Sterling Rants

I get the feeling that Bruce Sterling is just trying to be ornery because it’s fun to be a contrarian. If you maintain the status quo, no-one talks about it. Discussions don’t go on for long when everyone agrees with each other. When Sterling tells bloggers they’re a passing fad, or says that mashups are a novelty art form that will fade away, it really gets peoples’ blood pumping — notice how I’m blogging it, like the good little sheep I am.

I don’t think blogs will be gone in ten years. People have always kept diaries and daily journals, and blogs are just those things with feedback. People, being generally social, love feedback and want to communicate, and blogs, as a means of communication, are great. You can talk to a whole crowd at once with each post, and it’s quick and easy to keep on top of if you want to do it.

And mashups — sure, a lot of them are just people playing with music, which is okay by me, but probably won’t lead to any great classics. But sometimes you find something like The Kleptones, who take loads of already-great songs and turn them into something much more than the sum of their parts, and you realize that this isn’t just “novelty music.” (If you haven’t listened to the Kleptones’ album “A Night at the Hip-Hopera”, go grab it now. It’s sheer genius.)

And as for the “commons-based peer production” economic model? Sterling may not think much of it, but to me it seems like a successful, if limited, form of socialism. We choose what we like and what is popular by clicking, visiting, and posting about it. The best stuff rises to the top of the popularity heap, and often reaps rewards based on that popularity. It’s a mini-reputocracy, and while the repute may only be among a certain small subset of the population, it can still cause changes in the way the rest of the world works.