After all, even people I love dearly -- my wife, for example -- sometimes seem head throbbingly annoying. I'm sure the reverse is true.
So it was probably inevitable I'd rise one fine morning, wipe the sleep from my eyes and realize I was fed up with Bruce Sterling-isms such as favela-chic, spimes, squellettes, arphids and I don't even know what else.
[read all the Sterling-isms your mind can handle at his blog, "Beyond the Beyond --- <http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/> ]
But why?
These are all perfectly cremulent words/ideas/concepts/projections about *The Future*. Anyone can look around and find supporting, if not inarguable evidence.
For several minutes, I stared meditatively at the dark screen of my iPhone, trying to think it through. The little screen didn't stay dark for long; a call came through, breaking my reverie, then a cal reminder, a timer I set and forgot, an email notification, etc, etc. What a busy little device. Finally, an answer came to me. I decided that the tipping point -- to borrow an ancient Gladwellism -- wasn't Sterling neologisms alone.
No, it was the entire ambulance chasing mishigas.
The 'global guerrillas' [goog for blog url] who, once you parse out the faux complexities of their Kissingerian ramblings, can be called burning car fetishists (and not in an interesting, Ballardian way). For the global g set, any overturned, burning car anywhere is a metaphor for *The Coming Anarchy* and that aging chestnut, the 'failed state'.
The Thackaras [goog for doors of perception blog] who, while very smart and positive and pleasant and much better company than the Kunstlers (about whom, more below) accept, without anything resembling a rigorous review, "energy descent" and "peak protein" and "catabolic collapse" and a squellette's worth of neo small is beautifulisms jacketed in technical-esque jargon. They mold their futurism to fit their localvore dreams, ignoring counter-indications (for ex, that some eco crisis solutions will be huge and centralized and very tech wiggy and not at all concerned with beautiful jpegs of garden scale lettuce crops and pretty kids in dreads).
The Kunstlerian peakists who pantingly announce the hydrocarbon market's every price fluctuation and who gleefully assume (after weakly trying to hide their glee with expressions of a sort of regret for *The Coming Anarchy*) that the "big die off" is just around the corner.
The Dmitry Orlovs who...well, the less said about Orlov -- Earth's favorite cocktail swilling apocalyptarian -- the better.
...
Of course, there *is* an ecological crisis; problems are stacking up. But just as UFO enthusiasts forget the "unidentified" part of their favorite acronym, filling the unknown with marvelous tales of anal probes, 'greys' and clandestine, poorly filmed autopsies of clumsy starship pilots, eco crisis fixated futurists are pouring their own just-so stories into the space between what's known (the fact of crisis) and what's unknown (how things will actually play out).
.d.