6 ms·

Bruce Sterling: Poor folk love their cellphones

54 points by shalmanese 18y ago

abstractbill 18y ago
This reads more like a comparison of "old money" and "new money" to me, than of rich and poor. I have more than one rich friend who would hate to be disconnected.
- idiopathic 18y ago
  Actually, it sounds more like a restatement of the Theory of the Leisure Class: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class (This is a wonderful book by the way, and it was recommended to me by a Chief Marketing Officer. Reading it on his recommendation was the first time I realized he was actually quite smart.)
_pius 18y ago
The article was thought-provoking for me, as I hadn't heard the Sterling talk, but she lost me here: I myself mostly post links to this column, hoping that the self-promotion is transparent enough that people can easily ignore a link or click it if they’re curious .... I can’t help wondering if I’ve turned into some banged-up street kid, stuck in a cruel and crowded neighborhood, trying to convince everyone that regular beatings give you character. Maybe the truth is that I wish I could get out of this place and live as I imagine some nondigital or predigital writers do: among family and friends, in big, beautiful houses, with precious, irreplaceable objects. And what is stopping her from doing that? Her Twitter usage seems to be very much self-promotional and one way, so it's not as if she's leaving a community she has a stake in. What's she whining about?
- sho 18y ago
  Bruce Sterling is awesome! He's one of the very few people who I'll at least skim pretty much anything he writes, watch all his talks, think about what he says. Sometimes he's wrong, but it's always a great ride. Love the guy. Funnily enough I basically hate all his books but who cares.
- abrahamsen 18y ago
  >> in big, beautiful houses, with precious, irreplaceable objects. > And what is stopping her from doing that? Lack of money, perhaps? Even the non-material first part >> among family and friends can be difficult if everyone are busy making ends meet.
  - _pius 18y ago
    She was speaking metaphorically.
    - _pius 18y ago
      Surprised someone downmodded me for this one. If you actually read the article, she wasn't literally talking about living in an overcrowded neighborhood and wanting to move to a big, secluded house; she was talking about feeling bombarded with tweets and wanting to get out of the Twittersphere, where she's not really well accepted. You know, writers sometimes use these things called "metaphors" to make their points more interesting ... :P
      - abrahamsen 18y ago
        Context is everything, in this case the context is Sterling's assertion that connections is for poor people. So the context is rich versus poor. "A big, secluded house" is correctly a metaphor, but a shallow one, namely for living the style of life of rich people. Something that really is a whole lot easier if you have a lot of money. This makes your original question seem weird, you are basically asking "What prevents her from living like a rich person?". The answer to that one is obviously "Lack of money".
yesimahuman 18y ago
I like the web and connectivity because I like making shit, he doesn't address the developer side of it all.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  he doesn't address the developer side of it all Well, not to put too fine a point on it: We're a vanishingly small percentage of humanity. What we think about the web is disproportionately important, because people who build the web have a certain amount of power to control how people use it by tweaking the design. But, ultimately, we don't get to choose how the medium is used, any more than the makers of the atomic bomb got to choose how that was used... or the people who write music and books get to decide how their work will be reviewed and who will quote from it.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
mechanical_fish 18y ago
Damn and blast, where is the podcast of the Bruce Sterling SXSW talk? It doesn't appear to be up here yet: http://sxsw.com/taxonomy/term/44 http://sxsw.com/taxonomy/term/44 I'm tired of all these bits-and-pieces leaks. Sterling's one-liners are much more fun -- and often make rather more sense -- in context. I suppose, if I had been willing to spend more money, I could have just gone to SXSW and heard Sterling in person. But, instead, I have to wait like a mendicant for them to get around to dribbling it out to me. Maybe this is what Sterling was talking about.
maigret 18y ago
Of course poor people love their cell phones! But rich people too (even more sometimes)... And what's the point? How you use Twitter is a pretty different story. I find the article has a pretty strange structure anyway, I'm sort of searching the point the writer wants to make. Some more tweeting could help the author to get more concise maybe :)
Adam503 18y ago
Bruce Sterling "Poor folk love their cellphones." "Poor folk" don't have cellphones. They can't afford them.
- olefoo 18y ago
  There is a $20 Billion (with a B) a year market in prepaid cell phone services that says you are wrong. And as is often the case, providing convenient retail solutions for small purchasers can be more profitable than demanding long term contracts. As with many things, when it comes to mobile services the poor pay more and get less.
  - Adam503 18y ago
    Those are lower middle class people buying those services. The poor would be choosing between their cellphones and shelter. Am not saying there are no people that choose to be homelessness and keep their cellphone, but there aren't very many.
    - jibiki 18y ago
      No true Scotsman would own a cellphone! In all seriousness, "poor" to me does not mean homeless. In fact, there are many people above the poverty line who I consider poor (the so-called "working poor".) Obviously this is different for you, and it's silly to have an argument over semantics.
      - Adam503 18y ago
        There's official US. Gov't standards for these types of things, you know. I use the same terminology and standards the US. Gov't does. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.html http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.htm... If someone insists on trying to communicate applying their own individual definition to terms of common usage that are different than those others in a region uses, they themselves are the ones that will have difficulty communicating their ideas. If the discussion is about poverty and the poor, and the discussion is in the US, the US Gov't standard would be the reasonable standard for terminology to be derived. So a single person with no dependents is considered poor in the US if they make less than $10,590 or roughly 10/11 K a year. I responded to Sterling's statement that said poor people love cellphone because people that make less than 10/11K a year don't have cell phone because they can't afford them.
cmars232 18y ago
The key word in Sterling's quote is 'dependence'. I can use these services without becoming dependent on them. They're useful, so is whatever I'm reading while I'm on the can. I don't know, maybe it means more to all those motivational self-help and internet marketing types on Twitter. One of the great advantages I see in microblogging is the ability to walk in and out of the "attention stream" at leisure. Try that with IM and you're considered rude or strange. Of course, some probably have a harder time walking away than others.
c00p3r 18y ago
Nothing special - all those cheap digital illusions (TV and now its successor - Internet) were adapted especially for the poor, targeted to the poor, and massively advertised to them. It just works, and now we can see the results.
haseman 18y ago
Bruce Sterling seems to have confused his concepts of "Rich" and "Old" Old people dislike connections, hide in private gardens. There are plenty of "Rich" people who live to sip from the firehose that is the internet...

