Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 23

Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias

For my latest podcast, I read my 2017 Wired op-ed, Disasters Don’t Have to End in Dystopias, a discussion of the themes in my novel Walkaway.

The thesis is that our estimations of probability of danger are unduly influenced by our ability to vividly imagine that danger (this is called the “availability heuristic”), so stories about human barbarism during crises inspires people to expect — and perform — that barbarism. The answer is to tell stories that reflect the reality of crises: that...

Talking Radicalized with CBC’s Shelagh Rogers on The Next Chapter

My book Radicalized is a finalist for Canada Reads, the CBC’s national book prize. I sat down with Sheelagh Rogers, host of The Next Chapter, for a wide-ranging interview (MP3) about the book and the Trump-era anxiety that drove me to write it.

Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers’ Fortresses

For my latest podcast, I read my latest EFF Deeplinks post, Gopher: When Adversarial Interoperability Burrowed Under the Gatekeepers’ Fortresses.

It’s the latest installment in my case histories of “adversarial interoperability” — once the main force that kept tech competitive. Today, I tell the story of Gopher, the web’s immediate predecessor, which burrowed under the mainframe systems’ guardians and created a menu-driven interface to campus resources, then the whole internet. Gopher ruled...

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today’s links How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form. The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated. Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire. My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can’t shop your way out of late-stage capitalism. 81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system. I’m coming to Kelowna!...

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 22 Feb 2020

Today’s links Tax Justice Network publishes a new global Financial Secrecy Index: US and UK, neck-and-neck What Marc Davis lifted from the Addams Family while designing the Haunted Mansion: Amateurs plagiarize, artists steal ICANN should demand to see the secret financial docs in the .ORG selloff: at least it’s an Ethos Wells Fargo will pay $3b for 2 million acts of fraud: they shoulda got the corporate death penalty This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010 Colophon: Recent publications,...

Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 21 Feb 2020

Today’s links Bloomberg’s campaign NDA is a gag order that covers sexual abuse and other crimes: Bloomberg’s lowest moment at the debate came when he fumfuhed over whether he’d release women from his corporate NDAs. Private Equity has sabotaged every attempt to end emergency room “surprise billing”: AKA, “Why didn’t you ask your ambulance driver to shop around?” The Parkland kids have launched a zine: “Unquiet” is a gorgeous, haunting zine from the March For Our Lives, debuted on Teen...

Pluralist, a daily link-dose: 20 Feb 2020

Today’s links The 2020 Nebula Award Finalists: a bumper crop of outstanding SF Uber driver/sharecroppers drive like maniacs to make quota: subprime lending + gig economy = stay off the roads Barclay’s bankers forced to endure nagging work-computer spyware: the shitty technology adoption curve at work Bernie Sanders leads in 10 out of 10 polls: but unless he can get a majority of pledged delegates, he’ll be ratfucked by superdelegates Bloomberg: kids only like Sanders because they’re...

Pluralist: 19 Feb 2020

Contents The Woman Who Loved Giraffes: a documentary about Anne Innis Dagg, the magnificent feminist biologist and critic of pseudoscience like evolutionary psychology. Machine learning doesn’t fix racism: experiments in using machine-learning “risk assessment” for bail hearings collapse in ignominy. Rethinking “de-growth” and material culture: great commentary from Kate “McMansion Hell” Wagner. Bernie Sanders is a clear favorite among “regular Democrats.” 71% approval and 19%...

Little Brother: a virtual “escape room” created by an 11th grade class in Germany!

Ulrich Oberender and his 11th grade students in a German high school created this “Edu-Breakout” based on my novel Little Brother: it’s a series of puzzles and challenges based on the book that engage deeply with both the privacy technology and the privacy ethics that run through the book! They call it “a digital escape room” and you’ll need to solve some challenges really early on to get very far! If you’re a teacher and want access to the Teacher’s Guide, you can email obucate@gmail.com or...

Talking Adversarial Interoperability with the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (Part I)

It’s been a few years since I last sat down with Carey Parker and his Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast, and last week I corrected that oversight, recording a long interview about the Right to Repair, Adversarial Interoperability, and Sonos’s e-waste gambit. Part I is up now (MP3), and part II will be up in a week.