Robert Scoble visited Switzerland and insisted on telling us about it thus:

What was really fun was having raclette cheese dinner with famous author Bruce Sterling. Of course I intruded on the dinner with my cell phone camera. It’s a 40 minute video, where Laurent and Pierre explain raclette. What’s really interesting is that we had people all over the world who were watching us live. At about 9:30 we sit down with Bruce Sterling, famous science fiction author.

It doesn’t get interesting until about 13 minutes when Bruce tells us the difference between a blogger and a novelist.

At 20 minutes in we discover that Yahoo has rejected Microsoft’s bid so you hear our initial opinions…

Wow! “Famous author Bruce Sterling”, eh? What really struck me was the confident way Scoble thinks that his admiring public would be willing to sit through 13 minutes of aimless chat to get to what he regards as a really interesting bit. Who does he think we are? And, more importantly, who does he think he is?

James Cridland wasn’t impressed, either.

What all this reminds me of is what the Nobel laureate, Herbert Simon, said to a journalist who asked him what newspapers he read. “None”, said Herb, before going on to explain that at his age time was precious and he wasn’t going to waste it on reading stuff to which people hadn’t devoted much time or thought.