The biggest physical export from New York City is now waste paper. The city's economy in fact rests on the production of fictitious capital to lend to the real estate agents who cut deals for the highly paid professionals who manufacture fictitious capital. (The Condition of Postmodernity, 331-32)
Who says theoryhead scholars don't pay attention to real life?
And speaking of prescience, Charlie Stross laments the newfound impossibility of writing near-future SF that won't be wrong by the time it's published. To which I can't help but wonder if it's ever been possible to write near-future SF that had any predictive value. Count me in the camp of those who think that prediction was never, and should never be, the point of even near-future SF.
And speaking of near-future SF, hooray for Stan Robinson, named one of Time magazine's 2008 Heroes of the Environment.
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