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Cyberpunk, Difference Engines and Mad Madge with Bruce Sterling
🕑 Added 2020-09-01 20:30:52 +0000 UTC
Hello everyone
If my voice is more reverberant than usual its because this is beaming from our new studio, which currently has no furniture, no electricity and no internet! We are hoping eventually to establish one or two of those things, and maybe even host some of these conversations live once we are all allowed to occupy space together again.
In the near term, the good news is we have a new episode for you! Last night we recorded a long and fun conversation with the Hugo award winning author and futurist Bruce Sterling. As you will hear Bruce has a great deal of knowledge about a great deal of stuff, and as well as his early writing helping to establish the cyberpunk movement, he was also among a handful of people who set the countercultural tone in San Francisco at the dawn of WIRED and the dot com boom. He is also a curator and expert on digital art.
We discuss his being the first WIRED cover story, new information he uncovered on the relationship between Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, the first science fiction writer; a woman referred to as “mad Madge”, Qanon as Christian fundamentalist Scifi, Amazons beginnings as a sci-fi bookstore, ideas from early dot com times that people didn’t pick up but maybe should have done more with, and to close we have a fiery debate about the merits and pitfalls of the name of this podcast and a conversation with GPT-3.
Bruce is a treat to talk to and a fountain of wild knowledge, we hope its fun to listen to. Have a great week.
Comments
Mat
cheers Simon :) Looking forward to hope runners!!!
This was really great. Ran the whole gamut of interesting conversations. Bruce is really funny!
Mat
I def detect a generational difference, although appreciate the chance to feel that out with someone from a different time. The nice thing I found about this is that, for example, it is always refreshing to talk to older people who still very much see the archive and discourse as a canonized/hallowed thing - when of course as you allude to it feels like the damage of the last decade has been to explode that form entirely, or at least it is something that is direly in need of reconstitution.
yo that was an interesting talk b/c of the generational differences in understanding the tech/creative landscape. i have a lot of respect for bruce sterling but he kept referencing 'the edge' and pushing to 'the edge' in a way that felt a little archaic. in order for there to be a 'leading edge' or edge you need some kind of discernible structure/form. i think mat's definition of interdependence was great in pointing to this lack of structure or community with these electronic tools. so where and what really is the edge these days, bruce...
