California College of the Arts Graduate Studies Lecture Series presents Bruce Sterling
Bruce Sterling is the legendary master of the cyberpunk science fiction genre and a founder of the Viridian Design movement, which explores radical green technologies to deal with impending ecological collapse.
Sterling has written, "Don't become a well-rounded person. Well-rounded people are smooth and dull. Become a thoroughly spiky person. Grow spikes from every angle. Stick in their throats like a puffer fish. Learn about the stuff that was buried because it was too experimental or embarrassing or inexplicable.
In 2005 he was "visionary in residence" at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He is a professor at the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland.
Bio
Brenda Laurel
Chair, Graduate Design Program
Bruce Sterling
Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which defined the cyberpunk genre.
In 2003 he was appointed Professor at the European Graduate School where he is teaching Summer Intensive Courses on media and design. In 2005, he became "visionary in residence" at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Sterling's analysis of humans being the personification of time is fascinating. We are time in flux, and everything is bound to change. People who can't deal with the natural cycle of change probably have more difficult times. Everything has a lifetime and when people are trapped in the mode of keeping things the same they are setting themself up for failure and disappointment. Mind-opening speech.
With Sterling's description of the unknown and uncertainty in futurism in design I don't know why any company would invest in a futurist. If futurists are usually the death of a company and designers are the future, why not just skip the futurist and go straight for the designer.
"the most advanced yet acceptable" --acceptable to whom? the market the power broker idealogues, your conscience, your fear/greed matrix? Sterling strips down our global market based brains( our greedy grey matter) sucking up and storing concepts like "branding" and "virulent memes" which are really old ideas originating in wartime( out of Walter Lippman's description of "manufacture of consent") your/our consent to greedily consume time/material non-renewable resources on earth.
This is brilliant...particularly the part about futurism equals "not the whole future, but the client's future that you're going to help create" and their hopes and anxieties are the grain of that future