5 ms·

The Ecuadorian Library

113 points by waterlesscloud 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
thenomad 13y ago
1) This is one of the best things BruceS has written in years - and Bruce is still one of the best commentators on the Future we have. Clear, unflinching, and simultaneously hopeful and horrified. 2) Medium got Bruce Sterling? OK, fine, guess I'm reluctantly supporting them. Where goes the guy who wrote the Viridian Manifesto, there goeth my nation.
mr_spothawk 13y ago
This is so well written and so beautifully sewn together. I hope this gets exposed everywhere. He needs to do more of this stuff. We could use a lot more writers and thought leaders in this effort.
- EdwinJeremiah 13y ago
  I appreciate That!!
norswap 13y ago
> The pigs in Orwell’s “Animal Farm” have more suavity than the US government is demonstrating now. Amen to that. To me it's amazing that in years past, spying on political opponents was enough to make a president resign, while apparently today spying on the world's population doesn't put heat on anyone. Of course circumstances are different, now it's the state doing the spying, not a political party; yet one might wonder what's really different except for bipartisanship.
- dmytrish 13y ago
  There's a phrase attributed to Stalin: "Killing a person is a crime, killing millions is statistics". It's sad how relevant (s/killing/spying/g) it still is.
terhechte 13y ago
Money Quote: "It’s all about Bradley shivering naked in his solitary cage, and Julian diligently typing in his book-lined closet at the embassy, and Ed bagging out behind the plastic seating of some airport, in a jetlag fit of black globalization that went on for a solid month. And, those tiny, confined, somehow united spaces are the moral high ground. That’s where it is right now, that’s what it looks like these days."
- Amadou 13y ago
  Except that Snowden almost certainly did not spend much time sleeping in the actual airport. But poetic license and all that... Here is one of many stories about the Novotel: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/trapped-transit-orwellian-moscow-airport-hotel http://bigstory.ap.org/article/trapped-transit-orwellian-mos...
g8oz 13y ago
Love everything this guy writes. Reading him feels like eating dessert.
confluence 13y ago
This is magnificent. Truly it is. Holy crap is it good. TIL: Laws don't exist. Rights don't exist. Power is the only protection against power. Companies are their country's bitches. Countries aren't really that different. Power isn't where you expect it to be. There's a lot of Potemkin posturing going around. There are a lot organizations out their more dangerous than the NSA. Did I say how good this essay was? Because, to be frank, it is probably the best thing I've read all year. The world is a farce, and everyone in it is full of shit.
D9u 13y ago
Very well written! My favorite part: People, you couldn’t trust any of these three guys to go down to the corner grocery for a pack of cigarettes. Stallman would bring you tiny peat-pots of baby tobacco plants, then tell you to grow your own. Assange would buy the cigarettes, but smoke them all himself while coding up something unworkable. And Ed would set fire to himself, to prove to an innocent mankind that tobacco is a monstrous and cancerous evil that must be exposed at all costs. And yet the three of them together, they look just amazing. They are fantastic figures, like the promise of otherworldly aid from a superhero comic. They are visibly stronger than they’ve ever been before. They have the initiative in a world afflicted with comprehensive helplessness. We need people like Bruce within governments all around the world. People who aren't blinded by agenda, money, or inconvenience. Thank you for sharing this with us.
e3pi 13y ago
Read his 2010 `The Blast Shack' at: http://www.webstock.org.nz/the-blast-shack/ http://www.webstock.org.nz/the-blast-shack/ "...a massive computer leak is not the kind of sunlight that chases away corrupt misbehavior; it’s more like some dreadful shift in the planetary atmosphere that causes ultraviolet light to peel their skin away.
dkuntz2 13y ago
I'm going to stand out here, but I didn't actually like the essay. While it started solely as a stylistic distaste stemming from the continued use of first names, which immediately makes a work sound less professional to me, it just continued along not really making a point. Yes, these people are in opposition to those other people, who are in opposition of the US government, but we knew that already. I was hugely put off when it sounded like (to me, I admit I may have been projecting) he was insulting Assange's demeanor, specifically the stuttering part, because it doesn't seem relevant to the point being made. Mostly, this seemed like a piece of entertainment, not giving a new view our new information.

