airliner (oh
- praise allah). These nitwits, warned buy their generals to shut
- down civil aviation for the hostilities went for the money and kept
- the airport open. I don't like or support Mr. T but it is clear
- there are dimmer bulbs in the leadership of the world.
- So I wonder, will the next general of the Quds force want to be
- out and about rallying the militias of the middle east when he knows
- the Americans know who he is, listen to his every radiated
- conversation, know his location, and can center punch his moving car
- with a 50 Kg missile pulling the trigger half the world away?
- ## [permalink #70](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post70) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 11 Jan 20 23:50_
- Speaking of artists who can make unlikely contraptions in their
- garage, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is having a
- retrospective show of the technology art work of Rafael
- Lozano-Hemmer.
- He is definitely one of the most advanced and capable tech-artists
- of this century. If you ever want to light up an entire city with
- interactive lasers, Rafael is your guy.
- https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/01/rafael-lozano-hemmer-san-franc
- [isco-moma/](https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2020/01/rafael-lozano-hemmer-san-francisco-moma/)
- He's also the only artist I know who is Mexican-Canadian, which
- seems like a really cool thing to be when you think about it.
- ## [permalink #71](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post71) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 00:13_
- Here’s a nice retrospective of “Electronic Dance Music” in the last
- decade. You’ll note that EDM has some inherent youth appeal because
- your Boomer parents don’t like it, but also it’s the only form of
- pop music production that seems to be technically advancing.
- Nobody’s done anything new or remarkable with electric guitars in
- quite a while — they have become as stable as the theremin, which,
- in the year MMXX, is one hundred years old. Mankind has had an
- entire ecentury of electronic music….
- https://pitchfork.com/features/article/2010s-reverberations-of-edm-skrillex-ze
- [dd/](https://pitchfork.com/features/article/2010s-reverberations-of-edm-skrillex-zedd/)
- EDM has got new methods of democratized production, with YouTube
- tutorials, Ableton plug-ins, and sample packs you can buy on line.
- And then, if you’re a big draw and you’ve gotten to the arena stage,
- you can wire up a bunch of LED billboards and put on a garish
- multimedia show that’s basically a traveling theme-park. And that’s
- monetizable! Wow!
- “Whatever happens to musicians will happen to everybody,” and
- really, the ruthless punishment these artists absorb, while
- continuing somehow to survive and emit more or less coherent noises,
- it just astonishes me. Symphony orchestras and opera still somehow
- exist in our world, next to these musical EDM entrepreneurs who
- squeak by like self-employed circuit-bending crafts people from the
- Maker Movement.
- ## [permalink #72](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post72) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 03:06_
- *Okay, maybe it was a bit cruel of me to claim that the guitar is as
- stable as the theremin, because of course you can plug grandpa's
- electric guitar into an FX box that is basically an EDM rig.
- https://neuraldsp.com/quad-cortex
- *Lookah all the knobs and buttons on that! "Quad Cortex is the most
- powerful floor modeler on the planet. With 2GHz of dedicated DSP
- from its Quad-Core SHARC® architecture, this ludicrous amount of
- processing capacity provides limitless sound design possibilities."
- ## [permalink #73](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post73) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 03:08_
- <scribbled by bruces Sun 12 Jan 20 03:08>
- ## [permalink #74](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post74) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Gary Gach [(ggg)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 07:11_
- <70> If I may pause for a moment on the San Francisco connection
- here – it makes sense that SF MOMA is presenting this, rather than,
- say, San Jose Museum of Art, now that the two cities have made an
- historic handshake: Silicon Valley keeps the hardware, San Francisco
- explores the software. It's a leap to say that rock&roll lightshows
- of the '60s have evolved and transformed, but the fact is light is
- becoming an element in public spaces here.
- No flying billboards yet, as from out of Blade Runner. It's still
- all noncommercial and arty. Salesforce Tower has a different "movie"
- that plays in its peak every night, barely recognizable images taken
- from daily life transformed into shifting shapes and color form. The
- Bay Bridge is also a nightly lightshow of sorts – thanks to an
- outfit called Illuminate.org.
- Their latest, in Grace Cathedral, sold out for 2019 the moment it
- was announced: a projector of 300,000 lumens has been hoisted up and
- fastened into the flying buttresses to create a 100-foot curtain of
- shifting light and color, in a space beside the interfaith chapel,
- where the labyrinth sits, in a 15-minute composition of music and
- light.
- https://gracecathedral.org/events/grace-light/
- ## [permalink #75](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page03.html#post75) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 07:39_
- This talk about lightshows and projections makes me think of Luke
- Savisky's "Eye of Texas" projection on New Year's Eve 2006 in
- Austin:[ https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2008-02-08/589099/](https://www.austinchronicle.com/arts/2008-02-08/589099/) Luke
- (https://lukesavisky.com/) has always been an ambitious and creative
- video artist. Ahead of his time - he was doing this sort of thing
- back in the 90s. The projections just kept getting larger.
- Also around 2005-2006, while working with the Digital Convergence
- Initiative here in Austin, I was engaged in speculative converations
- with Kim Smith, who was looking ahead of the curve with flat screen
- development. Kim saw the potential to have flat screens everywhere,
- including massive displays. Prescient - I see screens everywhere,
- some scaled to immensity.
- Diverse shadows on our 21st century cave walls... What will the
- 2020s bring? More light, less shadow?
- ## [permalink #76](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post76) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:38_
- We bloggers (or webloggers) around the turn of the 21st century
- argued that our unfiltered and diverse voices would yield a better
- perspective on truth, surfacing stories and details that mainstream
- media would inherently miss. Some of us had been trained as
- journalists and advocated teaching journalistic process and ethics
- to bloggers. The Internet would bring the democratization of
- knowledge, etc.
- Utopian visions of the future of the Internet always looked on the
- shiny side and failed to consider the potential for wicked dark
- clouds to form. In fact blogs and social media were ideal petri
- dishes for viral growth of malevolent propaganda. And with the
- mainstreaming of Internet access, access spread to populations not
- known for critical thinking and discretion. Our efforts had evolved
- an ecosystem for distribution of weaponized memes. This only sunk in
- when Donald Trump, a grifter know for his Twitter presence and
- cultivation of conspiracy theories, was elected President in 2016.
- Since then he's been aggressively constructing false narratives
- while taking power (and money) and sharing with affiliated cohorts,
- undermining democratic intention and the rule of law.
- ## [permalink #77](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post77) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:38_
- As Bruce said earlier, Trump's ascendance reflects a global trend, a
- reaction to globalism, to the sense of eroding borders that is
- attributable somewhat to the evolution of the Internet. A backlash,
- leveraged by wealthy opportunists and authoritarian bullies.
- That's one view, anyway. But the world is still spinning, artists
- are still creating, makers are still making, opposition is
- percolating, people (in the US, at least) still have jobs, inner
- cities appear to be thriving, suburban dads are still mowing their
- weekend lawns, retirees are cruising and watching their investments
- appreciate... the world is full of contradictions.
- ## [permalink #78](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post78) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:39_
- Half of America is fearing the worst, the other half feels safe and
- secure with Mad King Orange's persistent sales pitch. How long will
- they apply snake oil to their various wounds before they realize
- it's not working, they're not secure or safe. In fact a storm is
- coming, forecast by science, ignored by a faction more concerned
- with short-term profit than long-term survival. The mayor of Amity
- Island ignores the malevolent shark approaching.
- ## [permalink #79](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post79) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:48_
- What to do in MMXX? This is a critical time, we have to act on
- climate change mitigation now, though now might be so late that we
- have to focus on adaptation as well. As individuals we can find
- ways to reduce our carbon footprints, but individual action isn't
- enough. We need acknowledgement of the problem and urgent action to
- curb emissions at government/policy levels, and within corporations.
- We must vote for candidates who grasp the problem and are committed
- to the challenge. If you march in the streets, focus on addressing
- climate change as your cause.
- In his 100th Viridian Note, Bruce wrote:
- "There are three basic activities we Viridians can fruitfully
- pursue: we can create new concepts, we can spread ideas, and we can
- be a moral force by example.
- "Being small and diffuse is a tactical advantage for those three
- activities. We can never expect to rule the planet by Papal decree,
- but we're by no means without potential influence. Small diffuse
- groups get quite a lot done in the world.
- "If we Viridians successfully affect the course of events, it won't
- be by lobbying, staging elections, shipping products, or passing
- laws. It'll be by making a new world seem plausible, by becoming
- early adapters, and by the Vaclav Havel method of publicly "living
- in truth."
- "Becoming an effective early adapter means finding new things and
- processes, and making them modish. It's about cause celebres,
- theatricality, publicity stunts, and hype.
- "Creating buzz is something at which we Viridians should excel.
- Besides, it's fun."
- http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/76-100/00100.html
- ## [permalink #80](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post80) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Justin Pickard [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:56_
- > Via email from Justin Pickard:
- In <inkwell.vue.507.5>, Bruce mentions that neither Estonia nor
- Dubai are, perhaps, quite as redolent of the future as they once
- were. With this overarching sense of clumping or convergence, that
- the differences between individual countries' fates are a matter of
- flavour or degree, rather than anything more fundamental, I wonder
- if a country-by-country weather forecast is the most helpful way to
- be slicing things.
- With that in mind, are there any smaller places (cities, landscapes,
- retail parks, UNESCO world heritage sites, whatever) that feel like
- particularly good points of reference, in figuring out the shape of
- things to come? What about people? Any individuals we should be
- keeping an eye on, or who aren't getting the attention they deserve?
- And how about those things that overspill or ignore the borders of
- the modern nation-state?
- ## [permalink #81](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post81) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Brian Slesinsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:58_
- > Via email from Brian Slesinsky:
- Besides show-biz, it seems like the other way for makers to ship is
- using Kickstarter? Then you really need to figure out how to
- manufacture stuff. It seems like a lot of Kickstarter campaigns fail
- at various stages. They can fail up front by raising money, or raise
- the money and then discover manufacturing is harder than they
- thought and fail to ship. Or sometimes they do eventually manage to
- ship, but months or years after they said they would.
- Seems like if you succeed then you've started a small business,
- which is great if that's the business you want to be in.
- As a retired tinkerer I was thinking about what my deliverable would
- be, and since I'm a software guy who's dabbling in hardware, I think
- my shippable is a video and a recipe. So, I'm thinking about some
- kid who watches the video and wants to build the thing for cheap.
- What tools do they need, what parts do they buy? I could buy fancy
- equipment for myself, but I'm not going to if it limits the audience
- for my recipe. Downloading a pattern and ordering something cheap
- from a laser-cutting service seems pretty doable, along with buying
- some parts at Home Depot. There are services where you can have a
- PCB board made, but I'll want to make sure the soldering is easy to
- do with a cheap soldering iron and basic skills, or avoid it
- altogether if there's a way.
