Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
How is the world this year?

Bruce Sterling (he of the Dead Media Project, Wired magazine, Veridian
Design, and many successful novels and lectures) returns to discuss it with
us. Here, again, to lead the conversation is Jon Lebkowsky (like Bruce, a
member of The Well, Jon's a techno-culture-focused writer, activist, and
consultant).

What are the issues, gents? Anything *really* new and different about the
year gone by? What to expect in the year ahead?
  

    
I'm still in shock, recovering from 2005. I'm tempted to rail about
disasters of biblical proportions, but I fear the various flavors of
fundamentalist will assume a rationale for apocalyptic acts of
destruction.

Bruce, you spent the year teaching design. How did that effect your
perception of the various earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, famines,
plagues, etc.?  Can we design our way out of this mess?
  

    
I know it's spooky, but this isn't anything compared to what's coming
down the pike.  

Yeah, I spent a year teaching design.  The top issue in the industrial
design field is that everything "industrial" is going to China.  This
isn't brute labor these Chinese are up to; basically, they're working
their way out of Communism.  

This  new industrial revolution the Chinese
are having dwarfs anything the Chinese have ever done before.  The
transformation is swift and colossal.    If you're in shock, imagine
them.
Imagine being some minor-league peasant apparatchik in China whose
family tilled the same patch of soil for the past 3000 years.
And then your son comes home and demands broadband
so he can play Korean wargames.  Huh?

But the Chinese aren't freaking out about it; they're not
wringing their hands, declaring war on abstract nouns,
succumbing to fundamentalist bullshit, 
or telling everybody that the Chinese way of life
is not up for negotiation.  Basically, they're just getting
on with the necessary work at hand.  They've
always been a cauldron of toil.  Now they're
getting paid!  Who wouldn't go for that?

They're not "designing their way out of the mess."  Basically,
they're doing it the Deng Xiaoping way, which is "crossing the river
by feeling the rocks with your feet."  That doesn't make the
change any less profound, though.  2005 was a crap year
for the US, but China and India are off their knees and
on their feet.  In the global perspective, that's a big deal.
  

    
So once they're on their feet, do they bury us? Or do they buy us?
  

    

I guess those prospects are mighty exciting, but what if the Chinese
just
go about their own booming business?  Do they HAVE to buy or bury
anybody?  And even if they do, isn't Siberia just sort of sitting
there?

Maybe they buy or bury South Korea.  Check out this NYT piece
on the huge Chinese appetite for South Korean hiphop.
The fact that there is South Korean hiphop is wack enough,
but imagine a vast China enthralled with Korean hiphop!
Do they have to buy or bury any American hiphop?
Heck no, man. They become the planetary
hiphop majority by force of numbers.

 They can just sublimely ignore
American hiphop, just like the US  government does.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/international/asia/02korea.html?hp&ex=113617
8000&en=f06cacf38dc8f861&ei=5094&partner=homepage
  

    
I was thinking metaphorically, that they would bury us by marginalizing our 
economy. Developing nations also have an edge, because they can leapfrog over 
industrial dinosaurs; this is South Korea's real power, so I'm told. On the 
other hand, I was talking to someone today about collaborative economies - 
thinking about moving away from competition with other nations, in favor of 
collaboration. I suppose that sounds subversive at the moment, to those who 
feel that competition is still possible.

So maybe the hiphop we all listen to is created collaboratively, via the web,
by djs in Korea, China, and East L.A.?
  

    
Well, much as I appreciate Chinese manufacturing excellence, I don't
think they'll be "burying" anybody till they've got some Chinese
soft-power...
global-scale Chinese music, film, anime, Beijing consensus diplomacy,
 that kind of thing.

When and if people start getting "Sino-ized" rather than
"Westernized,"
that'll be a big deal.  I just don't expect to see that happening.
I think we are well past that epoch.

We're all in the same global stew now.  Koreans exporting
black American music to China?  Hey, if you're looking for
Confucian cultural purity, game over.

I'm  quite the Sinophile. I think what they've done in the past
20 years is a near-miracle.  If you'd gone back 20 years ago and
asked American diplomats for their top-end positive China scenario,
it likely would have been something like this situation today.

So if we're getting what we want from them, why are we bitching?
Do we miss those glamorous Great Leap Forward days when
starved corpses were floating down their rivers?  Have they
failed to brandish enough hydrogen bombs at us lately?
Do we miss the sweet accommodations of the Gang of Four?

Our economy really needs some 'marginalizing.'  The old economy
is not sustainable and is dangerous to us and to everyone
we know.  We shouldn't cling to yesterday's methods. The  American
competitive
advantage is the proven and repeated ability to invent 
new economies.

