Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2014 (Link)
Awesome, well-written synopsis of the year by two science fiction authors. Damn fun to read. To wit:
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.
Yep, that pretty well describes it.
Suppose the entire US Congress came to your house in a body, to you, as a citizen, and they told you, well, anything at all — in their collective wisdom — something minor maybe, say they recommended a roach insecticide, for instance. Would you take that act at face value? Would you listen to the Congress with the respect due legally elected officials, and do what they said?
“Hey,” you might say, “the US Congress is the legitimate, elective legislative body of a superpower; so they can’t be that bad! I’d better buy that aerosol can and spritz it around some!” Would you do that? Really? Wouldn’t you pull an NSA, and pretend to do it, and then lie to them, lying as minimally as you could?
Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. And Yep.