Bruce Sterling talks peak oil on The Well

johnmarkos

Bruce Sterling is having a conversation with a group of Well members about the future at his annual "State of the World" discussion at the Well. Non-Well members can view the discussion and email in questions.

Sterling gets into peak oil specifically in posts 39 and 42, but there's a lot of other good discussion of the future in there as well.

http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/317/Bruce-Sterling-State-of-the-Worl-page02.html
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To do serious futurism you need to think historically. The future is a kind of history that hasn't happened yet. - Bruce Sterling

diogenes · Tar Sands Joined: Jan 29, 2006 Posts: 33

His arguments are rather poor.

People don't seem to understand that a nation which has peaked internally or which has supply problems is not the same as the world having peaked. Even nations as isolated as Cuba, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany have or had access to the produce of other nations.

Furthermore--this is just a minor thing--the population of the world has tripled since 1930.

johnmarkos

You're reading him wrong. Read it as literary nonfiction, not as debate or reportage. He's not predicting; he's opining on how the future might appear, using metaphors and historical examples (see my sig below).
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To do serious futurism you need to think historically. The future is a kind of history that hasn't happened yet. - Bruce Sterling