We Americans suck at surrounding the oil wells with land-mines and
demanding a check on everybody's papers.  That strategy
doesn't play to our strengths.

Over in Europe, a bunch of quarrelsome states moved away
from their attempted burials into collaboration.  Did Germany "bury"
Belgium lately?  Did France "bury" Spain?  No.  You just wander
around throwing Euros at people. The Greeks aren't
sobbing into their Danish beer about being crushed
by the international competition.

This isn't a "Chinese century," or anything so corny and fearsome.
The Chinese have got maybe 25, 30 lively years in the sun
before they run into the weirdest demographic problems
on the planet.  That doesn't even count their restive
land-empire and the pervasive corruption problems  they
have.  We ought to be crossing our fingers for the
Chinese people, rather than sitting in some neocon bunker
plotting their demise.

I already saw this handwringing playbook, back when Japan
was booming in the 80s.  Did we all die because
Japan boomed?  Do we hate them forever?  It's a non-issue.
  

    
I think Americans who worry about China's potential domination of
markets are really concerned about he economic decline of the USA.
China is a convenient target for their anxieties, easier to grasp than
complex global forces that go bump in the night. Developing nations are
doing just that, developing; more slices of the world pie, less room
for dominant forces.  Are we in transition from a world dominated by
superpowers to a world of networks and markets, a p2p world where
hierarchies have crumbled? Is the violence and confusion we see today
symptomatic of a struggle to retain concentrations of power and money
that are inherently doomed by global structural evolution?
  

    

I think it's absolutely hysterical that Chinese kids are making money
working up low-level characters in virtual worlds to sell to Americans. The
happier analog to teen girls and boys undressing in front of web cams, which
I think I predicted (not that I was the first) back in 1990 or so ("Polly
Jean Amour and SeeYouDoMe").
  

    
Which way does the surveillance backlash go, Bruce? More state power, or
less, and with what results?
  

    
Bruce: please say more about weird Chinese demographics.
  

    
> economic decline of the USA

Relative or absolute?

Looked at in relative terms, by how many times the income of the average
American worker exceeds that of the average worker in whatever country
we're being compared to, their advancement is our decline -- but that way
lies nothing but madness.

Even the poorest of nations will eventually get on board the prosperity
train, as they become the last places to run to for cheap labor.  But,
aside from having to pay a little more for produce, some continued loss of
jobs to off-shore operations, and increased competition for non-renewable
commodities that are beginning to be in short supply, how does this hurt
us?  And, considering that increased incomes in places where people have
historically had trouble just feeding themselves translates to new markets,
the net effect might actually be positive.

We'd be well advised to helpful in finding ways for emerging economies to
be complementary with our own, rather than in direct competition with it,
and, as much as possible, to bypass dependency on the non-renewables to
which we are currently addicted.
  

    
"Which way does the surveillance backlash go, Bruce? More state power,
or
less, and with what results?"

The hot-button here is always domestic spying for political advantage.
Nixon could have used all the Cuban refugees he wanted to spy
on Cubans inside the USA; but when he let them loose on the
Democrats, it meant his head.  It took a while, but the
state can't stand internal spying on the state.

Obviously it takes some state-power to run an outfit like
ECHELON, and In-Q-Tel is busily spreading the grant money
for tomorrow's Total Information Awareness system right now.
But I suspect that the "backlash" goes someplace pretty strange.

I'm thinking the future of surveillance belongs to partisan
blogger-mobs howling for blood.  You can see a guy
like Josh Marshall trying to start his own private-investigation
agency over at TALKING POINTS MEMO...  He's nickel-and-diming
it, but what if he had a few million?   A cat like
Abramoff has had the run of K Street for years now.
Nobody brought it up, nobody said a thing... 

If I were a spook from an unfriendly power and I wanted to
destabilize the American political system, I'd be
feeding the American poli-bloggers big chunks of fresh meat.
It wouldn't matter if it came from right or left.
Just as long as it was shocking, and not the sort
of thing the mainstream media saw fit to touch.
Blowjobs.  Gay White House reporters.  That sort of
thing.  

There's a major-league video sex scandal in 
Indian politics right now.  It's got rather little to do
with India per se and everything to do with how easy
it is for political operatives to videotape moral panics and
distribute them.
It is proving enough to wreck the major
opposition party in the biggest democracy in the world.
Pakistani intelligence couldn't have done a neater job,
and, you know, maybe they did. 
  

    
"Bruce: please say more about weird Chinese demographics."

Here's some stuff out of a British think-tank:

"As early as 2015, China's working age population will actually start
falling. By 2040, today's young workers will be pensioners - in fact
the world's second largest population, after India, will be Chinese
pensioners. (...)

