The Other Dead Media
03.11.00
Think we're kidding? Well, Bruce Sterling certainly isn't.
In his recently published "The Manifesto of January 3, 2000," the best-selling science fiction writer and co-godfather of Cyberpunk imagines a post-human future, populated by a myriad of bioengineered lifeforms whose current equivalents are Pokemon and the Teletubbies.
To support his thesis, Sterling includes the "Master-List of Dead Media," which implies that at the rate we're killing off old technology, it's only a matter of time before your Aunt Susie is cross-pollinated with a parrot.
Whether you buy Sterling's view of the future or not is your business. But you'd have to be recently deceased media yourself not to find the Master List highly informative and entertaining. Grouped into a variety of categories from "Dead Preliterate Media" to "Dead Sound Production Technologies," the list includes the Quipu (KEE-POO) -- a string-based Incan form of communication -- and American guided-missile mail.
In the following interview, Sterling's erudition and postmodern playfulness run wild, as he pokes fun at the "crypto-religious" fervor of the Internet Revolution and humorously explains why the title of his latest novel, "Distraction," was no accident.
Listen to Sterling discuss:
Dead Media
What it is and where to find it.
Losing It
Data holocausts, info-mausoleums, and other eerie byproducts of ephemeral media.
Instant Info-Obsolescence Sterling's Manifesto of Jan 3, 2000 Humanity as Dead Media? Machine Worship Internet Hysteria Distraction and Info-Overload Stock Trader Nation Sterling's advice to those seeking relief from mental burnout and "the carpal tunnel of the soul". Deconstructing Pokeman Like what you hear? Read the book: NetSlaves: True Tales of Working the Web, a beyond-the-hype look at what it's really like to work in the Internet business.
Why consumers keep paying over and over for the same cultural artifacts.
Why artists, whose economies are ruled by "rich idiots", have cause to rejoice these days.
How the biotech revolution will end "humanity as we know it" within the next 100 years.
Why Americans regard inanimate objects with "crypto-religous" fervor.
Why the Net is greeted with the same "moral panic" that met "Hot Rod Delinquents" of the 1950's.
Sterling discusses his latest book, and dissects Steve Case, the "hydra-headed" monster of postindustrial capitalism.
Why Wealth Fever and "swaggering Robber Barons" are running amok in America's "new gilded age".
How Pokeman and the Teletubbies are preparing today's youth for a post-human future.
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