54 points by shalmanese 18y ago

This reads more like a comparison of "old money" and "new money" to me, than of rich and poor. I have more than one rich friend who would hate to be disconnected.

idiopathic 18y ago
Actually, it sounds more like a restatement of the Theory of the Leisure Class: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class (This is a wonderful book by the way, and it was recommended to me by a Chief Marketing Officer. Reading it on his recommendation was the first time I realized he was actually quite smart.)

_pius 18y ago

The article was thought-provoking for me, as I hadn't heard the Sterling talk, but she lost me here: I myself mostly post links to this column, hoping that the self-promotion is transparent enough that people can easily ignore a link or click it if they’re curious .... I can’t help wondering if I’ve turned into some banged-up street kid, stuck in a cruel and crowded neighborhood, trying to convince everyone that regular beatings give you character. Maybe the truth is that I wish I could get out of this place and live as I imagine some nondigital or predigital writers do: among family and friends, in big, beautiful houses, with precious, irreplaceable objects. And what is stopping her from doing that? Her Twitter usage seems to be very much self-promotional and one way, so it's not as if she's leaving a community she has a stake in. What's she whining about?

sho 18y ago
Bruce Sterling is awesome! He's one of the very few people who I'll at least skim pretty much anything he writes, watch all his talks, think about what he says. Sometimes he's wrong, but it's always a great ride. Love the guy. Funnily enough I basically hate all his books but who cares.
abrahamsen 18y ago
>> in big, beautiful houses, with precious, irreplaceable objects. > And what is stopping her from doing that? Lack of money, perhaps? Even the non-material first part >> among family and friends can be difficult if everyone are busy making ends meet.
- _pius 18y ago
  She was speaking metaphorically.
  - _pius 18y ago
    Surprised someone downmodded me for this one. If you actually read the article, she wasn't literally talking about living in an overcrowded neighborhood and wanting to move to a big, secluded house; she was talking about feeling bombarded with tweets and wanting to get out of the Twittersphere, where she's not really well accepted. You know, writers sometimes use these things called "metaphors" to make their points more interesting ... :P
    - abrahamsen 18y ago
      Context is everything, in this case the context is Sterling's assertion that connections is for poor people. So the context is rich versus poor. "A big, secluded house" is correctly a metaphor, but a shallow one, namely for living the style of life of rich people. Something that really is a whole lot easier if you have a lot of money. This makes your original question seem weird, you are basically asking "What prevents her from living like a rich person?". The answer to that one is obviously "Lack of money".

