Bruce Sterling has always been one of my favorite authors from the cyberpunk crowd. He helped kick the genre off, but he never got sucked into the myopic Hipper Than Thou contests that infect any ‘artsy’ genre. Earlier this month he wrote an article for the Austin Chronicle pontificating about new digital culture. It’s not news to anyone who follows bleeding edge, but it’s cool insightful, and full of great pull quotes.
The core demographic at SXSW is the woolly-eyed digital creative, a species of creature from way before the Boom. Those characters were never anywhere near the big IPOs. They were all fueled by sheer subcultural coolness.
--Bruce Sterling