113 points by waterlesscloud 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

1) This is one of the best things BruceS has written in years - and Bruce is still one of the best commentators on the Future we have. Clear, unflinching, and simultaneously hopeful and horrified. 2) Medium got Bruce Sterling? OK, fine, guess I'm reluctantly supporting them. Where goes the guy who wrote the Viridian Manifesto, there goeth my nation.

mr_spothawk 13y ago

This is so well written and so beautifully sewn together. I hope this gets exposed everywhere. He needs to do more of this stuff. We could use a lot more writers and thought leaders in this effort.

EdwinJeremiah 13y ago
I appreciate That!!

norswap 13y ago

> The pigs in Orwell’s “Animal Farm” have more suavity than the US government is demonstrating now. Amen to that. To me it's amazing that in years past, spying on political opponents was enough to make a president resign, while apparently today spying on the world's population doesn't put heat on anyone. Of course circumstances are different, now it's the state doing the spying, not a political party; yet one might wonder what's really different except for bipartisanship.

dmytrish 13y ago
There's a phrase attributed to Stalin: "Killing a person is a crime, killing millions is statistics". It's sad how relevant (s/killing/spying/g) it still is.

terhechte 13y ago

Money Quote: "It’s all about Bradley shivering naked in his solitary cage, and Julian diligently typing in his book-lined closet at the embassy, and Ed bagging out behind the plastic seating of some airport, in a jetlag fit of black globalization that went on for a solid month. And, those tiny, confined, somehow united spaces are the moral high ground. That’s where it is right now, that’s what it looks like these days."

Amadou 13y ago
Except that Snowden almost certainly did not spend much time sleeping in the actual airport. But poetic license and all that... Here is one of many stories about the Novotel: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/trapped-transit-orwellian-moscow-airport-hotel http://bigstory.ap.org/article/trapped-transit-orwellian-mos...

g8oz 13y ago

Love everything this guy writes. Reading him feels like eating dessert.

confluence 13y ago

This is magnificent. Truly it is. Holy crap is it good. TIL: Laws don't exist. Rights don't exist. Power is the only protection against power. Companies are their country's bitches. Countries aren't really that different. Power isn't where you expect it to be. There's a lot of Potemkin posturing going around. There are a lot organizations out their more dangerous than the NSA. Did I say how good this essay was? Because, to be frank, it is probably the best thing I've read all year. The world is a farce, and everyone in it is full of shit.

D9u 13y ago

Very well written! My favorite part: People, you couldn’t trust any of these three guys to go down to the corner grocery for a pack of cigarettes. Stallman would bring you tiny peat-pots of baby tobacco plants, then tell you to grow your own. Assange would buy the cigarettes, but smoke them all himself while coding up something unworkable. And Ed would set fire to himself, to prove to an innocent mankind that tobacco is a monstrous and cancerous evil that must be exposed at all costs. And yet the three of them together, they look just amazing. They are fantastic figures, like the promise of otherworldly aid from a superhero comic. They are visibly stronger than they’ve ever been before. They have the initiative in a world afflicted with comprehensive helplessness. We need people like Bruce within governments all around the world. People who aren't blinded by agenda, money, or inconvenience. Thank you for sharing this with us.

e3pi 13y ago

Read his 2010 `The Blast Shack' at: http://www.webstock.org.nz/the-blast-shack/ http://www.webstock.org.nz/the-blast-shack/ "...a massive computer leak is not the kind of sunlight that chases away corrupt misbehavior; it’s more like some dreadful shift in the planetary atmosphere that causes ultraviolet light to peel their skin away.

dkuntz2 13y ago

I'm going to stand out here, but I didn't actually like the essay. While it started solely as a stylistic distaste stemming from the continued use of first names, which immediately makes a work sound less professional to me, it just continued along not really making a point. Yes, these people are in opposition to those other people, who are in opposition of the US government, but we knew that already. I was hugely put off when it sounded like (to me, I admit I may have been projecting) he was insulting Assange's demeanor, specifically the stuttering part, because it doesn't seem relevant to the point being made. Mostly, this seemed like a piece of entertainment, not giving a new view our new information.