thursday morning reads

Russ Feingold on The Daily Show

Sean has transcribed Bruce Sterling's State of the World Address given at SXSW 2006.

As you may or may not know, I am spending a lot of my time in Europe this year, after spending a year in California. I get to see America from the outside now – I get to see America as 94% of the planet sees America. And I look at wireless spreading in London, and the spread of broadband in Korea. I’ve got broadband in Serbia, where the phone companies are literally run by criminals in exile … and my broadband in Serbia costs twenty dollars a month. And it works. Our people in Washington are drinking their own bathwater. They have forgotten how to build anything. They are busy monetizing stuff for their reelection campaigns. It is decadent. It is sclerotic. It looks like the Soviet Union.

These guys in power are so eager to monetize the Net, that they are turning the U. S. A. into a banana republic with rockets. Not just politically backward … technically backward. That’s the part that’s unforgivable. The Reality-Based community are fatally easy to push around, mostly because they’re so gentlemanly and ladylike. But when you actually ignore reality, for years on end, THE PAYBACK IS A BITCH, BROTHER!

And I would know … because I’m a Science Fiction writer.

Japan Times - Zero Yen Houses