I had the occassion to eat and drink with Bruce Sterling several years ago, so whenever I read something like this, I can picture him delivering with the typical Sterling zest:
“Let me put this to you straight: cyberspace has
become a slum. It’s a diseased slum, festering with
Microsoft Outlook viruses. The viruses turn people into
unwilling, unwitting agents of corruption and destruction.
If you dare to use Microsoft’s web products, which are so
easily and cruelly sabotaged, then you run a gruesome,
unconscionable risk of doing horrible virus damage to your
best friends and your closest collaborators. You can give
AIDs or herpes to the people who choose to have sex with
you, but you can give Klez.E to people you don’t even
know. That is a pretty far cry from the antiseptic
Euclidean vistas of virtual reality. Cyberspace in 2002
is a high-tech low-life slum straight out of William
Gibson’s NEUROMANCER. That’s a great book, but the people
who have to live in that book are pretty damn far from
happy.” Full Speech