He was the last and most inspirational speaker of the conference - not only by applying a good portion of wit and irony on the theme of the conference and giving the careful listener a backpack of questions on their way home, but also through the very quality of his speech - the art and precision of the spoken word.

Almost too good, because whenever I hear a speech of his my first thought is: this is turning into a Charles Bukowski Moment – him turning slightly nasty with you being present not knowing how to react: stupidly smiling, being embarrassed or just trying to pretend that you don’t speak nor understand English.

But this feeling, reinforced by the Texan Accent applied with Balkan brutality wit (Bruce Sterling currently lives in Belgrade), disappears once he is sure that he has the full attention of the audience, then he pulls you in his mental loops and excursions into Sci-Fi. It is his artistic use of references and associations which makes you drift and you as a listener start your very own journey – which on part of Bruce Sterling is great - unfortunately I can’t remember clearly what precisely he’s said - only what I’ve made of it.

Beyond the (slightly self-referential) evident role of the (Sci-Fi) authors by creating images and scenarios powering the imagination of scientists, designers and engineers (i.e. the example he used was the invention of (humanoid) robots by Josef Čapek), Bruce Sterling highlighted the need for designers to embrace projected developments, to be extremely critical of technological advances and to find ways to comment on those (and maybe pre-empting negative aspects of those). Hence he singled out Raby and Dunne’s work (in the context of the conference) as a starting point to find ways and methods needed for future sustainable humanistic approaches to life design.

I recommend to watch this interview with Bruce Sterling made earlier this year until the organisers of the Innovationsforum Interaktionsdesign Potsdam will put Bruce’s performance online – we will feature the link when they do.
And then there is of course the book of Bruce Sterling “Shaping Things” which we recommend to everybody who wants to engage into a contemporary discussion about design (yes that general).