Welcome to 2020 and your annual State of the World discussion with Bruce Sterling, Jon Lebkowsky and The WELL

Every year (20190, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2014, 2012, 2010, 2007, 2005) Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky conduct a public salon with the users of The WELL on the "State of the World." It's always one of the highlights of the new year for me, and this year (which Sterling calls the first year in his life when it's "hard to find any genuine technical novelty") is off to an especially chewy and interesting start.

Sterling's curtain-raiser posts are all about autocracy and inequality, authoritarianism and the climate emergency. The US's global reputation is in tatters, and with the fall of the US, so too have the US tech companies' reputations plummeted: "Anything that American technology tries to pull in Europe has Trump's face stamped on it. Everyone just assumes it's a lie, a fraud, a subterfuge and a grift, and they're gonna get rooked, if not murdered by drones."

Meanwhile, as the US has grown more similar to a poor autocratic state, the poor states that were once headed for US-style growth have instead stalled out and grown more autocratic themselves: "Brazil is Trumpistan with a Trump who is less sleepy and more predatory."

Where does this autocratic mood come from? Inequality, which is intrinsically humiliating: "People have to be taught theres a lot they just cant do that their betters can do, and theyre better off not asserting themselves or making troubleabove their station, unless theyve pledged fealty to some nobleman who commands resources." Read the rest