Public Sterling interview on the WELL

Bruce Sterling's doing a public interview on The WELL -- it's just been running for a day or so, and it's already accumulating some primo SterlingRants:

Spammers are not monsters ten feet tall. Spammers are vermin. If we all looked, acted, thought and behaved as badly as spammers do, our world would be reduced to desperate penury.

Spammers are parasites. They contribute nothing to the general welfare. Spammers couldn't trust each other with five bucks to walk down to the corner grocery and bring back a loaf of bread. They are wicked and malicious and they should be brought to justice.

The day when the delete key still ruled, well, these cool clean technocratic days are over on the Net. Microsoft might patch some security holes here and there, but there are no technical solutions to semantic frauds like phishing. The Internet has become a massive, worldwide medium. It has become a global arena of massive popular struggle, It's Chinese Indian American Brazilian European, the world wide works, and it reflects our own faults and deficits with cruel accuracy. When we look at the Net these days, we are staring straight into the portrait of Dorian Gray.

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