Tomorrow Now : Review

I'm in the midst of reading Bruce Sterling's new book "Tomorrow Now" and I must recommend it as an excellent read.

Science fiction writer Sterling is probably no stranger to most of us. In this offering he offers his unique nonfiction assessment of the future.

By his own admission, Sterling is not normally the "sober, serious futurist" that he appears to be in this book - Most of the time he doesn't care to work that hard! (Spoken like a true Austinite.)

In his introduction, Bruce gives a brief breakdown of futures work which I'll admit, brought a smile to my face. First, he says, you have to find somebody who'll pay you to do it. This stark reality immediately splits "futurism" into interest groups.

"In corporate futurism (which pays the best), you're concerned with new markets and new products. In government futurism (the most dignified), it's about investment in basic R&D, the changing demographics of the political base and new demands for bureaucratic public service. Military futurism is about new weapons platforms and new security threats: 'thinking the unthinkable,' as Herman Kahn aptly put it... Ethical futurism is about moral conundrums posed by possible future actions sucha s human cloning and genetic alteration. And so forth." (page xi)

Borrowing the seven stages of humanity cited by Shakespeare in "As You Like It", Bruce addresses the probable future of human beings as infants, students, lovers, soldiers, politicians, businessmen, and geriatrics. Issues discussed include genetics and reproduction, information networks, postindustrial design, the new world order, media and politics, information economics, and our ongoing struggle with mortality.

Rather than predicting awesome and unheard-of wonders, Sterling believes that futurism consists of "recognizing and describing a small apparent oddity that is destined to become a great commonplace." Using that definition as a springboard, he provides a variety of potential possibilities grounded in both common sense and present reality.

Tomorrow Now is well written, often surprising, always humorous. Sterling's individual slant on what may evolve serves as a visionary overview of the twenty-first century.

The Rise and Fall of an Icon

Grover Is Bitter, the story of Grover's hellish descent from Sesame Street stardom to the depths of alcoholism and depression. One of the funniest things I've read in ages.
(from wildgreenyonder)

Phone Number, E-mail Address the Same?
from ZDNet News - 14 February 2003)  l

The Bush administration is lending its support to an international proposal to map telephone numbers to Internet addresses.

In a recent internal letter, the Commerce Department recommended that the United States participate in an emerging electronic numbering system, known as ENUM, that will allow people to use one identifier for many different purposes, including mobile phones, e-mail, instant messaging and faxes. ENUM is designed to accelerate the convergence of the telephone network and the Internet and is expected to offer a huge boost to online telephony services.

When ENUM domains become active, users will be identified by their telephone number including the country code. What that means is a phone number such as +46-8-9761234 would be mapped to the 4.3.2.1.6.7.9.8.6.4.e164.arpa Internet address in a process that is expected to become automated and transparent to the user.