Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 29
August 21, 2019
Where to catch me at Burning Man!
This is my last day at my desk until Labor Day: tomorrow, we’re driving to Burning Man to get our annual dirtrave fix! If you’re heading to the playa, here’s three places and times you can find me:
The Liminal Labs Couch Chat, Weds, 12 noon, at Camp Liminal Labs (8:15 and Center Camp). Liminal Labs is my camp (celebrating its 21st year!), and every year, we put on a public lecture. This year, I’m hosting Andrew “bunnie” Huang (previously) the legendary hardware hacker and entrepreneur whom...
August 19, 2019
Podcast: A cycle of renewal, broken: How Big Tech and Big Media abuse copyright law to slay competition
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “A Cycle of Renewal, Broken: How Big Tech and Big Media Abuse Copyright Law to Slay Competition”, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s the latest in my ongoing series of case-studies of “adversarial interoperability,” where new services unseated the dominant companies by finding ways to plug into existing products against those products’ manufacturers. This week’s installment recounts the history of cable TV, and explains how the legal system i...
August 14, 2019
My appearance on the MMT podcast
I’ve been following the Modern Monetary Theory debate for about 18 months, and I’m largely a convert: governments spend money into existence and tax it out of existence, and government deficit spending is only inflationary if it’s bidding against the private sector for goods or services, which means that the government could guarantee every unemployed person a job (say, working on the Green New Deal), and which also means that every unemployed person and every unfilled social services role is...
August 13, 2019
Podcast: Interoperability and Privacy: Squaring the Circle
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “Interoperability and Privacy: Squaring the Circle, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s another in the series of “adversarial interoperability” explainers, this one focused on how privacy and adversarial interoperability relate to each other.
Even if we do manage to impose interoperability on Facebook in ways that allow for meaningful competition, in the absence of robust anti-monopoly rules, the ecosystem that grows up around that new standa...
August 5, 2019
Podcast: “IBM PC Compatible”: how adversarial interoperability saved PCs from monopolization
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay “IBM PC Compatible”: how adversarial interoperability saved PCs from monopolization, published today on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s another installment in my series about “adversarial interoperability,” and the role it has historically played in keeping tech open and competitive. This time, I relate the origin story of the “PC compatible” computer, with help from Tom Jennings (inventor of FidoNet!) who played a key role in the story.
All that changed in...
August 1, 2019
Paul Di Filippo on Radicalized: “Upton-Sinclairish muckraking, and Dickensian-Hugonian ashcan realism”
I was incredibly gratified and excited to read Paul Di Filippo’s Locus review of my latest book, Radicalized; Di Filippo is a superb writer, one of the original, Mirrorshades cyberpunks, and he is a superb and insightful literary critic, so when I read his superlative-laden review of my book today, it was an absolute thrill (I haven’t been this excited about a review since Bruce Sterling reviewed Walkaway).
There’s so much to be delighted by in this review, not least a comparison to Rod Se...
July 30, 2019
Houstonites! Come see Hank Green and me in conversation tomorrow night!
Hank Green and I are doing a double act tomorrow night, July 31, as part of the tour for the paperback of his debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. It’s a ticketed event (admission includes a copy of Hank’s book), and we’re presenting at 7PM at Spring Forest Middle School in association with Blue Willow Bookshop. Hope to see you there!
July 29, 2019
Podcast: Adblocking: How About Nah?
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay Adblocking: How About Nah?, published last week on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s the latest installment in my series about “adversarial interoperability,” and the role it has historically played in keeping tech open and competitive, and how that role is changing now that yesterday’s scrappy startups have become today’s bloated incumbents, determined to prevent anyone from disrupting them they way they disrupted tech in their early days.
At the height of t...
July 22, 2019
Podcast: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for Network Effects
In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my essay SAMBA versus SMB: Adversarial Interoperability is Judo for Network Effects, published last week on EFF’s Deeplinks; it’s a furhter exploration of the idea of “adversarial interoperability” and the role it has played in fighting monopolies and preserving competition, and how we could use it to restore competition today.
In tech, “network effects” can be a powerful force to maintain market dominance: if everyone is using Facebook, then your Facebook...
July 19, 2019
Appearance on the Jim Rutt Podcast
Jim Rutt — former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute and ex-Network Solutions CEO — just launched his new podcast, and included me in the first season! (MP3) It was a characteristically wide-ranging, interdisciplinary kind of interview, covering competition and adversarial interoperability, technological self-determination and human rights, conspiracy theories and corruption. There’s a full transcript here.