yesimahuman 18y ago

I like the web and connectivity because I like making shit, he doesn't address the developer side of it all.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
he doesn't address the developer side of it all Well, not to put too fine a point on it: We're a vanishingly small percentage of humanity. What we think about the web is disproportionately important, because people who build the web have a certain amount of power to control how people use it by tweaking the design. But, ultimately, we don't get to choose how the medium is used, any more than the makers of the atomic bomb got to choose how that was used... or the people who write music and books get to decide how their work will be reviewed and who will quote from it.

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

mechanical_fish 18y ago

Damn and blast, where is the podcast of the Bruce Sterling SXSW talk? It doesn't appear to be up here yet: http://sxsw.com/taxonomy/term/44 http://sxsw.com/taxonomy/term/44 I'm tired of all these bits-and-pieces leaks. Sterling's one-liners are much more fun -- and often make rather more sense -- in context. I suppose, if I had been willing to spend more money, I could have just gone to SXSW and heard Sterling in person. But, instead, I have to wait like a mendicant for them to get around to dribbling it out to me. Maybe this is what Sterling was talking about.

maigret 18y ago

Of course poor people love their cell phones! But rich people too (even more sometimes)... And what's the point? How you use Twitter is a pretty different story. I find the article has a pretty strange structure anyway, I'm sort of searching the point the writer wants to make. Some more tweeting could help the author to get more concise maybe :)

Adam503 18y ago

Bruce Sterling "Poor folk love their cellphones." "Poor folk" don't have cellphones. They can't afford them.

olefoo 18y ago
There is a $20 Billion (with a B) a year market in prepaid cell phone services that says you are wrong. And as is often the case, providing convenient retail solutions for small purchasers can be more profitable than demanding long term contracts. As with many things, when it comes to mobile services the poor pay more and get less.
- Adam503 18y ago
  Those are lower middle class people buying those services. The poor would be choosing between their cellphones and shelter. Am not saying there are no people that choose to be homelessness and keep their cellphone, but there aren't very many.
  - jibiki 18y ago
    No true Scotsman would own a cellphone! In all seriousness, "poor" to me does not mean homeless. In fact, there are many people above the poverty line who I consider poor (the so-called "working poor".) Obviously this is different for you, and it's silly to have an argument over semantics.
    - Adam503 18y ago
      There's official US. Gov't standards for these types of things, you know. I use the same terminology and standards the US. Gov't does. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.html http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh07.htm... If someone insists on trying to communicate applying their own individual definition to terms of common usage that are different than those others in a region uses, they themselves are the ones that will have difficulty communicating their ideas. If the discussion is about poverty and the poor, and the discussion is in the US, the US Gov't standard would be the reasonable standard for terminology to be derived. So a single person with no dependents is considered poor in the US if they make less than $10,590 or roughly 10/11 K a year. I responded to Sterling's statement that said poor people love cellphone because people that make less than 10/11K a year don't have cell phone because they can't afford them.

cmars232 18y ago

The key word in Sterling's quote is 'dependence'. I can use these services without becoming dependent on them. They're useful, so is whatever I'm reading while I'm on the can. I don't know, maybe it means more to all those motivational self-help and internet marketing types on Twitter. One of the great advantages I see in microblogging is the ability to walk in and out of the "attention stream" at leisure. Try that with IM and you're considered rude or strange. Of course, some probably have a harder time walking away than others.

c00p3r 18y ago

Nothing special - all those cheap digital illusions (TV and now its successor - Internet) were adapted especially for the poor, targeted to the poor, and massively advertised to them. It just works, and now we can see the results.

haseman 18y ago

Bruce Sterling seems to have confused his concepts of "Rich" and "Old" Old people dislike connections, hide in private gardens. There are plenty of "Rich" people who live to sip from the firehose that is the internet...