The leading science fiction author, online commentator, and radical environmental campaigner Bruce Sterling - he of the Dead Media Project, Wired magazine, Veridian Design, and many successful novels and lectures! - gave an inspired and inspiring talk to a captivated audience last night.

As part of this year’s New Media Awards , the event took place at the Grouse & Claret pub near Victoria.

Co-founder of the “cyberpunk” school of science fiction and co-author (with William Gibson) of The Difference Engine, Bruce is also the head of The Viridian Design Movement set up to tackle climate change as “a design and engineering problem […] a cultural problem and a problem of artistic sensibility”.

Bruce talked for about 45 minutes before answering a series of questions from the audience.
He riffed through a wide range of topics but more particularly discussed the latest web developments, focussing on Tim O’Reilly’s theory of the architecture of participation and Web 2.0 (a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online).

He explained how we are really living in a time when “smart people on the ground” are able to “effect change”, really and truly, and made the comment that Web 2.0 was an effort by “alpha geeks” to wrest control of the web back.

One of the main thrusts of his talk was about applying internet concepts like sorting and searching to the real world by creating links between real-world items and virtual counterparts. So you would never lose your keys again because you could easily Google them!

You can listen to the talk and the following questions and answers as two podcasts here.

PS. Bruce has a new non-fiction book out, called Shaping Things, where he discusses these issues and many more.

Other blog posts on this event:
Bruce Sterling in London
Stealing the revolution 2.0
45-minutes
Web 2.0
The Wikipedia Pool Party
Buzzwords
Flickr
GFE
Sum-up
Bruce Sterling
Technical Support Evolves
Tom Morris
Cyber Files
Battleship Quinquireme
Bruce Sterling in Belgravia
Audio from Bruce Sterling (see update)
Bruce Sterling in London
Bruce Sterling on Web 2.0
Bruce Sterling Podcasts
Bruce Sterling in London