"There could well be 100 million Chinese people aged over 80, more
than the current worldwide total, as Richard Jackson and Neil Howe
point out in their excellent paper, The Graying of the Middle Kingdom
(CSIS 2004). (...)

"Because of China's one-child policy there will be fewer new workers
under its so-called "4,2,1" population structure - four grandparents,
two parents and one child. This is a demographic transition that many
countries go through. But a process that is taking a century in the
west will take 40 years there. The desperate rush for economic growth
is fuelled by fears that China could grow old before it grows rich. 

"Not so long ago, China was one of the world's most youthful
countries, with a median age of 20. Its median age is now estimated at
33. By 2050, the United Nations forecasts, China's median age could be
45, against 43 for the UK and 41 for the US.

(((That's not the weird part - just getting old.  Every country's
doing that.
This is the weird part: the Chinese gender imbalance.)))

"Imposing the one-child policy on these long established customs is
having an extraordinary effect. If you can have only one child it
becomes highly desirable to have a boy. The rule is not as strictly
enforced as it was, but you can now see its effect on the second child,
which in the eyes of many Chinese really is the last chance to have a
boy. For every 100 female second children, there are 152 males.
Overall, there are now about 120 boys for every 100 girls in China.

"The country is waking up to this extraordinary imbalance. Last year
it banned ultrasound testing to try to stop gender-based abortion. But
already it means China is facing a world not unlike a traditional
Oxbridge college, with far too many men relative to women. That is why
we can already read in the media accounts of young women being bribed
or even kidnapped from places such as North Korea or Vietnam.  China is
going to have to attract large-scale female immigration or many of its
young men will leave."

(((I'm not sure that I buy the mass-migration theory, but there's
never been a society anywhere, ever, with that kind of age and
sex-ratio structure.   China forty years from now looks like a
lumberjack camp for geezers.  I wish 'em luck with that.)))
  

    
i had a chance conversation with a young chinese guy while spending too many
hours in an airport a few months ago. he'd come to the U.S. to visit family
members and was headed back. he is studying industrial design in peking.

i said something about how that would likely guarantee him fat salaries for
life and he laughed. not exactly a happy laugh. he said that there are
hundreds of design schools in china now, but a very small percentage of the
students are finding work once they graduate. one of the reasons he cited
was the fact that good design was often deemed frivolous since, in truth,
schlock consistently sells better within china.

i asked if he thought this would change soon. he said he thought it would
take at least a generation. he said that there is enormous pressure on rural
populations to move to cities and so the level of cultural sophistication
and demand for good design keeps falling. he said that the level of
corruption within the major manufacturing companies and the governmental
bodies with whom they must work was not only entrenched, but resistant to
any review or recall.

i asked if government censorship was at least partly responsible for the
inability too challenge the corruption. he said that we misunderstand how
most chinese view free expression. he said most people there don't care
about free speech guarantees. they just want to make money. more money than
last year. so far, most people are making more money and so there is little
call for change.

i'm sure he spoke at least partly from the vantage point of jaded youth, but
he was certainly less than enthused about his future as an industrial
designer in china. he said that even though he had won several prestigious
awards and came from a well-known family, it was unlikely that he would be
allowed to leave the country and he anticipated a difficult road ahead.

couldn't help tossing this into the conversation...
  

    
It's hard for us to imagine living in a country that doesn't place
some value on free expression, but that's because it's part of our
tradition.  And considering that there are still many here that place
safety above liberty, it's not hard to image that someone in China
would be indifferent to free speech guarantees. Chairman Mao once said
something about effective governance being a matter of keeping the
people's bellies full and their minds empty...
  

    
I think when I was in my 20s I may have said the same about most
Americans -- that they   
> don't care about free speech guarantees. they just want to make money. 
> more money than last year.

I might still say it now and then, to be honest.
  

    
Well, I'm used to designers moaning by now.  They  moan much less than
most novelists, probably because they're not melancholics by
temperament.

There's one thing you'll never hear a designer from any country ever
say: that
consumers have too high a standard of taste.  I have to wonder if
there is any
place where consumers are too refined, knowledgeable, and picky.  If
so, I'd be
guessing Denmark.

I don't hang out with Chinese designers, but from what I hear, they
have
a problem anticipating changes in taste.  You can get across to
Chinese students
that consumer items ought to be more elegant. It seems to be
harder for them to grasp that manufactured objects will and should
look radically different in  ten years.

Media design people have no problem with that concept, but graphic
design and industrial design people sometimes do; they tend to
think that the best design is "timeless."  The cyberati types, through
harsh personal experience,  are way more into the sell-by date.   

I spent a lot of my time last year trying to convince my
Art Center students that technological transitions make sense
and can be anticipated.  There are ways in design to make
the passage of time your friend.
  

