Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 39

August 20, 2018

I’m heading to Burning Man! (here’s where to find me)


Hey you! I’m driving to the Playa this Thursday, and there’s a small but significant chance that you’ll be there too! If you’re around, come and say hi!


Thursday, Aug 30 at noon: I’m co-hosting the second annual Liminal Speaks lecture, with Crystal Beasley and Jonathan Steuer. Our topic this year is “Who Am I This Time? Three Geeks Talking Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, and Identity.” We’re on at noon on Thursday, at my camp, Liminal Labs, which is at Rod’s Road at 3:15, off th...

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Published on August 20, 2018 12:23

August 15, 2018

Talking surveillance, elections, monopolies, and Facebook on the Bots and Ballots podcast

Grant Burningham interviewed me for his Bots and Ballots podcast (MP3), covering a bunch of extremely timely tech-politics issues: Facebook and the impact of commercial surveillance on democratic elections; Alex Jones, censorship and market concentration; and monopolism and the future of the internet.

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Published on August 15, 2018 11:50

August 10, 2018

Talking the hard questions of privacy and freedom with the Yale Privacy Lab podcast


This week, I sat down for an hour-long interview with the Yale Privacy Lab‘s Sean O’Brien (MP3); Sean is a frequent Boing Boing contributor and I was honored that he invited me to be his guest on the very first episode of the Lab’s new podcast.


As you might imagine, Sean had some sophisticated — and difficult — questions about privacy and freedom online and we delved into some material that I don’t normally get to cover. It was an exciting and challenging conversation!

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Published on August 10, 2018 12:31

August 9, 2018

Come see me at the Edinburgh Festival and/or Worldcon!

I’m heading to Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival where I’m appearing with the wonderful Ada Palmer on August 12th at 845PM (we’re talking about the apocalypse, science fiction and hopefulness); from there, I’m heading to the 76th World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, California, where I’ll be doing a bunch of panels, signings and a reading.


Here’s my Worldcon schedule:

Friday August 17:

11AM, Signing, The Book Bin table, dealer’s room R4

12PM, Borderlines, SJCC 210B, with Joanna M...

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Published on August 09, 2018 12:37

My closing keynote from the second Decentralized Web Summit

Two years ago, I delivered the closing keynote at the Internet Archive’s inaugural Decentralized Web event; last week, we had the second of these, and once again, I gave the closing keynote, entitled Big Tech’s problem is Big, not Tech. Here’s the abstract:

For decades, we fought complacency over Big Tech. That’s over. The techlash is here, and with it, a new and scarier problem: that we’ll tame big tech by regulating it with expensive compliance rules that no startup could match, enthron...

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Published on August 09, 2018 12:31

August 7, 2018

Talking copyright, internet freedom, artistic business models, and antitrust with Steal This Show

I’m on the latest episode of Torrentfreak’s Steal This Show podcast (MP3), where I talk with host Jamie King about “Whether file-sharing & P2P communities have lost the battle to streaming services like Netflix and Spotify, and why the ‘copyfight’ is still important; how the European Copyright Directive eats at the fabric of the Web, making it even harder to compete with content giants; and why breaking up companies like Google and Facebook might be the only way to restore an internet — and a...

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Published on August 07, 2018 09:09

July 30, 2018

I’ll be live on BookTV’s In Depth on August 5!

I’m headed to DC to sit down in studio with BookTV’s “In Depth” on August 5; it’ll air live on Aug 5 at 12PM Eastern/9AM Pacific and be repeated on August 6 at 12AM Eastern/(9PM Pacific on Aug 5) and on Aug 11 at 9AM Eastern/6AM Pacific. It’s a phone-in!

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Published on July 30, 2018 12:05

July 17, 2018

See you at Comic-Con!

I’m one of the “special guests” at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con! If you’re attending, I hope you’ll come by and see some of my programming items, especially my spotlight interview with Cecil Castellucci (Friday, July 20, 1330h-1430h, Room 24ABC), where I’ll be making an exciting announcement.

Here’s my full schedule, including some extracurriculars not listed in the regular program:


* Thursday, 1PM: Panel – Finding Comfort in the Apocalypse, Room 32AB, with Emily Suvada, Elizabeth Hand,...

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Published on July 17, 2018 11:12

July 16, 2018

Podcast: Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags


Here’s my reading (MP3) of Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags, a Locus Magazine column about the corruption implicit in surveillance capitalism, which creates giant risks to users by collecting sensitive information about them in order to eke out tiny gains in the efficacy of targeted advertising. The commercial surveillance industry may not be very good at selling us fridges, but they’re very good at locating racists and thugs and getting them to support violent political movements.

MP3

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Published on July 16, 2018 16:32

Portuguese translation of Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags

Brent Longborough did me the enormous favor of translating my latest Locus column, Zuck’s Empire of Oily Rags, into Portuguese, and sent it to me to publish.

Cory Doctorow: Zuck e seu Império de Trapos Oleosos

2 de julho de 2018 Cory Doctorow

Durante vinte anos, os defensores da privacidade vem soando o alarme sobre a vigilância comercial on-line, a maneira de as empresas coletarem dossiês detalhados sobre nós para ajudar os profissionais de marketing a nos almejar com seus anúncios. Esse al...

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Published on July 16, 2018 12:20