SXSWi with Bruce Sterling
It’s not about the size of your conference, but how you use it.
— Alexis Ohanian
This week Quotables has been attending SXSWi (South By South West Interactive) – not in person, but through our new conference quoting app, SXSW Quotables.
We’ve been live-quoting a number of keynotes and sharing them both on the SXSW Quotables and @sxswquotes, allowing users to experience the conference vicariously through the power of digital media. As an added bonus, it allows us to save some of the choicest SXSW quotes for posterity.
One of our favourite events of the conference was from Bruce Sterling. Here are our Top 20 quotes from his talk!
1. Usually I don’t talk about politics, I’d much rather talk about technology and really cool ideas. But I think it’s important to talk about politics.
— Bruce Sterling
2. I’m interested in things that have one foot in fantasy and a toe in reality.
— Bruce Sterling
3. For four days, SXSW is the world capitol of the web.
— Bruce Sterling
4. I criticize stuff that doesn’t exist yet.
— Bruce Sterling
5. The passage of time turns cyberpunks into design professors.
— Bruce Sterling
6. Teaching in design school vs. simply designing stuff is disgusting incompetence and passionate virtuosity.
— Bruce Sterling
7. What makes the world work, what makes things better, is passionate virtuosity.
— Bruce Sterling
8. Microbes aren’t in the bible.
— Bruce Sterling
9. Washington DC is a Walmart of brothels.
— Bruce Sterling
10. It brings out one’s inner Bill Hicks ladies and gentlemen.
— Bruce Sterling
11. US politics is a joke to anyone outside the reach of Fox News.
— Bruce Sterling
12. If Bill Hicks was looking down on Texas right now he would not be a happy man. He’d be scolding you worse than me.
— Bruce Sterling
13. I want to formally declare my passionate solidarity with the millennials. Boomers shut the hell up!
— Bruce Sterling
14. American people should be in the streets… Madison style.
— Bruce Sterling
15. People under 25 are the victims of a decaying status quo. It’s a gerontocracy.
— Bruce Sterling
16. Another world is inevitable. The future is unwritten. Good luck to you.
— Bruce Sterling
17. Women of SXSW, do not embrace a coward!
— Bruce Sterling
18. I’m not gonna cry because this event has grown too big to have my epic house parties anymore.
— Bruce Sterling
19. Italy is the one country in the world where cyberpunk is a native practice.
— Bruce Sterling
Have you been following SXSWi? What have been your favourite talks or panels?
Re: #20 above. I think Bruce also threw in the US military into this quote as in “more political clout than the state department and the US military combined.”
This was an angry and cynical talk where he metaphored the present state of Italy’s Berlusconi government with the Flat Earth Society Republican positions. The whole world is laughing at Italy and they are laughing at the US too. Only here, you have to be careful laughing at your certifiable crazy uncle who has a large collection of guns and lives with you.
Thanks for that Jim, we’ve updated the quote to include that info – much appreciated.
We all enjoyed the Bruce’s speech immensely, great to end SXSWi with a bang!