I got this Bruce Sterling video link in an email from the host of the conversation shown. It was advertised as something of a Sterling diss of Wired - "Chris Anderson created a 'commercial regime' @ Wired, reason why he [Sterling, ed.] isn't writing on the magazine" - but I think Lele is missing what Sterling is saying - it's not a commercial/noncommercial argument, but just an argument about the long tail and citizen blogging. Blogging kills op-ed pieces first.

Sterling, as always, is interesting just to listen to. He has this song-like style he transports himself into as he himself is persuaded or fired up by the subject he talks about. He is being live translated to italian on the video. As I was watching, it struck me how the conversational style of Sterling being translated, reminds me of how blog writing works: You have to shoot off short highly comprehensible isolated bursts that capture and make sense individually. You can't rely on the context of your own flow to convince the audience, since you don't get to convey flow.
What the audience is getting are little mediated chunks of conversation. It's very similar to the chopped up rhetoric one has to employ in online writing.