    
China is a big deal for me, in large part because I spent seven years
of my military career watching them. 

Frankly, I abhor the camp of the Yellow Peril fearmongers, because I
think they are likely to get us into trouble. From a military
standpoint there's not a doubt in my mind that sooner or later we're
going to be in some kind uneasy, armed standoff with China. We're both
competing for the same resources, after all. For the military
industrial complex apologists who say that our technology will allow us
to face down China, I say baloney. The Chinese can buy technology that
they don't currently own, and they can reverse-engineer it and have it
on the shelf much faster than we can develop new stuff to outsmart
them. And let's not forget we're talking about a military heritage that
wrote the book on asymmetric warfare--at least three times. 

I don't think armed conflict between the US and China is inevitable,
however, because China is going to have its own problems before too
long. The sheer population pressure would be difficult even without the
upcoming affluent lifestyle demands. It's not going to be long before
they start running headlong into Malthus. Therefore a great deal of the
Chinese military apparatus will probably be looking inward, attempting
to enforce security. We're already seeing that in the way they attempt
to control the internet.

But on the more positive side, I think China has tremendous human
capital. Don't underestimate the power of those millions of Chinese
engineers trying to find ways to bring clean water and cheap
electricity to the Chinese people. If there are sustainable energy
devices out there to build, Chinese factories and cheap labor are going
to build them in massive amounts. The Chinese had a long history of
sustainable agriculture before the Great Leap Forward, and I suspect
many of those techniques will be brought into play. The Loess Plateau
is already being taken out of grain production and moved over to
forestation. More to the point, I strongly suspect Chinese bioengineers
will be on vanguard of cutting edge techniques for producing edibles
in industrial parks. Once the Chinese brain mass is turned toward
solving the problems of ecological sustainability, I think we're going
to see something fantastic. And if the Chinese people benefit, we are
all going to benefit sooner or later. 

Or I sure hope so, anyway. I'd hate like hell to get into a shooting
war with those folks. That's my recurring nightmare.
  

    
By the way, the Korean hip-hop thing is pretty goofy from an American
standpoint, not just because it's in Korean but because it's total
poser nonsense. Korean and Chinese hip-hoppers make the Backstreet Boys
look like genuine hood rats. The international appeal of hip-hop is in
its underdog roots and minority thug credibility. If you really want
to see some true international hip-hop, you got to go to Europe and
watch Turks and North Africans laying it down in German. Now that's
some good shit! 
  

    
Bruce, did you spend much time last year talking about Viridian
design?  Or has that reached its expiration date?
  

    
Well, it's hard to be a design fan when you're a design professor with
an office and a salary.  I also consistently find that
worldchanging.com covers every cybergreen issue I'd like to cover, and
then some.  At the moment, I'm contenting myself with writing the
introduction to their forthcoming book.

Still, if I find something to say about design and climate change that
isn't already being said louder elsewhere, you can bet I'll say it. 
When I first started this Viridian effort back in 1998, Chiapas was on
fire.  Today it's Texas that's on fire.  Tomorrow?  It's gonna be
worse. 
  

    
Speaking of Texas...

You're a Texan from the Rio Grande Valley who's been traveling the
world and is moving to Belgrade, so you have an unsual perspective.
Since I'm  a fellow Texan, I find myself wondering how your various
movements have affected your Texas roots, and vice versa?
  

    


George Vogt writes:



How about a "mortality and morbidity report" from the Dead Media department?
I just noticed that my neighborhood photography shop has been replaced by a
Chinese restaurant.   "Is the [movie] theatre really dead?"
  

    
Well, after most of a year in California, I think I've reached some
kind of global escape-velocity. I'm not so much "moving to Belgrade" as
finding another place to set down my laptop.  I know I'm doing
Australia and Sweden in a few months.  I may be back in Los Angeles to
do some consulting in a matter of days.

I'm a child of the Texas oil diaspora.  People in my family have been
in the Persian Gulf, the North Sea, Trinidad...  It surprises me a
little to see how many Texans I know, who seem like perfectly normal
homebodies, have offered to show up on my doorstep in Belgrade.  My
elderly aunt is jetting all over central America this year.  I have a
Texan uncle who lived in a recreational vehicle for about a decade.

I dunno what gets into us.  Maybe its genetic.
  

    
I saw somebody taking pictures with a film camera yesterday.  That
painful way he had to stop and compose his shots...  It was like
watching a guy write with carbon-paper and a manual typewriter.  I
never used to carry a camera in the days of yore; there's nothing more
likely to signify you as a tourist and a mark for hustlers.  But I've
got a digital camera in my pocket most every day now.  It's a routine.

Every iPod you see is a dead Walkman.  When photography shops die,
their souls probably go to FlickR.

http://www.flickr.com/