- If it's popular, maybe one of the musical electronics companies will
- have someone in Shenzhen manufacture a nicer copy of it and then you
- won't need to build it yourself anymore.
- I'm paying some attention to the computer keyboard enthusiasts, who
- pay surprising amounts of money to have a computer keyboard made
- just the way they like it. (Or maybe to make videos with keyboards
- in them? Hard to tell.) The keyswitches are made by a handful of
- companies and there are tiny vendors who apparently buy parts in
- bulk and sell them in smaller quantities, or assemble a keyboard if
- you're willing to pay. I need to buy keyswitches too, so I'm glad
- they exist.
- This all seems like rather consumer-oriented behavior? It's what you
- do when you can't find exactly what you want on Amazon and you're
- enough of an enthusiast that you won't settle for what's out there.
- The companies aligned with this behavior sell parts and services, so
- you're still buying stuff, just different stuff.
- It seems like show-biz and making stuff aren't entirely distinct?
- People who watch cooking shows do cook themselves sometimes. This
- might be more the lighter side of education. YouTube seems to be how
- people learn things nowadays, if they just want to do it and not get
- credentials proving you learned it.
- Maybe education and show-biz are merging a bit? You have the
- theoretical side where they teach stuff that there's no way you're
- going to do yourself but is conceptually interesting, and then
- there's the more practical side.
- ## [permalink #82](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post82) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Brian Slesinsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 08:59_
- > Via email from Brian Slesinsky:
- Regarding the Internet of Things, it seems like a large subset is
- the Internet of Cameras?
- At our house it is mostly my wife who buys the cameras. We have
- cameras outside pointed at the front porch where the packages get
- dropped because we once had a package stolen. It's reassuring when
- we're traveling. Also, we have a dash-cam because the other drivers
- are crazy, though the dash-cam isn't on much and doesn't seem to be
- effective for much of anything. A lot of this seems to be about
- which side of the camera you're on, if it's pointed at someone else
- you feel better.
- I did buy a camera for my mother in the form of a Google Nest Hub
- Max. This was strictly for easier video chat and it does the job. We
- chat every morning, it's great. It's a nice photo frame too. But
- getting through the install up to the point where we could video
- chat was honestly scary for her. Particularly the part where it
- insisted on learning to recognize her voice. It's like, a normal
- phone doesn't insist on this, so why now?
- But suppose it didn't need to be trained? It feels like this is a
- matter of product design and technology getting a little bit better.
- She is happy with the switch. You turn it off and it says
- "microphone and camera are off!" This is just what people want.
- Geeks may want a physical shutter or verifiable open source
- binaries, but if your product says "microphone and camera are off"
- in an authoritative voice, I think a lot of people will go for it.
- ## [permalink #83](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post83) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Sigmundur Halldorsson [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 09:00_
- > Via email from Sigmundur Halldorsson:
- One of the most remarkable TV series of 2019 was HBO's Chernobyl -
- a story many of us are familiar with. The show was so relevant to
- 2019 as it had a very powerful comment on truth vs.
- disinformation/propaganda "It [truth] is always there, whether we
- see it or not, whether we choose to or not. The truth doesn’t care
- about our needs or wants. It doesn’t care about our governments, our
- ideologies, our religions. It will lie in wait for all time.” These
- words from nuclear scientist Valery Legasov, who would then be
- quoted "What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them
- for truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we
- no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else
- is left but to abandon even the hope of truth." - so have we reached
- that point? Where we should abandon all hope of truth? Because there
- was a very strong warning embedded in that TV series (and the
- Chernobyl disaster as a whole) in that "Every lie we tell incurs a
- debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid." - so this
- seemed to reflect the situation we are in right now. What with
- alternative facts, climate change deniers, disinformation efforts
- and all that - are we seeing a way out? At least I'm seeing some
- tools to enable me to spot bots on Twitter - or is this state of
- affairs working in favor of the oligarchy? So we'll get lots more of
- it in 2020? Have we generally come to the conclusion that the
- removal of quality control (aka editors) from the distribution of
- "news" and "information" in the name of "democratization of
- information" was a mistake and that we need solutions (be those
- based on biased AI or biased people) in order to get away from a
- world of alternative facts? Are we seeing serious efforts in this
- area?
- ## [permalink #84](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post84) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Kieran O'Neill [(oneillk)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 15:05_
- I would note that it's very interesting to see Jon talking about
- voluntary simplicity on one page, and the Veridian movement on the
- next. I still remember Bruce's excoriating remarks about "hairshirt
- environmentalism" from way back when.
- But it's not a bad juxtaposition to be making. If you look at the
- Millenial generation, we've been were propelled by a combination of
- relative poverty and a sense of environmental responsibility to
- pursue not-always-voluntary simplicity. But at the same time, we
- were a more connected generation than any before us. Phones, tablets
- and laptops were cheap. Rent, cars, property and all the traditional
- accoutrements of the middle class weren't. So you had "hipsters"
- riding around on bicycles, growing organic vegetables in square-foot
- raised beds, and making their own jam, while meticulously
- documenting everything to their friends on Facebook, Instagram and
- Twitter. It's been a kind of favela chic environmentalism.
- And now Gen Z is coming of age, and they're more connected and more
- economically disadvantaged than ever before. They're going to be
- interesting to watch -- how they practice environmentalism, how they
- organise, and how they vote, especially as the Boomers start dying
- off. The statistics I've seen seem to suggest that Gen Z is more in
- favour of race and immigrant rights, more in favour of gender and
- LGBTQ+ rights, and more in favour of socialism than any before them.
- ## [permalink #85](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post85) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): ixak [(ixak23)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 12 Jan 20 18:33_
- As we think about the rise of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment
- across Europe and the US (and elsewhere), I was struck by something
- I noticed in Uganda. Uganda is one of the larger refugee-hosting
- countries. They have a population of about 42 million, and they’ve
- taken in more than a million refugees, mostly from South Sudan and
- the DRC. This type of activity isn’t exclusive to them, but it’s
- worth noting in the context of their past history. In the late 80s
- and early 90s, during the Rwandan civil war, Uganda absorbed many
- Rwanda refugees, and future President Museveni incorporated them
- into his military/security apparatus (even to the point of
- appointing future Rwandan president Paul Kagame as his head of
- military intelligence). There are those who see echoes of this in
- the current Ugandan stance towards refugees – the DRC and South
- Sudan are deeply unstable neighbors, and their refugee populations
- provide touchpoints for Uganda’s regional intelligence networks as a
- bulwark against current and future border conflicts and regional
- upheavals.
- Similar stances can be seen in Jordan and Turkey’s attitudes towards
- the Syrian refugee networks – better to have fugitives from an
- unstable neighbor who want or owe you favors than to make them your
- enemies. This was also the US attitude towards Cuban refugees from
- the 60s well on into the 90s, while the Pakistani government has
- used FATA-based Pashtun factions to render parts of Afghanistan
- unstable and persistently ungovernable since the Russians invaded.
- In this context it’s useful to see where similar gates are open in
- response to ethnonationalism’s rising tides. Certainly the
- government of Bangladesh is absorbing Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar,
- and if the BJP in India succeeds in its anti-Muslim agenda, both
- Bangladesh and Pakistan will have to accommodate outmigration or
- even expulsion of substantial numbers of Indian Muslims (in India,
- even small percentages result in big numbers). Ethiopia hosts large
- numbers of Eritreans refugees as well, despite minor thaws in their
- respective relationships.
- Which brings me to my point of curiosity – who’s going to do this
- for the Uighurs? There’s 11+ million of them in China, and maybe
- they aren’t fleeing in large numbers at the moment, but China’s
- obviously concerned enough to toss 5% of Xinjiang into concentration
- camps just on the off-chance that the Muslims there might continue
- to feel less “Chinese” than would otherwise be desirable. If
- outflows increase, it’ll be interesting to see who’s willing to host
- them in ever-increasing numbers.
- ## [permalink #86](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post86) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 00:16_
- https://www.politico.eu/article/fayez-al-sarraj-tentative-ceasefire-russia-tur
- [key-takes-hold-in-libya/](https://www.politico.eu/article/fayez-al-sarraj-tentative-ceasefire-russia-turkey-takes-hold-in-libya/)
- Here’s current developments in Libya, where the United Nations, the
- European Union, and the USA are just sorta staring in bemusement as
- Erdogan, plus Putin and his deniable offshore curator-army, have
- arranged a Libyan cease-fire. If there really is a genuine
- cease-fire in Libya that is sustainable, then I’m not sure what kind
- of hold the Turks and Russians have on the violent factions in
- Libya. Why would the Libyan warlords do anything that Turks or
- Russians say — out of sheer gratitude?
- The Russians and the Turks are by no means natural allies, so it’s
- hard to understand how they would jointly maintain a client state in
- Libya. How do they divvy up the loot without backstabbing each
- other?
- I'd be guessing that they somehow establish a duopoly-on-violence
- and then settle in to drain different Libyan oil-patches, but that’s
- not all that easy, either. Everybody thinks the oil will pay for
- the invasion and it never does. So what are they getting into,
- what’s on their mind? How would they protect Libya from all the
- other interested parties who have been destroying Libya all this
- time, such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates. ISIS and
- various Chinese drone manufacturers?
- Russian couldn’t defeat Afghanistan and Turkey can’t defeat Kurds,
- so why are they begging for this new trouble? Is it just Napoleonic
- hubris from two tough-guy male oligarchs?
- Also, what if they win?
- ## [permalink #87](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post87) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 00:19_
- It makes me wonder if “frozen conflict” might become a more general
- situation. Why can’t more people live just like “Abkhazia,”
- “Transdnistria,” “Crimea,” “Novorussia,” “South Ossetia,” which are
- all fake-states under Russian protection? As for Turkey, it has
- long possessed illegal “Turkish Cyprus” and also the new Turkish
- protectorate zone in Syria that Trump retreated from, which doesn’t
- even have a name yet. I don’t expect the Turks to leave that area,
- by the way. At least: not Erdogan.
- Maybe the Russians and Turks could become so geopolitically
- influential that they can legitimize these various places they’ve
- grabbed — (or, from their domestic point of view, places that fell
- into their laps and that they are nobly defending from the likes of
- savage Greeks and Ukrainians).
- In the case of “Turkish Cyprus” that’s been an unrecognized area
- ever since the early 1970s. It’s an anomalous zone, generations
- old, that sustains itself mostly with gambling, retirees and heroin.
