Mar 2009 Tech Fiction – We’re All Geeks Now
How can everyone not love near future fiction?
I've just finished Charles Stross' Halted State which is a great read on a whole host of levels — from 10 year out science fiction with pervasive high bandwidth wifi, smart location services, vision-enhancing glasses with data overlays and a second-tier economy between massive multiplayer online games. It is a nice vision of technology and when I get a moment I'll tap in some of the amazing quotes this guy has come up with to share.
On another note finishing one book set me off looking up others and in the process came across a few videos of another favourite author, Neal Stephenson, which I came across it in classic web linking fashion seeing the link because both spoke at Google's Mountain View authors series.
Never ceases to amaze how uninteresting the TV becomes when you can watch 2 hours back to back of interesing writers. (And how effective putting good content online gives you a better appreciation for the brand the sponsors it.) At anyrate I noticed Stephenson called out one of my favorite lines by saying in a commencement address that "we are all geeks now." Not his best presentation but the content is excellent:
His idea is that we all have an area of passion that we can feed because of the freely available information today — and publish as easily. My idea when I called the great and good of marketing and advertising at the Ogilvy Verge event "geeks" and said it was ok because "we're all geeks now" was we are all become adept at using technology to live fuller lives.
Either way we should all embrace it — technology is here to stay and will do wonderful things for all of us. Long live techno-utopianism.
