So, like a lot of people, I saw this article on The Verge yesterday about the Awl website network. And this thing here jumped out at me:

“I’m ready for a big storm,” Herrman says, putting down his beer and launching into an exaggerated vision of the future. “Everyone wakes up, and it’s just sand. And most people die, but a few survive, and they all walk in different directions. And I’m ready for this to happen every three months. That’s the cool cyberpunk outcome of all this. Everything remakes itself all the time, and then nothing is sustainable, and the idea that you could do any of these things we’re doing now as jobs will be some ridiculous anachronism.”

He’s talking about the business of Doing Things On The Internet. And this might be the most elegant and compressed version of something I’ve been trying to say for years. It gets across that this is not a mature technology, that things are constantly shifting, and that, on a regular basis, you have to look at the landscape and be ready to try something else entirely if you want to stay ahead of the shivering sand. Embrace it. Never let yourself believe for a moment that any condition will become The Way Things Are. Everything is in motion, much of it is strange and beautiful, and most of it wants to kill you. Keep walking.

CUT TO: Everett McGill in DUNE intoning MMMM, SHAI-HULUD

READING: THE WATER KNIFE, Paolo Bacigalupi (UK) (US)