- Imagine a vast planetary proliferation of Turkish Cypruses. I’ll
- give it one thing: Turkish Cyprus is a heavily armed Turkish
- military occupation zone and it sure is “peaceful.” I’ve been
- there: you can hear a pin drop.
- ## [permalink #88](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post88) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 00:23_
- Then there’s other people’s post-Westphalian land-grab problems,
- occupied Palestine, Golan Heights, Kosovo… and endlessly “failed
- states” like Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan…. If you add in the
- possibility of waves of refugees, as ixak23 remarks, due to ethnic
- purges, or rising seas, in a planetary landscape that’s physically
- unstable from climate change, you might be looking at a 22nd century
- where national walls and borders are physically unworkable. The
- nation-state system, of staking out the acreage with gates and
- barbed wire, has to be abandoned like the Maginot Line. You end
- up with a different, novel, planetary security order, as in: what
- mercenary army do you pay mafia protection to, and are you on
- somebody’s belt-and-road trading system…
- A situation where nobody obeys nation-states any more, they’re
- archaic, and you’ve got an oligarchic situation that looks more like
- Dark Age Italian city-states. Not any post-national “world
- government,” but a pulverized world that’s got some networked
- patches of high-tech governance on it, here and there, with vast
- barbarian hordes of AirBnB nomads.
- ## [permalink #89](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post89) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Mark McDonough [(mcdee)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 01:03_
- London looks like a city-state with an archaic nation state
- inconveniently attached.
- ## [permalink #90](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post90) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): ixak [(ixak23)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 02:40_
- "The
- nation-state system, of staking out the acreage with gates and
- barbed wire, has to be abandoned like the Maginot Line. You end
- up with a different, novel, planetary security order, as in: what
- mercenary army do you pay mafia protection to, and are you on
- somebody’s belt-and-road trading system…"
- Well, GPC is back at the top of the agenda for the US State
- Department
- https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-12-10/age-great-power-competition
- But internally they've changed a key word in the acronym. In a
- telling revision (despite its usage in the linked article), it no
- longer stands for "Great Power Competition" but now refers to
- "Global Power Competition."
- ## [permalink #91](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post91) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 06:25_
- I can't read the whole article at Foreign Affairs (pay wall), but I
- see this in the second paragraph:
- "... the United States is gearing up for a new era—one marked not by
- unchallenged U.S. dominance but by a rising China and a vindictive
- Russia seeking to undermine U.S. leadership and refashion global
- politics in their favor."
- The current administration has seemed to facilitate the undermining
- of U.S. leadership, and the State Department appears to be in
- Trump's pocket, so I'm wondering just how the United States is
- "gearing up"? I suppose I should subscribe and read the whole
- article.
- ## [permalink #92](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post92) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 06:34_
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90450641/total-chaos-how-trumps-washington-is-kill
- [ing-the-next-generation-of-tech](https://www.fastcompany.com/90450641/total-chaos-how-trumps-washington-is-killing-the-next-generation-of-tech)
- That Fast Company article says that ideological chaos and government
- dysfunction are undermining technology development in the U.S.: "But
- Washington’s extreme dysfunction forces decision-making onto cities
- and states. To make matters worse, extremists on both the far left
- and the far right—who make up the majority of voters in low-turnout
- local primary elections—now hold most of the power. When that
- happens, balanced decision-making goes right out the window. So
- instead of weighing the pros and cons of each public policy,
- reaching a compromise, and then giving everyone certainty and
- resolution, tech regulation today is a battle zone."
- Consequently: "A world where Washington is unable to accomplish
- virtually anything and where local governments are dominated by
- ideological interests is a world that only puts us further behind
- countries and governments that are still able to logically regulate
- technology. It’s a world where we can’t protect kids from online
- predators or consumers from overreaching monopolies because every
- issue has to be relitigated dozens and dozens of times, rather than
- patiently debated and resolved once and for all. It’s a world that
- drives away new jobs and tax revenue for the sake of likes and
- retweets."
- ## [permalink #93](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post93) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Kieran O'Neill [(oneillk)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 13 Jan 20 11:04_
- Re: the Foreign Policy article, it's worth noticing that both
- authors are Trump apparatchiks who left the administration to start
- a think tank called the "Initiative on great power competition for
- U.S. and allies/partners".
- Re post-Westphalian limbo-states, how about Puerto Rico or Hong Kong?
- ## [permalink #94](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post94) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 05:03_
- Justin Pickard remarks:
- “I wonder if a country-by-country weather forecast is the most
- helpful way to be slicing things.
- “With that in mind, are there any smaller places (cities,
- landscapes,
- retail parks, UNESCO world heritage sites, whatever) that feel like
- particularly good points of reference, in figuring out the shape of
- things to come? What about people? Any individuals we should be
- keeping an eye on, or who aren't getting the attention they deserve?
- And how about those things that overspill or ignore the borders of
- the modern nation-state?”
- “Well, yeah — people from superpowers tend to overestimate
- governments and what they can achieve. It’s often rather
- superstitious, like the assumption that the Archbishop can lead
- prayers about the weather.
- *When you’re in a small, weak country with a dinky, indifferent
- government, people tend to tackle their big problems culturally.
- “It’s really shameful and inappropriate that scandalous-person there
- should be doing something so wicked that is so unlike
- Us-Here-in-Ruritania.” There’s a ton of that scoldiness in modern
- social media because there’s no such thing as a legislative remedy.
- *So if governments are less potent and worth less attention, what
- matters now? — and I’m thinking it’s most likely oligarchs. Why
- waste time fretting about Republican elected officials, when
- right-wing Congresspeople don’t care about each other? Obviously
- they care about Trump, the Murdochs and the Kochs.
- ## [permalink #95](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post95) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 05:04_
- *It would be good to have some authoritative, vetted publication
- along the line of “Foreign Policy” that covered the politically
- active ultra-rich. Admittedly, they mostly work though cut-outs and
- think-tanks, they don’t hop out of the limo and personally kick ass
- and take names, but it would make interesting reading. Especially,
- oligarchs themselves would read it.
- *it’s not unusual that the wealthy should dominate governments. But
- the semi-covert breed of oligarch called “curator” is new — rich,
- offshored warlords. Maybe they’re better understood as rich people
- usurping what are normally nation-state prerogatives. Certainly
- they’ve got as much wealth as many nation-states, and they also have
- arms and soldiers.
- *Also, armed oligarchs, the curators, want to kill each other.
- They’re not, like, cordial rich-guy pals at Davos Forum. For years
- Erik Prince of Blackwater has been urging anyone who listens to
- assassinate the Iranian General Suleimani, and Prince finally got
- his way. So you have to wonder if maybe it’s open season on armed
- billionaires from now on.
- ## [permalink #96](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post96) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 05:04_
- *There are places on earth that aren’t in nation-states, like those
- frozen conflicts and state-failure areas that I mentioned earlier.
- However, the truly novel development for 02020 is the
- Xinjiang-style, Kashmir-Style, Internet blackout zone, inside a
- functional nation.
- *You just shut down the cellphone towers and the routers and leave
- the rebels to stew in their info-darkness. India even blacked-out
- their own capital for a while. It would not surprise me to see this
- practice spread or even get written into law: like, Kashmir is on
- double-secret probation! They can’t have any Internet or phones
- until they bow the knee!!
- *So what is daily life like in these newly-deprived areas? We know
- what a pre-Internet situation looks like, but a post-Internet
- situation — what are the political implications? If you live there,
- what are you supposed to do with yourself?
- *In Cuba they have long had what they call “the Weekly Packet,”
- which is a terabyte thumb-drive of, just, samizdat copied Internet
- stuff for the blacked-out Cuba-zone. It’s rather like a monthly
- State of the World summary, but with lots of stolen entertainment.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
- So should EVERYBODY read that “packet”? Would it do any good in
- Kashmir or Xinjiang? Should somebody build a USA Paquete, just in
- case the Washington Post and New York Times get blacked-out as
- enemies-of-the-people, or maybe a QAnon Paquete so you can continue
- your heroic struggle against pedophile pizza parlors after Facebook
- bans you? Nobody has thought any of this through.
- ## [permalink #97](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post97) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 08:23_
- Speaking of curators... all television news in Russia is in a
- relationship to the state similar to Fox News' relationship to the
- Republican party (which is attempting to become synonymous with "the
- state," seeking complete and total dominance of government).
- A 2017 Guardian piece describes how it works: "... reporters working
- for state news outlets – which effectively are almost all news
- outlets in Russia – are public servants first and journalists second
- (if at all)."
- Interesting comment: "... in the US and in Russia, the media are
- often distracted with outrage over absurd behaviour and nonsensical
- public statements while ignoring what those in power want to be
- ignored."
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/24/putin-russia-media-state
- [-government-control](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/24/putin-russia-media-state-government-control)
- ## [permalink #98](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post98) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Tiffany Lee Brown (T) [(magdalen)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 12:39_
- "vast barbarian hordes of AirBnB nomads."
- chortle!
- i would love to see what a post-Internet something looks like. i would miss
- y'all, but i'd welcome people existing in real life, engaging with their
- real communities, coming out of their global-bubble-pods to break bread
- and fix roads and take on climate collapse together.
- ## [permalink #99](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post99) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 13:38_
- Online relationships are valuable, we don't have to ditch those
- connections in order to have physical community. They sorta work
- together, in fact. We just have to define the real problems, and
- deal with 'em. Spending time together online is not a problem, but
- jacking in obsessively to the exclusion of other aspects of our
- lives is most certainly a Bad Thing. It's okay to look through the
- window of your device from time to time, but it's wrong to fall
- through a virtual rabbit hole, to lose your sense of reality, to
- confuse media with experience.
- One of my talks was about a confusion driven by the persistence of
- sci-fi notions in contemporary culture. Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel
- Universe et al have become myths that we almost believe. And we
- believe without real evidence that time travel could be a thing,
- that interplanetary travel is inevitable, that ships might travel at
- warp speed through wormholes, that artificial intelligence will
- evolve to resemble human intelligence/awareness. Our constant media
- exposure to fictional narratives leaves us confused about what's
- real.
- Perhaps we should take more time to just be, to see things as they
- are, to get to know our minds apart from embedded narratives.
- I've noticed in media an increase in horrific fantasy imagery and
- narrative, and wonder what that's doing to our heads... to our
- beliefs... to our expectations.
- Garbage in... what's coming out?
- ## [permalink #100](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page04.html#post100) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Tiffany Lee Brown (T) [(magdalen)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 14 Jan 20 19:27_
- totally with you on that, jonl! GIGO for sure.
