With about 10 kilos more than last year, Bruce Sterling filled Hall D again with thousands of people who came to listen to his closing of SXSW. Too fine a humor for me or too gringo for a Latino, but the first 20 minutes at least made it a torture.
He talked about the bad weather we had in this South by South WET, how it rained so much and how cold it has been, to a whole long paragraph about drugs in Mexico, drug trafficking and other inconsistencies. I guess for many it’s great, while for me it’s a nightmare. It makes me think what am I doing here? Makes me crave my 6 o’clock margarita even more.
While I keep waiting for him to start talking about SXSW, with some new idea or perspective that I don’t have, I think he got on topic when he talked about geek art. Then he got to Twitter’s 5 year anniversary, which he launched at SXSW to tell us all, “If you were waiting for something as big as Twitter this year, you’ll keep waiting.” In simple he said that something this big couldn’t happen every year.
He then went on to how he’s seeing people dressed today. He notes that a few years ago SXSW had people in t-shirts and jeans, more looking like guys starting a business. Now he says he sees people better dressed, more successful and showing a level of elevation that he even calls “chic,” though still not comparable to the Film crowd.
He is bothered by the retro look of the geeks, and wonders if this is a reflection of a problem to be solved. He suggested we all come dressed more like people who talk about the future would. He then elaborated with jokes that I didn’t understand, however, he brought up an idea that I think would perfectly apply to our creative people in agencies around the world.
And into the predictions came the author of Beyond and Beyond. Without further introduction he predicted with a story to integrate stories. He brought into the room the stacks, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. Incidentally, all Americans and irreversible powers of innovation. Sterling developed his monologue with a reference to the stacks and their dominance, which reaches to the tiniest levels. Integrated at the top and bottom, the future of the stacks is simple: they will take total control of the Internet.
Between them they will be doing everything possible to become the dominant stack, with the intention of destroying the others. However, he said that all five will be destroyed. He anticipates that they will all disappear as all the previous ones have done. With simple reasons that speak of saturation and exhaustion in users, in other words he talks about how they will inevitably be commodities, although people today love stacks.
In fact, he insists that none of these big firms bring us wealth and prosperity. Stacks, according to Sterling, do not have customers, but live stock (earned!). By this, he almost says that they reduce us to the level of dogs in reference to his famous cartoon. Then, without any reservation, he referred to the lords of the internet, the founders of each firm, to remind us how human they are. He mentioned the stacks as reflections of humanity, fragile and too dependent on people.
By this time the torture at the beginning made perfect sense. By the 36th minute I understand why the room is filled with thousands of people sitting and listening to him. No doubt he sees what many of us do not, especially when he makes me feel part of the herd. In fact, he recommends us to abandon our absurd level of dependence on stacks. And of course, what will happen to them? How will they live without these firms? How will they avoid what happened to Kodak, Nokia or MySpace?
So let’s turn out the lights and imagine they’re all gone. What’s left? For a good while he concentrated on a performance that got a lot of laughs to recreate his visualization of the future. You can hear it for yourself on the recording I’m making on my iPhone to make sure you check to see if what I’ve written makes any sense. The truth is, I didn’t understand where it went.
It was interesting to take notes while Sterling was making his speech – I tried! By the 44th minute I was lost again, as I couldn’t see what he was proposing in concrete terms, and in all this I barely managed to glean his rescue of the value of information, academia and knowledge.
In the end he gave away the books and closed. There you have the recording.
