The State of the World – 2014 Edition

> It’ll be hard, this year, not to dwell obsessively on the capering
specters of the NSA, Snowden, Wikileaks, Bitcoin… 2013 turned out to be
the year when the Digital Revolution trended Stalinist. Old-school
Digital Bolsheviks scattered hapless in every direction, as Big Data
Killer Bot Commissars scoured the darkening landscape, and Trotsky went
to ground in Ecuador.
>
> An extraordinary atmosphere of sullen, baffled evil, as the year
opens. I don’t know what to compare 2014 to — except for many other
glum post-revolutionary situations, when the zealots succeeded in
toppling the status quo, then failed to install a just and decent form
of civil order. The world in 2014 is like a globalized Twitter Egypt.

– Bruce Sterling

Wie schon seit 2000, so machen sich auch dieses Jahr wieder [Bruce Sterling](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_sterling) und [John Lebkowsky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Lebkowsky) auf der alt, ehrwürdigen Plattform The Well daran, den Zustand dieser Welt zu diskutieren. In der Regel ist der Übergang zwischen witzigem Sarkasmus und scharfen Beobachtungen sehr fließend und sorgt für großartige Unterhaltung.

[The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2014](http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/473/Bruce-Sterling-and-Jon-Lebkowsky-page01.html)