- > Perhaps we should take more time to just be
- yes. i find it surprisingly difficult. my mind wants to spend all its time
- chunking away at geopolitics and gender issues and community politics and
- and and and. some of us require substantial amounts of time away from
- screens and news media in order to recover a bit of sanity and balance. a
- one-hour walk a few times a week doesn't cut it.
- ## [permalink #101](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post101) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 02:43_Although I truly admire its honesty, and it even cheers me up to
- see it said, this is one of the most wistful things I’ve read in
- ages. November 8, 2016: that dreadful day when Big Tech first
- turned evil! The day when WIRED magazine should have switched from
- relentless Industry booster to a moralizing scold!
- WIRED is a little late at managing that transition, but they’re
- done it now.
- Poor WIRED! If I could have shown this screed to Jane Metcalfe
- and Louis Rossetto on the day they first appeared on my Austin
- doorstep — “Hi! We’re starting a cool new magazine in San
- Francisco, would you like to write for us?” I bet they would have
- run home to Amsterdam and cried.
- https://www.wired.com/story/wired25-work-together-fix-mess-we-made/
- ## [permalink #102](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post102) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 02:45_
- https://www.wired.com/story/wired25-work-together-fix-mess-we-made/
- With that said, that said, in my opinion, the tech scene is
- kinda overdoing it with the self-scourging tech-lash. The techies
- happen to be top dogs in a particularly rotten era, so people
- naturally blame them for most-everything. Also, the tech moguls
- love the limelight and would much rather look like massive baddies
- than just blundering morons who ran themselves into a ditch.
- Sometimes a hand-wringing mea culpa is a great way to play drama
- queen.
- When you look around, obviously the other major industries are
- just as bad or worse than Big Tech is. Other big American
- industries are not moral exemplars of corporate good-citizenship and
- kindness to the user-base. The US has become a crooked country, and
- its industries look and act crooked. Real estate is wicked, cruel, unworkable. The car biz kills and
- pollutes. The arms biz, it’s huge and takes whatever it wants.
- Aviation is crashing headlong, electricity blacks people out,
- nuclear was an awful, irretrievable mistake in tech development….
- Cable TV is blatantly corrupt and exploitative, the most fiercely
- hated US biz of them all, while Big Pharma kills people outright,
- and even agriculture lives on handouts….. The fossil-fuel biz is
- super-ultra-terrible, literal crush-the-world bad. They’ve become
- super-villains, in a trip-to-The-Hague level of
- crime-against-humanity. There’s never been a major industry so
- wicked as people who can melt the poles, set continents on fire and
- lie about it. They make Zuckerberg look like a Teletubby.
- Even American church pastors are actively wicked in MMXX,
- they’re become pro-Trump race-hate misogynists. You couldn’t dream
- of deriving a serious moral lesson from any major American preacher
- — they’re men of God, but they’re starkly obvious nogoodniks. Bill
- Gates has ten times the moral authority of any American theocrat —
- because at least the guy’s a serious philanthropist who puts in the
- hours. America’s full-time ethical leaders are blatant Elmer Gantry
- figures that no sane stakeholder would trust with a burnt-out match.
- ## [permalink #103](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post103) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 02:46_
- You can’t be a morally squeaky-clean commercial enterprise
- within a corrupted society. That can’t be done. Professional
- integrity isn’t possible either — the editor of WIRED is arguing
- here that software engineers ought to act more like
- engineer-engineers, but China is a Communist-engineering
- technocracy. China’s got engineers out the wazoo, and they’re
- engineering Xinjiang and face-surveillance. Osama bin Laden was an
- engineer. Engineers are just a profession like doctors or lawyers,
- and those professions can’t look good when politics are crooked and
- the health system kills people.
- The simple truth is, it is humiliating to live in an oligarchy.
- Injustice prevails, and most people have to sacrifice their freedom,
- dignity and initiative. It feels like a bad scene all around
- because it’s indeed just plain bad, and with few paths of moral
- redemption. Cool hardware in your hand doesn’t redeem you from the
- general air of corruption, arrogance, oppression, repression, and
- all-around shame and sleaze.
- ## [permalink #104](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post104) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 02:46_
- Unlike this WIRED editorial, I don’t think that the tech biz
- has the innate ability to grab its own bootstraps, clean itself up
- and march ahead manfully. That’s like expecting American
- health-care to miraculously reform itself because doctors and nurses
- somehow become more Hippocratic.
- What will likely happen is no particular reform, or maybe bits
- and pieces, while a Black Swan appears that makes all these concerns
- seem irrelevant. Reading this ten years from now will be like
- reading about people trying to reform their videotape rental biz.
- Voltaire lived in an Oligarchy, and he was an Enlightenment
- figure. The lesson of Voltaire is that it’s better to be honest
- than to try to be good.
- ## [permalink #105](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post105) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce McLaughlin [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 08:19_
- > Via email from Bruce McLaughlin:
- Perhaps “sci-fi notions in contemporary culture” became popular
- because people were looking for stories to hang all of the
- technological changes we have been going through on.
- I think “horrific fantasy imagery and narrative” may be an attempt
- by people to come to grips with the global political move to
- oligarchy along with the disastrous effects of global warming. In 20
- years Game of Thrones may seem like a truer account of the world
- than West Wing.
- Over the course of history there have been human settlements and
- civilizations run by people who did not value the truth. I think
- that is where we are headed now. Pointing this out is not going to
- be enough to stop it.
- ## [permalink #106](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post106) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Alberto Cottica [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 08:47_
- From Alberto Cottica, via a mutual friend:
- I enjoyed the broad, grim sweep of Bruce’s “everywhere is kind of
- the same” in Posts 5 to 7. But I wonder: where does that leave the
- European Union? That’s the one polity that can never go
- ethno-nationalist, not without completely disintegrating. I live in
- Brussels, with maybe half a foot in the Eurosphere. From where I
- stand I can see the EU shudder and lurch, but to be honest I have no
- idea where all this is going. The EU does seem to have a chance to
- do something completely different – almost an obligation to do so,
- just by sheer inertia in a world that has suddenly changed its
- direction. The buzzwords are getting weirder (“Green EU Deal”,
- “Internet of Humans”), and von der Leyen is still mostly an unknown
- quantity.
- Any intuition to share from you guys?
- Thanks, keep up the good work!
- ## [permalink #107](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post107) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Emily Gertz [(emilyg)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 09:00_
- >>>
- That Fast Company article says that ideological chaos and government
- dysfunction are undermining technology development in the U.S.: "But
- Washington’s extreme dysfunction forces decision-making onto cities
- and states. To make matters worse, extremists on both the far left
- and the far right—who make up the majority of voters in low-turnout
- local primary elections—now hold most of the power. When that
- happens, balanced decision-making goes right out the window. So
- instead of weighing the pros and cons of each public policy,
- reaching a compromise, and then giving everyone certainty and
- resolution, tech regulation today is a battle zone."
- >>>
- Can we pause for a moment to laugh at, or cry over, what passes for
- "far-left" these days in the eyes of a publication like Fast
- Company? Most of the positions of today's Democratic Party activists
- who are furthest "left" from the party's center would be perfectly
- recognizable to FDR or LBJ. And not because those positions are
- unpopular; but because one side has done a great job for the past
- few decades of spreading reactionary disinformation, while the other
- mostly dozed off and let it happen.
- As someone whose job involves reporting on and analyzing
- environmental and climate politics, I feel desperate for better ways
- to describe positions we've called "right" and "left" for the past
- 150 years.
- ## [permalink #108](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post108) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 10:49_
- "because one side has done a great job for the past few decades of
- spreading reactionary disinformation, while the other mostly dozed
- off and let it happen."
- I would say that differently. I would say one side had declared war,
- and the other side didn't have enough of a clue to realize it.
- ## [permalink #109](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post109) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): those Andropovian bongs [(rik)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 10:52_
- Very well said.
- ## [permalink #110](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post110) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 11:47_
- I stumbled onto this one while trying to improve my mood and slide
- the black dog out the door... One reason we have to be cheerful:
- toilets are more effective than ever, and using less water than
- ever.
- "The long, sustained greening of American johns has been one of the
- most transformative factors in keeping drought-stricken western
- cities from running dry. The proof is in the water meters: In cities
- from Denver to Las Vegas to Phoenix, water use is either staying
- stable or going down, even while populations continue to rise."
- https://reasonstobecheerful.world/how-toilets-saved-the-west/
- ## [permalink #111](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post111) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Paulina Borsook [(loris)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 15 Jan 20 12:04_
- in the spirit of 'as above so below'
- larry lessig suing the nytimes for 'clickbait defamation'
- the .org top level domain registry sold under stealth of night to
- private equity.
- ## [permalink #112](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post112) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 01:56_
- *The new World Economic Forum "Global Risk Report" is out for MMXX.
- I generally leaf through these every year.
- *They rarely surprise me, but I enjoy reading the world's problems
- framed in anodyne Swiss technocrat-ese. It's language that's easy
- to parody. I could write just like that myself, if I didn't prefer
- to discuss the same topics in a wisecracking, cyberpunk,
- jargon-laden bohemian dialect.
- *Normally the Davos crowd just worry about what CEOs worry about, ie
- economics, but now they're plenty worried about drowning and/or
- being on fire. From a CEO's perspective, of course.
- *I'm getting a little worried about the personal safety of the
- well-to-do globalists who show up for Davos. I'm not sure they
- understand the moral effect it would have if some ticked-off
- oligarch "curator" decided to strafe Davos with a drone. Of course
- everybody would assume it was some commie terrorist or fundie zealot
- attacking the rich, but the rich don't get it about the predatory
- rich attacking the Establishment rich. They don't get it that the
- oligarchs are arming and there's no leash left.
- https://www.weforum.org/global-risks
- ## [permalink #113](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post113) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 01:58_
- *Here's a few excerpted quotes from the WEF Risks Report -- I like
- the way they class up our WELL discussion here. They should flash by
- in the WELL discourse, much like Davos women of the European
- mistress-class, sleek, multilingual secretary-assistants with
- leather clipboards, who emerge from limos clad in Armani. For a lot
- of Davos attendees, it's basically a week-long event of top-end
- sex-tourism, a kind of Swiss Ibiza with celebrity lectures instead
- of disco. You kind of have to see that to believe it, but, well,
- that's who they are.
- "Powerful economic, demographic and technological forces are shaping
- a new balance of power. The result is an unsettled geopolitical
- landscape — one in which states are increasingly viewing
- opportunities and challenges through unilateral lenses. What were
- once givens regarding alliance structures and multilateral systems
- no longer hold as states question the value of long-standing
- frameworks, adopt more nationalist postures in pursuit of individual
- agendas and weigh the potential geopolitical consequences of
- economic decoupling. (...)
- "Amid this darkening economic outlook, citizens’ discontent has
- hardened with systems that have failed to promote advancement.
