Bruce Sterling: The Ecuadorian Library

Xeni Jardin 8:12 am Mon Aug 5, 2013

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Richard Stallman and Julian Assange hold up a Shepard Fairey-ized photo of Edward Snowden. Image: Wikileaks.

Science fiction author and design futurist Bruce Sterling has written a masterful piece on the swirling vortex of cypherpunkian dystopia that is Edward Snowden/Wikileaks/NSA/Bradley Manning. Read it aloud to the loved one you'd share MREs with when the shit hits the fan. Print it out. Hand copies to strangers in the street. Know that he is right, and has superpowers with which to see and interpret our dark future. Snip:

If you’re a typical NSA geek, and you stare in all due horror at Julian, it’s impossible not to recognize him as one of your own breed. He’s got the math fixation, the stilted speech, the thousand-yard-stare, and even the private idiolect that somehow allows NSA guys to make up their own vocabulary whenever addressing Congress (who don’t matter) and haranguing black-hat hacker security conventions (who obviously do).

Julian has turned out to be a Tim Leary at the NSA’s psychiatric convention. He’s a lasting embarrassment who also spiked their Kool-Aid. Crushing Julian, cutting his funding, that stuff didn’t help one bit. He’s still got a roof and a keyboard. That’s all he ever seems to need.

The Ecuadorian Library: or, The Blast Shack After Three Years (medium)

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