Science-fiction author Bruce Sterling delivered his AGDC keynote on Tuesday, speculating on the state of computing 35 years in the future.

Posing as a time-traveling grad student under the tutelage of 89-year-old Dr. Bruce Sterling, he apologized for coming in Dr. Sterling's place.  He reported that Dr. Sterling, as a gung-ho fan of bio-technology, was a freakish "post-human" with the "fresh dewy skin of  a 10-year-old," but unfortunately, time travel was too strenuous for him.

Continuing on with the premise, Sterling began to display technology from the future.  After quipping that computers in 2043 are boring everyday objects like bricks and towels, he pulled out his General Electric Pocket Mediator, i.e. a towel.  The woven components weren't functioning in this era, he said, but in the future, apps would be instantly downloaded from the "cloud." 

In describing games in 2043, Sterling said, "We don't pretend that a glass screen is a window into a virtual world.  We hang the towel in mid-air and gaze right through it and all the light that hits the mediator is passed right through it except the image has altered.  I guess you call that augmented reality but we don't."

Stressing the ubiquity of games, he said, "We don't have virtual games.  We have house games, nation games, global games, space games, etc."

Next, he showed the future of networking - nanotechnology.  Uncovering the quantum shield (i.e. aluminum foil), he revealed tiny computational crystals (i.e. salt in a salt shaker) that could occupy more than one dimension of space at a time.  Each crystal contained the same networking power as a server farm in 2008.  After sprinkling the salt about, he claimed that he had created an autonomous cloud about the size of the entire Internet in 2004, but a hang-up forced him to pull out a vector field (i.e. napkin) and in a sleight of hand, the salt shaker disappeared.  Recalling Arthur C. Clarke, he quoted, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

No Q&A from the audience, because as a supposed time traveler from the future, he already knew the questions to be asked.  What games are big success in the next 35 years?  Who are the rich guys in computer entertainment?  "It's the bankers!" he said.  Reading from a fictional game service manual for Avatar Checkout, which sounded like any boring business application, he commented,  "It's almost as much fun as investment banking.  Financial services are boring, always boring."  But in 2043, gamer bankers are the only banks going on.  Brick-and-mortar establishments are long gone and games are used as a front end like the marble pillars that used to grace those old banks.

So where did computer entertainment go wrong?

The word "computer" in "computer entertainment" holds you back, Sterling admonished.  Rattling off different platforms like consoles and handheld, he said, "Those are all bottles.  It's not about the bottle." Think about credit cards, drones, street-based video, doorknobs and satellites instead.

Turning to the word, "entertainment," Sterling identified three problem groups who were abusers, not users: Gold farmers, griefers and convergence culture people.  These abusers are not about fun.  Gold farmers are driven by greed, griefers are anti-fun and convergence culture people are all about meta-fun.  But these abusers can't be beat because they're cultural.  "You need to redefine yourself as something else," he said.

"The best way to create the future is to invent it.  But the best way to understand the future is to study the past.  Your past once involved a futurist prophecy: Towel Designers"  With that, Sterling came full circle.

Sterling began to retell the story of Atari, once the fastest growing company in U.S. history.  After Time Warner bought Atari and Nolan Bushnell was pushed out, the geeks at Atari wanted a better cut, so the new boss told the Atari engineers, "You are Towel Designers."  Explaining, Sterling said what that meant was these guys weren't visionaries.  They didn't change people's lives.  They were functional designers with only the power the decide if there would be polka dots or red stripes on the towels.  Then, four guys left and formed Activision.  That was the beginning of the end for Atari. 

While the factory mentality will always exist, Sterling talked about others who were against the norm.  These were the creative disrupters.  So, will our industry consist of towel designers or creative disrupters?  Only time will tell.