- Disapproval of how governments are addressing profound economic and
- social issues has sparked protests throughout the world, potentially
- weakening the ability of governments to take decisive action should
- a downturn occur. Without economic and social stability, countries
- could lack the financial resources, fiscal margin, political capital
- or social support needed to confront key global risks."
- ## [permalink #114](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post114) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 01:59_
- WEF climate crisis MMXX, paging Greta Thunberg:
- "Climate change is striking harder and more rapidly than many
- expected. The
last five years are on track to be the warmest
- on record, natural disasters are becoming more intense and more
- frequent, and last year witnessed unprecedented extreme weather
- throughout the world. Alarmingly, global temperatures are on track
- to increase by at least 3°C towards the end of the century—twice
- what climate experts have warned is the limit to avoid the most
- severe economic, social and environmental consequences.
- "The near-term impacts of climate change add up to a planetary
- emergency that will include loss of life, social and geopolitical
- tensions and negative economic impacts. For the first time in the
- history of the Global Risks Perception Survey, environmental
- concerns dominate the top long-term risks by likelihood among
- members of the World Economic Forum’s multistakeholder community;
- three of the top five risks by impact are also environmental (see
- Figure I, The Evolving Risks Landscape 2007–2020)....
- *The graphics are good in this "Global Risks Report." I recommend
- it. I pay attention, hey, I'm not even kidding.
- https://www.weforum.org/global-risks
- ## [permalink #115](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post115) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 07:58_
- Increasingly often I have to turn off the news feeds, hide the
- phone, ditch the computers, shut down the rather imposing flat
- screen that fills our living room wall, and look outside the
- surrounding windows, where the grass is growing same as it's grown
- my whole life. Birds fly by and squirrels scurry along the fence.
- It's much warmer than before, but not yet distressingly so.
- While the world has changed so much in my seven decades, and change
- has hyper-accelerated over the last couple of decades, I remind
- myself that the computer-mediated world inside my head isn't the
- real world; my newsfeeds don't represent reality accurately. When
- I'm still, following my breath, everything is change and everything
- his changeless. In the wildest of times, silence is crucial.
- ## [permalink #116](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post116) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): bill braasch [(bbraasch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 16:20_
- Climate change is giving us a physics lesson on momentum. Seeing is
- believing. The second derivative of ocean temperature is positive. We are
- warming the ocean faster year over year.
- FUDDs Law: If you push something hard enough, it will fall over.
- Off to Davos to kick that around. It turns out to be a banking problem.
- ## [permalink #117](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post117) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Gary Gach [(ggg)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 17:13_
- Expand on that last sentence, a little, Bill?
- ( please ? )
- ## [permalink #118](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post118) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): bill braasch [(bbraasch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 16 Jan 20 20:45_
- BlackRock recently said they were going to take climate impact into
- its banking decisions. There’s certainly money to be made in the
- transition to green energy.
- ## [permalink #119](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post119) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 02:17_
- Okay, what is Vladimir Putin up to? Why does he have to dissolve
- his own government and fire everybody, when events seem to be going
- great for him? You’re not supposed to lead a revolutionary coup
- d’etat against your own government when you yourself already control
- everything in it. That looks either Maoist or whimsical, and
- neither one of those is good.
- Maybe Putin’s trying to demonstrate that the legal Russian
- government is paper-thin and he can actually rule by secret decree
- by just using spies, “curators” and billionaire oligarchs. Maybe
- the facade of legality is more trouble to have to him than it’s
- worth. But people do like to have these cover stories. If you’re a
- spy and you have no cover story, you’re not even a “spy.” You’re
- just some guy standing on a heap of cash with a cluster of
- headphones and telescopes. People can see you. They might shoot at
- you. You’re like a crab without a shell.
- ## [permalink #120](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post120) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 02:18_
- Nobody seems to have seen this event coming, especially inside
- Russia. They’re just kinda standing around gawping. I hope that
- Vladimir hasn’t simply wigged-out, just gone unilateral and guzzled
- his own bathwater. Vladimir never drinks vodka, but he’s an old man
- who still fancies himself as a muscular judo tough-guy. An aging
- man who dumps the mother of the children for a much younger gymnast
- mistress, that’s the kind of guy who is gonna skin-pop a lot of
- performance enhancers. Maybe his judgement is wandering, and he’s
- getting impulsive.
- I don’t think that Vladimir takes the Libya thing seriously, because
- he shouldn’t be pulling an internally destabilizing stunt while also
- launching a daring, offshored imperialist adventure. Something’s
- just not adding up here. I guess it’s time for some Kremlinology.
- ## [permalink #121](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post121) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 06:36_
- The Guardian has this Putin quote: "We all have to think together
- how to build a structure of power so that it better corresponds to
- the pre-election period and prepares the country for the period
- after the presidential election in March." Their interpretation:
- "Today's events suggested that Mr Putin was determined to install
- trusted allies in positions of influence before his departure from
- power next year."
- CNN: "By taking steps to tighten his grip on power, Putin is also
- sending a message to the wider world. More Putin in Russia means
- more Putin on the international stage. And if the last few years
- have taught us anything, that means a Russia willing to go to
- extraordinary lengths to act as a direct rival for influence to the
- US-led world order -- and create more headaches for America and its
- allies."
- Maybe he's making room in his government for an expatriate Trump?
- ## [permalink #122](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post122) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): ixak [(ixak23)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 07:31_
- As far as Putin’s objectives in Russia and in Libya, he’s definitely
- becoming concerned with his legacy. His actions in Russia are most
- likely the result of cognitive dissonance between his desire for a
- Russia with strong institutions that will survive him, crossed with
- his desire to have those institutions subject to his singular
- authority. You can’t have both, but he’s still going to try.
- The Libya thing is far more complex, and raises the topic of what
- Russia’s goals are in Africa altogether. The allure of having
- leverage over a weak oil-rich state with Mediterranean port access
- and (relative) proximity to both southern Europe and the Atlantic is
- pretty evident. Overland access to armaments markets are also an
- obvious plus, given the popularity of cold war arms and vehicles
- across the continent. Just about every African country I’ve been to
- that has an air force has a few MI-24s and MI-17s in their air, and
- the reality is that you can buy 40 used MI-17s for the cost of a
- single used Blackhawk helicopter. And like software, armaments
- aren’t just a product anymore, they’re a service with ongoing
- training and maintenance contracts that persist beyond the initial
- weapon purchase (AAAS? Armaments as a service?). The utility of
- Russian activity in a place like Madagascar is much less obvious,
- but it’s definitely happening.
- All of this happens at an interesting time for both French and US
- military engagement in Africa. Recent French casualties from the
- helicopter crash in Mali have spurred some reconsideration of their
- role in the Sahel, but Macron’s paternalistic attitude towards
- Francophone Africa has also triggered a “don’t let the door hit you
- in the ass” backlash on the part of the various African leaders. The
- US DoD is also rethinking their AFRICOM footprint and general
- commitment to their African allies. This would shift the burden for
- US security assistance in Africa almost exclusively to the State
- Department, which is far less able to operate outside of major urban
- centers in the more unstable countries. I mention this because
- target locations for groups like AQIM, Boko Haram and ISIS in Africa
- seem to be moving to weaker and weaker states that are less able to
- control their own territory. The circumstances in Burkina Faso and
- Mali, for example, have degraded dramatically just over the past
- year, with extremist groups killing hundreds of soldiers, and
- thousands of civilians in those two countries alone.
- Understanding that there are plenty of good arguments for
- anti-interventionism, what should be done for countries that are
- outgunned by malicious non-state actors in their midst and
- desperately asking for assistance?
- ## [permalink #123](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post123) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): The ineluctable modality of the risible. [(patf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 18:58_
- > Russian governmental reorg.
- Perhaps the simple story is not only simple but true: oil.
- There was something I read at one point that I never followed up
- upon: the biggest single part of the backstory to the collapse of
- the Soviet Union had to do with a price of oil which, after the Arab
- oil shocks in the 70s, cratered again in the 80s. Apparent here:
- http://chartsbin.com/view/oau
- One part of that story is price-supply push: the price rises of the
- 70s greatly aided both North Sea oil in Europe and Alaskan oil for
- the US. It'd be interesting to do the research to see just where
- elsewhere further new supply came online.
- It takes time though for things to play out and it took something on
- the order of 10 yrs before this really undermined the finances of
- the Soviet Union.
- There's a thing to keep in mind. I worked these numbers once (but
- don't have that in front of me now) - oil is king of commodities and
- may represent half or more of all natural resource revenue
- worldwide. So as much as the SU/Russia has all these other natural
- resources - diamonds, etc - income from oil is crucial and there's
- no substitute.
- John D Rockefeller said something to the effect of: oil is the best
- business you can be in - and the second best. When times are good,
- profits gush. Might be hard to know what to do with all the cash.
- Proximately, oil again crashed from > $100/bbl to its present range
- of 50-60 in 2014, so it's been half its former value for something
- like 5-6 yrs. It takes time for things to play out - and Vlad just
- reorganized his govt.
- The Russians are an ingenious people and I imagine there are a lot
- of inside stories of the brilliant successes they've had
- maintaining, and even [somewhat] increasing oil production in
- Russia's aging fields. That's a lot of the story why their interest
- in the Arctic is so acute. Even supposing effective Arctic
- geopolitical brinksmanship, and the Russians seize a very large part
- of the Arctic for exploration, the capital costs are going to be
- astonishing. This is not your grandfather's west Siberian field.
- It's part of the Russian shtick though to believe they can rise to
- heroic deeds in particular (historically) those that attach to
- taming new, and impossibly difficult, geographies. We'll see.
- Declining demography doesn't help.
- So Vlad, and the Russians generally, are in a pickle. I think we
- ascribe a Russian, or Soviet, govt more stability than is justified
- and it's pretty clear how that worked out last time. On the
- positive side for them the economics of kleptocracy probably are
- better historically understood than Communism so that helps - if
- you're Putin & Co.
- Cyberwarfare? Still a sideshow to oil. Hopes are high. As far as
- I can see the most successful cyber attack wasn't anything either
- the Russians or Chinese did - rather it was Stuxnet which was the
- product of an Israeli-US collaboration.
- It would seem that the Soviet Union's, and Russia's, perennial
- geostragtice role is spoiler and while it's a less expenisve
- proposition than say hegemon, it still has its bills to be paid and
- there's nothing even remotely on the horizon that can pay those
- bills like oil.
- ## [permalink #124](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post124) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): The ineluctable modality of the risible. [(patf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 17 Jan 20 19:37_
- This is always useful. Where does Russia make its money on export
- markets?
