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Bruce Sterling
This nOde last updated September 19th, 2003 and is permanently morphing...
(3 Cauac (Rain) / 7 Ch'en (Black) - 159/260 - 12.19.10.10.19)

STERLING, BRUCE (1954-Present)- Also known as Vincent
Omniaveritas.  from Austin, Texas
Journalist, literary critic, contributing writer for _Wired_ (on the cover of the first issue) and science  fiction author. Author of _The Artificial Kid_, _Involution Ocean_,   _Schismatrix_, _Crystal Express_, _Islands in the Net_, _Globalhead_ and  _Heavy Weather_, as well as the introductions to several books, and was  the editor of _Mirrorshades- The Cyberpunk Anthology_. He also wrote the  non-fiction _The Hacker Crackdown_, about the events of the Hacker  Crackdown of 1990, and co-wrote _The Difference Engine_ with William Gibson. His most recent  book was _Holy Fire_.  In his early days, he edited a weird samizdat zine  that viciously railed against the SF mainstream (dragons, space operas  etc.) entitled _Cheap Truth_ under the name "Vincent Omniaveritas." _Cheap  Truth_ was to SF what _Phrack Magazine_ is to personal computers.

• _Distraction_
• _A Good Old-Fashioned Future_

What we face now is a war of states of mind.   - The Spook
        "The Spook" by Bruce Sterling; 1983

There's a universe of potential, Lindsay, think of that. No rules, no limits.
Bruce Sterling -  _Schismatrix_

History is a form of science fiction. The future is history that hasn't happened yet. History is the sensibility of one time, assessing another time, that it cannot possibly know.

from _Viridian Design_

"Henceforth, artistic integrity should be judged, not by one's classic bohemian seclusion from satanic mills and the grasping bourgeoisie, but by what one creates and gives away." Bruce Sterling - _The Manifesto of January 3, 2000_

The Internet is the natural test-bed for this fast-moving, fast-vanishing, start-up society. Because the native technology of the coming years is not the 19th century "machine" or the 20th century "product." It is the 21st century "gizmo."

A gizmo is a device with so many features and so many promises that it can never be mastered within its own useful lifetime. A gizmo is flimsy, cheap, colorful, friendly, intriguing, easily disposable, and unlikely to harm the user. The gizmos purpose is not to efficiently perform some function or effectively provide some service. A gizmo exists to snag the users attention, and to engage the user in a vast unfolding nexus of interlinked experience.

The gizmo in its manifold aspects is the beau ideal for contemporary design and engineering. Because that is what our culture will be like, at its heart, in its bones, in its organs. A gizmo culture. We will go in so many directions at once that most of them will never see fulfillment. And then they will be gone.

- Bruce Sterling

“Contradictions and oxymorons often signal future opportunities. They suggest that something formerly unthinkable is within humanity’s grasp. A paradox
is a gap in competing systems of definition, a potential hole in the status quo. A frontier where the light of comprehension is dawning.” - _Tomorrow Now_ by Bruce Sterling

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