I went surfing through MIT’s Technology Review site and two pieces discussing SXSW caught my attention. The first is called “SXSW Day 5: Future of the Book: The $100 Laptop” (Link) and I thought it made a nice bookend to something I wrote earlier (reLink) which is related to some thoughts I had some time back (Link). I’m very much looking forward to hearing the end-user reviews of the OLPC computer. I’m still not on the bandwagon, but I do hope they prove skeptics like me wrong.

The second piece is titled “SXSW Day 5: Bruce Sterling on Faux Culture for Electronic Hicks” (Link) and what I really enjoyed about it is that Sterling is echoing my earlier comments regarding mashup culture (reLink – and read the comments). I’ll confess to giving Sterling some grief; set off back when he was being, in my opinion, overly harsh in his comments related to Vik Olliver’s early fabber prototypes (reLink). But having just finished his book, Shaping Things, I’m struck by how similar we think; it’s a little unnerving. So under the circumstances, I guess I should finally back off and thank him for putting the issues about which I care front and center where they can be debated and, hopefully, resolved. After all, no one is going to pay serious attention to me, or read posts where I slam the lack of boundary-breaching creativity in the mashup culture.