- https://oec.world/en/profile/country/rus/
- It's dominated by the dark brown industrial category on the left
- whose official name is "Mineral Products" where in Russia's case
- that means hydrocarbons. If I total the 4 largest numbers I get
- (+ 28 17 5.8 4.7)
- 55.5
- 55.5% of all exports by dollar value. Actually, that's better
- (less) than other oil exporters such as Saudi Arabia or Venezuela
- whose intl income is pretty much all oil.
- Wheat is tiny - in dollar value. What about Russian arms sales?
- https://www.army-technology.com/features/arms-exports-by-country/
- For 2018, #2 behind the US but, while geopolitically important, arms
- bring in only $6.4 bln. Which leads me to wonder: is the Russian
- arms industry even profitable and if it isn't it's a drain, but a
- small one. The Soviet Union massively subsidized arms production
- (and one assumes oil income helped in that regard) and arms
- production may well still be subsidized. Probably provides a lot of
- employment in a country that doesn't have many industries - to speak
- of in volume terms.
- ## [permalink #125](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page05.html#post125) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 10:20_
- https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/the-chefs-global-footprints
- Here's an article about attempting to follow the "curator" Yevgeny
- Prighozin by following his private jets. Jets are still subject to
- planetary regulation, so they're a traceable stand-in for Prigozhin
- himself. Even though there's no particular reason that Prigozhin
- should be inside any particular plane (he has several). Occasionally
- his wife and kids release a selfie from within a plane, because
- they're not spooky "curators" themselves, they're just common,
- everyday rich people.
- Maybe Prigozhin could cover his tracks in future by buying a fleet
- of time-share jets, and then hopping on and off of them.
- Since Prighozhin came to prominence after the seizure of Crimea,
- he's been in a lot of odd places. Generally he sets up some
- commercial enterprise on the ground in Whatever-stan, as well as
- shuffling in some tough-guy militia.
- ## [permalink #126](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post126) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 12:14_
- By the way, when Putin gets directly asked about Prigozhin, he asks
- why the Western powers don't restrain George Soros.
- ## [permalink #127](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post127) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Gregory Prinsze [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 16:53_
- My friend Mark Petrakis posted this, written by Gregory Prinsze, on
- Facebook:
- "Democracy" was a temporary phase of history which allowed bankers
- to take control from the earlier generation of dominant power
- players: the Church and the old European monarchies.
- Once the influence of the Church and the monarchies was sufficiently
- diminished, the next goal for the bankers and their oligarchical
- cronies was to increasingly take control of "democracy" itself, a
- process which picked up momentum and sophistication throughout the
- 20th century.
- The next steps are increasing privatization (already well underway)
- and eventually phasing out "democracy" altogether. The final
- destination is intended to be a global tyranny run by a tiny gang of
- supremacist psychopaths and their technocrat commissars... a utopia
- for them, and a cleverly disguised gulag for everyone else.
- There's no question that this is happening, yet most people keep
- relying on bankster-owned mainstream media for their "understanding"
- of the world, and keep voting for the same old D and R
- bankster-approved politicians, almost all of whom serve the
- oligarchs regardless of party affiliation.
- Control of the "education" system and mainstream media has played a
- huge role in making this possible, but it's still obvious
- nonetheless. So, why does it continue? Because of cognitive
- dissonance, laziness, group think, and fear of being seen as an
- "outsider" or worse yet a "conspiracy theorist."
- The result is a political form of Stockholm Syndrome, and it will
- soon lead to what Manhattan Project physicist Charles Galton Darwin
- described as the perennial ruling elite goal: "A more perfect form
- of slavery"... one in which the population is so perfectly
- conditioned that they don't even recognize their own servitude. As
- Aldous Huxley correctly predicted, they will be taught to "love
- their servitude"... we're almost there."
- ## [permalink #128](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post128) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 16:54_
- (That last was posted with permission from its author.)
- ## [permalink #129](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post129) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Renshin Bunce [(renshin)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 16:58_
- ...and it's depressing as hell. I marched today, not because I think
- this or any other march will change anything, but because I want it
- on the record that I disagree with the government takeover that
- we're living under currently.
- ## [permalink #130](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post130) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 17:00_
- I'm thinking I don't have a clue what's true anymore. We're in a
- storm of conflicting narratives.
- ## [permalink #131](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post131) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Administrivia [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sat 18 Jan 20 17:10_
- Our MMXX State of the World jam is set to end Monday, which is
- incidentally Martin Luther King Day in the USA.
- Keep those cards and letters rolling in... inkwell at well.com.
- Keep reading and keep sharing:[ https://bit.ly/sotw-2020](https://bit.ly/sotw-2020)
- ## [permalink #132](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post132) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 01:52_
- *It's hard to count the oligarchs here. On the other hand, it makes
- one understand why Putin would say that Soros is the same as
- Prigozhin. Every player involved in the Trump Ukraine racket thinks
- that Soros is the same as Prigozhin. That's they're consensus: it's
- all about oligarch-on-oligarch culture war.
- *No wonder the top Republican guy in the impeachment is actively
- involved in the scheme at the same time that he dismisses the US
- Congress as a side-show.
- https://www.thedailybeast.com/lev-parnas-dishes-on-kushner-maduro-and-soros?re
- [f=scroll](https://www.thedailybeast.com/lev-parnas-dishes-on-kushner-maduro-and-soros?ref=scroll)
- “The consensus was that the reason Trump had the Russiagate and
- everything that was happening was because Soros and the Democrats
- controlled certain U.S. embassies in Eastern Europe, particularly
- the Ukrainian one, and were able to help with the Manafort stuff and
- all other kinds of stuff that basically caused problems in the Trump
- World,” he said.
- So the effort to influence Zelensky’s administration included
- machinations against Soros, he said—in particular, to push Zelensky
- to distance himself from people perceived to be close to
- billionaire. That push and the push for political favors for Trump
- were one and the same, he said. In retrospect, Parnas said, the
- Soros focus grew out of an atmosphere he described as cult-like.
- When asked if he believed his former allies’ claims about the
- billionaire, he said he got sucked in at the time.
- “When you’ve got the president saying it, you’ve got his attorneys
- saying it, you’ve got all these congressmen saying it, you’ve got
- all these senators saying it—again, when I say Trumpworld, that
- small inner-whatever, everybody would talk about it: ‘This Soros
- guy.’ That’s why I look at it as a cult.” (((It's sort of like a
- "cult," but it's a lot more like a group of courtiers who hang out
- with an oligarch. They're not supposed to be swayed by public
- opinion, their whole purpose is in serving oligarchy.)))
- Soros, a survivor of the Holocaust, has regularly been portrayed as
- a super-villian in Kremlin propaganda, and some of Trump’s allies
- have echoed that description as the president’s impeachment troubles
- have grown. DiGenova sparked outrage just last month after claiming
- Soros “controls” the State Department....
- ## [permalink #133](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post133) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 02:01_
- *Not looking real perky in the Libyan "peace talks." The pro-Russian
- side just shut off the oil flow while the pro-Turkish side is flying
- in hundreds, maybe thousands, of armed Syrian war veterans.
- *The twenty-first century's terror-war never exactly ends, but it
- does tend to migrate from place to place. Maybe the future really
- is about Africa, after an entire generation of the Mideast getting
- torn-up.
- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-envoy-idUSKBN1ZH0AQ
- ## [permalink #134](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post134) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 02:09_
- This Deloitte tech-trends publication is interesting because of its
- bold lack of objectivity about the future. On the contrary, it's
- full of free ads for Deloitte clients of the C-level who appear with
- head-shots say stuff like, "oh yeah, we believe totally in
- (buzzword), we think it's great."
- Of course Deloitte are just consultants, so maybe the tech-trends in
- tech trends will be to get more to the point. I can imagine a
- Chinese Politguro approved tech trends where Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent
- and maybe Huawei all appear on the same page and declare, "Well,
- these are the tech trends because we're going to MAKE them the tech
- trends." Like, twenty-first century futurism with Chinese
- characteristics.
- https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/tech-trends.html
- ## [permalink #135](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post135) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 02:55_
- *I can't possibly let a State of the World MMXX go by without some
- mention of this fantastic Dominic Cummings meditation. Cummings is
- a top political advisor to Boris Johnson.
- *The whole thing is good, with a lot of extravagant links to weird
- things that a modern political operative ought to properly know.
- Then it ends with this declaration that he wants to hire characters
- from science fiction novels. Since there's no way Cummings can
- actually do that, it's more the declaration that he WANTS to do
- that, which is interesting.
- *A virtual character like the Idoru from William Gibson's "Idoru," a
- modern government might be able to generate and hire a fictional
- character like that. As press secretary, for instance. Or a
- completely fake Dominic Cummings, a political expert that you claim
- to have on staff, but is not really there.
- https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-sc
- [ientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/](https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/)
- "G. Super-talented weirdos
- "People in SW1 talk a lot about ‘diversity’ but they rarely mean
- ‘true cognitive diversity’. They are usually babbling about ‘gender
- identity diversity blah blah’. What SW1 needs is not more drivel
- about ‘identity’ and ‘diversity’ from Oxbridge humanities graduates
- but more genuine cognitive diversity.
- "We need some true wild cards, artists, people who never went to
- university and fought their way out of an appalling hell hole,
- weirdos from William Gibson novels like that girl hired by Bigend as
- a brand ‘diviner’ who feels sick at the sight of Tommy Hilfiger or
- that Chinese-Cuban free runner from a crime family hired by the KGB.
- If you want to figure out what characters around Putin might do, or
- how international criminal gangs might exploit holes in our border
- security, you don’t want more Oxbridge English graduates who chat
- about Lacan at dinner parties with TV producers and spread fake news
- about fake news.
- "By definition I don’t really know what I’m looking for but I want
- people around No10 to be on the lookout for such people.
- "We need to figure out how to use such people better without asking
- them to conform to the horrors of ‘Human Resources’ (which also
- obviously need a bonfire)."
- *And, for good measure, here's a recent piece from British offshored
- SF writer and journalist, about how the science fiction of the
- 1980s, set in the 2020s, differs from the actual 2020s. Some food
- for thought here. Am I sorry I did it, now that a lot of it looks
- pretty goofy? No. Not really. On the contrary, it makes me want to
- write something about the 2060s.
