Bruce Sterling: what if VR/AR are like science fiction novels?

A bit late, I had a busy week in the newsroom, but here is futurist, cyberpunk author, design-specialist, journalist Bruce Sterling at the closing of SXSW 2017:

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What does he say about virtual reality and augmented reality? I quote (9:30):

I totally adore these, decades on end. Mostly because I really like messing with reality. If you are a science fiction writer and you don’t like augmented reality there is something wrong with you in my opinion. So I’m a huge fan of augmenting reality. But just because it’s really really cool and interesting doesn’t necessarily make it important. It might not be even an industry. It can be huge like science fiction games or science fiction cinema or science fiction television, or it could be more like science fiction novels, which are kind of cool and brainy but mostly just hang out in the corners of society covered with spider webs.

Actually this was not the most interesting part of his closing remarks. Far more fascinating are his speculations about the societal consequences of radical automatization.

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