There is something slightly maniacal about public speaking. You can always see the people who get up on stage and talk because they want to drain love out of the audience. Or - hi - the people who wait for the doors to close because now the poor fools in the room are trapped in there and the social contract and/or the ticket cost means they can’t just get up and leave without faking a full bladder or a seizure so now you can just drive your bullshit half-considered ideas into their heads. Don’t let me make you laugh. That means I’m in, and now I’m going to yell at you for twenty minutes about things that mostly only make sense in my mind and sometimes not even then. But it’s too late for you. Bruce Sterling is one of my favourite public speakers because - and Bruce might think this is untrue or unfair, but - sometimes I hear this thing where he’s like, ‘NOW I’ve got you and you MUST listen” and yell at start-up teenagers to make sure they use their windfall cash to buy a decent fucking bed because in five years the world will be done with them and they need to come out of it with something other than scurvy and furniture made out of empty pizza boxes.

Suddenly reminded of an old BLOOM COUNTY bit, and thank god for the internet and somebody in 2002 who felt the need to transcribe it into plaintext: “Prepare your pencil! L.H. Puttgrass, pundit for the people, will publicly ponder for posterity!”

 

Reading: NETWORKOLOGIES, Christopher Vitale (UK) (US)