- https://onezero.medium.com/how-science-fiction-imagined-the-2020s-f8e98a5bc729
- ## [permalink #136](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post136) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 04:13_
- Alberto Cottica remarks:
- I enjoyed the broad, grim sweep of Bruce’s “everywhere is kind of
- the same” in Posts 5 to 7. But I wonder: where does that leave the
- European Union? That’s the one polity that can never go
- ethno-nationalist, not without completely disintegrating. I live in
- Brussels, with maybe half a foot in the Eurosphere. From where I
- stand I can see the EU shudder and lurch, but to be honest I have no
- idea where all this is going. The EU does seem to have a chance to
- do something completely different – almost an obligation to do so,
- just by sheer inertia in a world that has suddenly changed its
- direction. The buzzwords are getting weirder (“Green EU Deal”,
- “Internet of Humans”), and von der Leyen is still mostly an unknown
- quantity.
- Any intuition to share from you guys?
- *It's all about Margrethe Vestager, the EU digital czarina. She's
- basically the only entity in modern tech that looks like governance.
- *I follow Margrethe in social media and I gaze in mild wonderment at
- everything she does... I think her aim is to tame Big Tech into an
- enterprise that is more like aerospace. Meaning Airbus style
- aerospace, not like that American Boeing junk that falls out of the
- sky.
- She's one of Europe's best technocrats. Pick of the litter, really.
- She's one of the least-scary power-players in modern politics. If I
- got email from Vestager, I wouldn't dive under the couch, I'd be
- inclined to listen with care and be all cordial. Whereas, if I got
- email from Prigozhin, I'd be updating my will.
- *With that said, though, there's something rather "curator" like
- about Margrethe Vestager. It's like EU democratic politics just
- sorta gave up and decided to let Margrethe handle everything because
- actual governance just gets in the way.
- ## [permalink #137](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post137) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 06:25_
- Cory Docotorow waxes techno-utopian:
- https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-cities-where-youre
- [-the-sensor-not-the-thing-being-sensed](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2020/jan/17/the-case-for-cities-where-youre-the-sensor-not-the-thing-being-sensed)
- "The case for ... cities that aren't dystopian surveillance states"
- "If we decide to treat people as sensors, and not as things to be
- sensed – if we observe Kant’s injunction that humans should be
- 'treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something
- else' – then we can modify the smart city to gather information
- about the things and share that information with the people."
- City centers in large and popular metropolitan areas are starting to
- feel more like theme parks. The people who live downtown pay seven
- figures for condos in multiuse highrises. Tour guides are always
- waxing nostalgic about how the city used to be a friendly and
- affordable town, before the gods of commerce created the new digital
- weather systems, raining profit on corporations. Smart cities are
- not smart for everybody. Ask the guy living in a box under the
- bridge how smart he thinks the city is.
- ## [permalink #138](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post138) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 07:26_
- Firehose media feed from Apple News, one of many sources of
- patchwork news. Just part of today's feed, no wonder my head is
- spinning:
- Impeachment impeachment impeachment.
- Amish sex scandals.
- Meghxit
- Immodium abuse
- Conor McGregor's latest "ultimate fight"
- Kidnapped teen snapchats a clue leading to her recovery
- Trump's grudges
- The FBI can unlock some phones, but not others
- Ageotypes
- Groom sexually assaults waitress at his wedding reception
- GirlsDoPorn is no more
- Trump "loves America" but hates American cities
- Mrs. Maisel is marvelous
- Amber Heard has a girlfriend
- Kim Kardashian as criminal justice reformer
- Casper, a mattress company that is a tech company
- Roomba deals!
- SpaceX launch
- Apple's iPhone 12
- Behringer clones synths from Moog to Roland
- Police robots are not smart
- Great USB hub!
- The most excellent egg sandwich
- Nazi propaganda in Brazil
- Medicaid block grants
- One Trump lawyer called another "dangerous"
- Marlin Kemmerer wanted to hold Congress hostage in 1932
- Biden Biden Biden
- Bernie and Trump have something(s) in common
- Guiliani ranting
- Trump's legal wranglings.
- Rebel Wilson lost weight
- Reba McEntire is down for a "Tremors" reboot
- US Companies pushing green energy in Europe
- Google Home's music setup
- Microsoft's new browser
- Natural alternative to diet pills
- Lose weight fast!
- Superfoods
- Carb myths
- Diagnosing flu
- Giant squid
- Hemorrhoid remedies
- Coronavirus
- Binaural beats
- Relocating feisty lions
- China phases out single use plastics
- Wild bears in Alaska
- Tunisia curbs coastal erosion
- Solar power in Qatar
- Daytrips
- ## [permalink #139](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post139) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Lena via lendie [(lendie)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 08:19_
- How is it that central and South America never are part of these
- discourses?
- So much going on there -countries like Venezuela imploding, native
- tribes taking big corps to court, Amazon heading to ecological
- disaster, how climate change is affecting the continent,
- reforestation efforts where land has been logged out, oil industry
- no longer pumping out revenues, general political governance heading
- more and more to the right and cartels running Mexico - that’s all
- off the top of my head.
- I mean, jeez, if you wanna be all grim and depressed, take some big
- looks there.
- ## [permalink #140](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post140) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce McLaughlin [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Sun 19 Jan 20 17:10_
- > Via email from Bruce McLaughlin:
- In his book, “Capitalism in the 21st Century,” Thomas PIketty
- suggests that wide income disparity with a small group at the top is
- the equilibrium state of capitalism. Events where large amounts of
- capital are destroyed (wars, depressions, disasters, etc.) knock the
- system out of equilibrium. What happens afterwards is that capital
- owners have to pay people to rebuild (growth), rather than charging
- them as much as possible for being alive (rent seeking).
- With this theory he explains the post WWII prosperity in Europe,
- Japan, and the US, along with the post WWII, Civil War, Famine, and
- another Civil War prosperity of China. China was in the right phase
- of development to be low bidder on the job of making a smartphone
- for everybody on the planet, which extended their prosperity. They
- are heading back to equilibrium now.
- What makes the current cycle different from older cycles like the
- Gilded Age in the US? Computers, cheap and fast communication and
- transportation, cheap and deadly weapons. How will the oligarchs use
- these new capabilities in the next decade? It’s not going to be
- pretty...
- ## [permalink #141](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post141) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 02:00_
- *Well, it seems that everybody in the world agrees that the Libyans
- ought to stop fighting, including the Russians, the Turks and even
- the Libyan factions. I hate to play the cynic here, because it
- would be great to see an oil war negotiated away. "Peace Breaks Out
- in MMXX," that would be fabulous news.
- *However, I have a sneaking suspicion that this cordial national
- paperwork implies that the situation is about to explode with
- extra-national proxy actors. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
- *At least The Donald's not involved, so who knows, maybe this Berlin
- agreement really is good news for the state of our world.
- *It's also of considerable interest that Prime Minister Boris
- Johnson would simply stroll up to Putin face to face in Berlin and
- tell Putin to knock it off with poisoning people (at least in
- Britain). Of course everybody knows Putin did that, while Johnson
- lives in his own fantasy world and will riff nonsense at any length
- about anything. Still, it's odd that BoJo would just,
- undiplomatically, truth-bomb that in a way, and in venue, where all
- the heavy players would overhear. Boris Johnson is truly a strange
- guy. If his underling wants to recruit "super-talented weirdos,"
- he'll have a hard time hiring someone weirder than the boss.
- ## [permalink #142](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post142) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 02:02_
- *Some of the Libya reportage from "Politico Europe."
- "DIPLOMACY STILL WORKS: The international community, or at least the
- parts that are most influential in Libya, agreed on a 55-point,
- nine-page document at a conference hosted by German Chancellor
- Angela Merkel in Berlin on Sunday. They call for the return to a
- political process in the country, and most importantly, say they
- will refrain from military interventions and respect the arms
- embargo in place. The signatories include Russia, Turkey, Egypt and
- the Emirates — which were represented at the highest level. Here
- are the conclusions."
- (((There's the pdf of the English-language version of the new
- treaty. It's odd to be in an era where they just pop up and you can
- thumb through 'em for yourself.)))
- https://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/resource/blob/656734/1713866/7982684117074dea50
- [70983ebb136249/2020-01-19-berlin-conference-on-libya-data.pdf](https://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/resource/blob/656734/1713866/7982684117074dea5070983ebb136249/2020-01-19-berlin-conference-on-libya-data.pdf)
- "Now the hard(er) part: Following up, implementing and guaranteeing
- the agreement holds will be the next — difficult — task; EU foreign
- ministers will attempt to do so as early as today at a meeting in
- Brussels...." (((Every government finds it easy to agree on
- not-shipping arms, because all the arms-shipping is being done by
- "curators," not governments. There's a rumor that the current
- leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, may be appointed by Putin as a
- kind of satrap of Syrian and Libyan affairs. If so, well, that
- Kadyrov guy's a complete savage. He's up for anything.)))
- "Putin also squeezed in a tête-à-tête with British PM Boris Johnson,
- who told him that Britain is still furious over the attempted
- assassination of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei
- Skripal in Salisbury in March 2018, and that U.K.-Russia relations
- can’t return to normal yet."
- ## [permalink #143](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post143) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): The ineluctable modality of the risible. [(patf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 12:26_
- Libya's oil reserves, esp. with US fracked oil now in the global
- equation, aren't considerable - at least in terms of the world price
- of oil or geostrategically generally - so I assume the interest of
- Libya, in particular for Russia, but Turkey as well, is as one more
- lever that might destabilize Europe. And not just for Libyans
- leaving the country, since that population isn't large (Libya has a
- population of only 6.375 mln.), but in particular other people
- elsewhere in Africa (or futher east in the ME even as far as
- Afghanistan) who want to flee to Europe.
- https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/italian-foreign-minister-luigi-di-m
- [aio-europe-stands-to-lose-the-most-a-a4453de7-d1e8-464b-b220-c3cbbd153cab](https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/italian-foreign-minister-luigi-di-maio-europe-stands-to-lose-the-most-a-a4453de7-d1e8-464b-b220-c3cbbd153cab)
- There are currently 700,000 migrants in the country who want to go
- elsewhere and that can pretty much only be Europe.
- I imagine Johnson is feeling vindicated and in a position of
- strength given the Conservatives' powerful December electoral
- victory. Labor in disarray, etc.
- ## [permalink #144](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post144) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Lena via lendie [(lendie)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 18:19_
- <rant on>
- You guys should be ashamed of yourselves. White guys pontificating
- about the state of the world leaving out half the world - curiously
- the brown and black part - Latin America and Africa. I've begun to
- suspect this is partically ignored because it is outside your
- comfort zones or knowledge zones or interest zones so half the world
- simply doesn't appear on the globes that you look at.
- You could write a state of the world based on the Amazon and I'd bet
- it *would* be a state of the world. The environmental and
- ecological issues alone affect the entire planet.
- Latin America and Africa may not be the players of your world but
- god knows without them there wouldn't be much of your world. They
- are exploited by the world you speak of - Eurocentric, US, Putin (do
- you call it Russia these days, heck if I know or care), China,
- Middle East Oil.
