| Wired
1.01: "War Is Virtual Hell"
"A wired Armed Forces will be composed entirely of veterans - highly trained veterans of military cyberspace. An army of high-tech masters who may never have fired a real shot in real anger, but have nevertheless rampaged across entire virtual continents, crushing all resistance with fluid teamwork and utterly focused, karate-like strikes. This is the concept of virtual reality as a strategic asset. It's the reasoning behind SIMNET, the 'Mother of All Computer Games.' It's modern Nintendo training for modern Nintendo war." Wired 2.04: "Compost of Empire" "Everything in Russia that was frozen solid during 50 years of Cold War is being blown apart in a devastating whirlwind of Coca-Cola, hamburgers, pop music and candy bars. Everything is for sale. Everyone is on the take. Crime and corruption have gone beyond moral opprobrium and become a daily necessity. The entire economy has collapsed into whirling dust, into viral cells: kiosks, blankets on the sidewalk, a plastic shopping-bag, the trunk of a car." Wired 3.01: "Triumph Of The Plastic People" "Nevertheless, Václav Havel embarrasses people sometimes. Not every president in the world will hold a formal audience with Pink Floyd, but Havel did just that last week. Havel also redesigned the night lighting for Hradcany Castle because he used to be a stage-lighting hand in Prague's little alternative theaters. The Hradcany Castle looks terrific now, tastefully lit in low-key, magic-realist verdigris and salmon pink, but most other presidents don't even know what verdigris and salmon pink are." Wired 3.05: Electrosphere: "Good Cop, Bad Hacker" "People in law enforcement often ask me, Mr. Sterling, if you're a science fiction writer like you say you are, then why should you care about American computer police and private security? And also, how come my kids can never find any copies of your sci-fi novels?" Wired 4.01: Idees Fortes: "The Aleph" "I imagine Public Telepresence Points, consisting of a rather mystical-looking black globe high on a mirrored stalk. The poetic obverse of a charlatan's crystal ball that people all over the world can peer into - or rather peer out from - this globe." Wired 4.05: Netizen: "Merchants of Venom" "The Republican 21st century basically resembles the Confederate States of America. States' rights supersede the will of the Union. Tent-revival preachers wield unquestioned power, aided by satellites and direct mail. The money formerly spent on federal social work is funneled directly into the coffers of churches."  Wired
4.07: "Is Phoenix Burning?"
"Mark Pauline has a good line of gab, in his elliptical, left-handed fashion. He's at relative rhetorical ease with classy theoretical jabber such as emergent behavior, cyborganics, chaos theory, transparent interfaces, artificial life, and the machinic phylum. However, the machinic phylum and 45 cents will get you a cup of coffee. They won't get you a "Spectacular Mechanical Performance," and Mark Pauline is a hardened 17-year veteran of more than 50 such shows. His performances always boast very apt titles such as the recent 'A Calculated Forecast of Ultimate Doom Sickening Episodes of Widespread Devastation Accompanied by Sensations of Pleasurable Excitement,' and the early but classic 'A Cruel and Relentless Plot to Pervert the Flesh of Beasts to Unholy Uses'." Wired 4.11: "Greetings From Burning Man" "Woke up, had breakfast. Looked out my RV window and saw a guy sitting on a toilet. He was skidding by at about 45 mph in a massive trail of dust. He had his toilet mounted on a wooden sled, and he was being towed by a pickup. His pants were around his ankles, and he was reading a magazine as he skidded along. It was the magazine reading that made this truly a memorable gesture." Wired 6.01: "Art and Corruption" "Being Russian, the River Club likes to think big. A common squatter's tactic in Saint Petersburg involves legally renting an apartment, then refusing to leave the premises while not paying the rent. That tactic is OK for wimps and sissies, but the River Club rarely bothers with 'paper permissions.' Back in 1994, the River Club squatted a big fishing trawler called the Stubnitz. They swarmed on board while the authorities weren't looking, equipped the ship with PCs and pirate radio, and turned it into a mobile ocean-going rave. The Riverniks and their allies then puttered around the Baltic with a crew of bewildered professional sailors, emitting crazed radio manifestos about invasions from Jupiter and a World War III breaking out inside the human brain." |