Sunday, March 6, 2005

Bruce Sterling: The Annual Rant

Bruce Sterling—visionary and legendary post-SXSWi party host—is seeing the annual geek invasion of his town from a new perspective this year: as an out-of-towner. Here’s his pre-take on the whole ruckus, ”Get Visionary With Me Here: We are no longer pioneers of the digital age. We’re miners..

As part of his larger view on the baggage he’s bringing to this year’s conference, he lets slip this simply marvelous description of what happened to his post-conf house party and why it’s moving on up under official SXSW-sanction this year:

The event’s become too big and sophisticated for the pioneer ethos to last. Back in the Clinton years, the digerati used to merely trickle in, asking, “Uh, is this the cyberpunk’s house?” Nowadays these cats have all got cell phones, Mapquest, and Google. So, last year they showed up on my doorstep in “flash mobs.” A flash mob is a mobile, electronically connected gang, the human equivalent of Brazilian army ants. First, you get this lone scout who shows up, sniffing around and waving his antennae – “Hey, wait, there’s free beer here!” – and out comes his phone-cammed cell phone from his ripstop nylon belt-pack: snick ... ka-sneee ... whizz! Eight minutes later, his entire buddy list comes piling out from every corner of the compass in a fleet of yellow cabs.

You know the way bloggers go ape when they discover a gay prostitute in the White House press corps? It’s just like that, except with beer.