- This other half of the world is starving, much without potable
- water, just barely surviving, without agency. Latin America doesn't
- have refugees, Africa has those.
- You can talk about oil yet here and getting closer is a huge water
- problem that could instigate wars. There isn't enough and more
- there isn't enough clean water without toxins. Australia is already
- in the throes of dealing with this - desalination projects happening
- or in the works. Who's the likely leader and knowledge center?
- Israel.
- What about looking at the state of the world through humanity? One
- that has decreasing empathy, increasingly tolerates sociopathy, has
- less and less sense of the common good and welfare and increasingly
- creates tribes (special interest groups) pitting themselves against
- each other (or manipulate a la "Let's you and him fight")thus losing
- what agency they had in the larger view, one that uses chemicals and
- toxins to grow foods at the same time as they destroy the earth they
- use?
- Where is love or kindness or compassion in any of these worlds?
- How about discussing these things?
- <rant off>
- ## [permalink #145](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post145) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Renshin Bunce [(renshin)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 19:29_
- (Cheering)
- ## [permalink #146](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post146) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Tiffany Lee Brown (T) [(magdalen)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 20 Jan 20 19:43_
- bravo, lendie! wow.
- yes. i want to hear about that state of the world, or the state of that
- world.
- ## [permalink #147](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post147) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 02:25_
- Hey, <lendie>, thanks for the rant! I would feel more ashamed if I
- pretended any kind of expertise about the Global South, but we
- certainly welcome contributions like yours.
- The true "state of the world" is so much more than any of us can
- grasp. I often feel like the blind man who happened to grab the
- elephant's rectum, the world being so much more than I can ever
- know, the awesome and terrifying breadth of global diversity. If we
- think we know the world because we "read the news," we're just
- kidding ourselves.
- Especially if we think we know something because we were watching
- Fox News, or MSNBC, or CNN, which are all about divisive politics.
- Those cable channels facilitate by attention and misrepresentation
- the power of the corrupt and unhinged.
- The exclusion of the Global South is unfortunately too common...
- check out
- https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/opinion/politics-global-south.html
- "... the global South has often been well outside the spotlight.
- Much of our global attention and reporting have been focused on the
- deceptions and distortions afflicting elections in the industrial
- West, such as those that unfolded amid the U.S. presidential race in
- 2016.
- "There is a grave danger in overlooking the consequences of this
- inattention, not only in terms of global democratization and
- democratic consolidation, but also in the specific ways the use of
- social media is impacting democratic processes in the South."
- ## [permalink #148](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post148) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Lena via lendie [(lendie)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 02:38_
- So how are you going to change this next year?
- ## [permalink #149](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post149) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 04:51_
- Uhm, Libya is in Africa.
- Venezuela is a kind of South American Libya. Maybe some day someone
- will write a definitive history about their endless panoply of
- curses and disorders. It's frankly beyond me.
- ## [permalink #150](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page06.html#post150) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 05:02_
- It seems that Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst will not be able to
- join us (unless they show up afterward for a post-midnight set).
- They got caught up in touring to support the new album. It’s a
- pity, because as musicians go they’re about the most erudite and
- chatty ones that I’ve ever met.
- As for next year, maybe Lauren Beukes could be persuaded to show up.
- She’s the most cyberpunk South African ever. Also, her new sci-fi
- short story collection “Slipping” is pretty good.
- I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t say more this year about the
- ongoing ruckus in India. I met some science fiction writers in
- Bangalore last year, so now I kinda know what gives with them
- social-media-wise, and man are they upset in MMXX. I’ve never seen
- such politically ticked-off science fiction writers. They’re
- yelling their heads off, but everybody’s too busy impeaching
- Presidents or breaking up Europe to keep up with India. Or Hong
- Kong either, where the intelligentsia are smoldering every day.
- ## [permalink #151](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post151) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 05:17_
- After the State of the World closes, I’ll be devoting some attention
- to jury duties for our electronic art festival in Turin, “Share
- Festival.” The theme for MMXX is “Riots: Here We Are.”
- A rather apt and timely theme, I hope you’ll agree. There’s still a
- week or so to send in entries if you are into the production of
- net.art, device art, machine art, code art, generative art and that
- good-old-fashioned formerly-new media.
- https://www.toshareproject.it/call-for-share-prize-xiii-edition-riots-here-we-
- [are/](https://www.toshareproject.it/call-for-share-prize-xiii-edition-riots-here-we-are/)
- And if you’re up for the big time of tech art, why not “Ars
- Electronica”? It’s got the “Golden Nica,” the Oscar of the tech art
- world.
- ******
- Prix Ars Electronica 2020
- Submit your entry now to the most traditional media art competition
- in the world!
- The following categories will be announced for the 2020 Prix Ars
- Electronica:
- Computer Animation, Digital Communities, Interactive Art + and u19 -
- create your world.
- The winners will receive the prestigious Golden Nicas, prize money
- of up to 10,000 euros per category and a prominent appearance at the
- Ars Electronica Festival in Linz
- (9 to 13 September 2020).
- You can find out how to submit or nominate your artistic project at
- ars.electronica.art/prix! The submission deadline is March 2, 2020.
- The participation is free of charge.
- Since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has been held annually for
- media artists from around the world. You’ll be able to find out
- which Prix jurors the many artists will be able to present this year
- and which projects have been submitted and awarded prizes on our Ars
- Electronica Blog.
- We are looking forward to your submission and wish you good luck!
- Your Ars Electronica Team
- *****
- Every year I do this jury work, and really, the panoply of ingenuity
- there always impressed me and raises my morale. So many strange,
- creative, inventive things from a some basement, some attic, some
- home-made lab in the corner of whateverness. It gives me a baseline
- faith in the resilience of humanity. Not that things are always
- good —that’s too much to ask — but that they’re always interesting.
- ## [permalink #152](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post152) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 09:40_
- It's been two weeks; this is when we normally end the conversation.
- But it's a soft stop, the topic is open for more posts. Feel free to
- continue.
- Thanks to all who've contributed, from on or off the WELL. Hopefully
- we're all gaining insight. It's been a bit bleak this year... the
- pendulum's swung to a dark place. But we're here for each other, and
- we can always hope...
- ## [permalink #153](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post153) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Angie Coiro [(coiro)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 10:07_
- That's lovely, Jon. Thanks for that thought.
- ## [permalink #154](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post154) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jon Lebkowsky [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 15:06_
- (Blushing!)
- ## [permalink #155](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post155) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): George Mokray [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 15:07_
- > Via email from George Mokray:
- If you want to know how to save coral reefs, you shouldv talk to
- Tom Goreau of the Global Coral Reef Alliance
- (http://globalcoral.org). Tom uses Wolf Hilbertz' biorock
- technology which should make Bruce Sterling happy as he uses the
- idea in one of his novels. Tom is also one of the leaders of the
- geotherapy (NOT geoengineering) community.
- ## [permalink #156](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post156) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jane Hirshfield [(jh)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Tue 21 Jan 20 18:17_
- I came late to reading this this year, and just want to thank Jon,
- Bruce, and everyone who came in with some really substantial
- questions and comments and perceptions.
- The dark mood feels right to me, given the state of the world, and
- any glimmer of reason to hope (as the post just before this is, as
- well as Jon's) is greatly appreciated.
- ## [permalink #157](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post157) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Bruce Sterling [(bruces)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 22 Jan 20 01:21_
- Thirty-three years of Boing Boing. Nobody's perfect, and things
- don't always go well, but there's a lot to be said for tenacity.
- *And the long-standing WELL, too, may it find favor among the gods;
- when the WELL was a bulletin-board-system, I once found its server
- and sat on it.
- https://boingboing.net/2020/01/21/boing-boing-is-20-or-33-year.html
- With any kind of luck, we'll be back next year.
- ## [permalink #158](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post158) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): John Spears [(banjojohn)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 08:43_
- Btw, what will historians call this age?
- The Anti-enlightenment?
- The Age of Fake?(from fake news to fake impeachment trails, etc)
- ## [permalink #159](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post159) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): those Andropovian bongs [(rik)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 08:59_
- I'm not so sure there will be historians all that much longer.
- ## [permalink #160](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post160) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): David Gans [(tnf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 09:34_
- The Great Endarkenment
- ## [permalink #161](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post161) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Jane Hirshfield [(jh)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 11:05_
- Or if we may be extremely lucky as well as extremely proactive, The
- Small Endarkenment.
- (great phrase, gans)
- ## [permalink #162](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post162) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): David Gans [(tnf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 12:52_
- It did not originate with me, but I put it into a song:
- Endarkened forces are clamping down
- On us unconfirming souls
- Waving flags and bashing "fags"
- And burning truth like coal
- Now, I don't know but I've been told
- The naming rights have all been sold
- Hell is hot and heaven's cold, and
- It's gonna get worse before it gets better
- It's gonna get worse before it gets better
- It's gonna get worse before it gets better
- But I know it's gonna get better
- ## [permalink #163](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post163) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): bill braasch [(bbraasch)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 13:23_
- 2020 is our 35th year as well.sf.ca.us, aka well.com .
- Chinese New Year begins this weekend. Wrap up your loose ends, pay
- your bills. The Year of the Metal Rat, the start of a 12 year metal
- cycle.
- Anything you’d like to opine about rats or metal?
- ## [permalink #164](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post164) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): those Andropovian bongs [(rik)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 13:24_
- I envy you your gift for your gift for words, and your optimism.
- ## [permalink #165](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post165) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): those Andropovian bongs [(rik)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 13:25_
- Slip.
- ## [permalink #166](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post166) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): David Gans [(tnf)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Thu 23 Jan 20 16:59_
- > and your optimism
- "Hope is an obligation," as <mtheo> once said in a very different context.
- ## [permalink #167](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post167) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): John Spears [(banjojohn)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Fri 24 Jan 20 13:08_
- Thank you, Gans, the Endarkening is right on target, hopefully not
- the Great Endarkening....
- Great lyrics, too, but I can't say I feel the optimism expressed the
- last line. I suspect that's part artistic license. I often think
- about Dylan's lyric, penned a few years ago: "it's not dark yet, but
- it's getting there...".
- ## [permalink #168](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post168) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Stuart [(sjs)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Mon 27 Jan 20 05:39_
- I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow
- ## [permalink #169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169) of [169](https://people.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/507/State-of-the-World-2020-Bruce-St-page07.html#post169): Vasilios Koronakis [(jonl)](https://people.well.com/truenames.html) _Wed 29 Jan 20 08:12_
- > Via email from Vasilios Koronakis:
- Bravo, bravo Lena! (re <inkwell.vue.507.144>)
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