I saw futurist Bruce Sterling give a presentation tonight. His talks can sometimes lead my mind in painfull mazes (mostly because he traveres topics too quickly) but out of the blue he can say three words that I’ll think about for weeks. Overall, I’m a big fan and his talks are consistently provoking either by jarring reality into a new clarity (like when the optomologist fixes your persrcription) or blowing open conceptualizations of the future (like when an airbag get set off in your brain.)

He had a simple aside on cellphones that comes at you like a howler monkey, and leaves your intellect demanding time to think about it more.

Cell phones are booming biggest in countries where large portions of the populations are still illiterate. Such people are not checking their email or uploading photos, they’re calling to ask if their cow is still alive. There are more cellphones sold in a year than computers on the planet. They are spreading like black ink. Industrialized countries are being leapfrogged. Humanity has never experienced anything with such scope.

Photo by Euan Semple.