Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 58
January 18, 2016
My University of Waterloo talk: No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing
Late last year, the Computer Science Club at the University of Waterloo (a university I am proud to have dropped out of!) invited me to give a lecture: No Matter Who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing. They’ve posted it in many formats for your enjoyment.
If cyberwar were a hockey game, it’d be the end of the first period and the score would be tied 500-500. All offense, no defense.
Meanwhile, a ho...
January 15, 2016
India’s Internet activists have a SOPA moment: no “poor Internet for poor people”
My latest Guardian column, ‘Poor internet for poor people': India’s activists fight Facebook connection plan, tells the story of how India’s amazing Internet activists have beaten back Facebook’s bid to become gatekeeper to the Internet for the next billion users.
They’ve been assisted in this by Facebook’s own stupid mistakes, to be sure, but all credit is due to them for refusing to settle and for rallying mass support to the cause of Net Neutrality in India.
The interesting question f...
January 7, 2016
Resilience over rigidity: how to solve tomorrow’s computer problems today
My new Locus Magazine column, Wicked Problems: Resilience Through Sensing, proposes a solution the urgent problem we have today of people doing bad stuff with computers. Where once “bad stuff with computers” meant “hacking your server,” now it could potentially mean “blocking air-traffic control transmissions” or “programming your self-driving car to kill you.”
The traditional regulatory model for solving this kind of problem — making it technologically difficult to accomplish this badness...
December 25, 2015
Podcast: Happy Xmas! (guest starring Poesy)
It’s been a year since I sat down at the mic, but it’s Christmas and we have a tradition to uphold. Now we’re settling in here in Burbank and I’ve got a new computer, I’m hoping to get everything running again and get back to a regular schedule.
December 23, 2015
If you think self-driving cars have a Trolley Problem, you’re asking the wrong questions
In my latest Guardian column, The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?, I take issue with the “Trolley Problem” as applied to autonomous vehicles, which asks, if your car has to choose between a maneuver that kills you and one that kills other people, which one should it be programmed to do?
The problem with this formulation of the problem is that it misses the big question that underpins it: if your car was programmed to kill you under normal circumstances, how would th...
December 13, 2015
Interview on Paul Holdengraber’s “Call from Paul” podcast
I appeared on the current episode of “A Call From Paul” (MP3), a podcast created by Paul Holdengraber, who curates the NY Public Library’s amazing interview series. Paul and I talked about London, UK politics, class war, education, and books.
December 11, 2015
What I told the kid who wanted to join the NSA
In my latest Guardian column, I tell the story of my recent lecture at West Point’s Cyber Institute, where a young cadet took me aside as asked what I thought of their plans for joining the NSA.
The cadet had good reasons to want to join the NSA: they were justly concerned about the Internet security of their loved ones, and felt that if no one who cared about lawfulness joined NSA, it would only get worse. But I had some questions for them.
“Snowden was gung-ho,” I explained. “He was p...
December 2, 2015
Free talk on surveillance, copyright and DRM tomorrow in Berlin: “PINEAPPLE!”
I’m in Berlin to speak at OEB, a conference on technology and education. It costs a hefty sum to attend the whole event, but my talk tomorrow at 1200h, “No Matter who’s Winning the War on General Purpose Computing, You’re Losing
” is free. Just show up at the Hotel Intercontinental on Budapester Strasse and check in at the OEB desk with the password “PINEAPPLE” for a voucher that will get you into my talk.
I Can’t Let You Do That, Dave: why computer scientists should care about DRM
I have an editorial in the current issue of Communications of the Association of Computing Machinery, a scholarly journal for computer scientists, in which I describe the way that laws that protect digital locks (like America’s DMCA) compromise the fundamentals of computer security.
At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we’re anxious to talk with computer scientists whose research is impeded by DMCA and laws like it, and to discuss how they can improve their odds of coming out on top in...
December 1, 2015
Wide-ranging interview (surveillance, DRM, copyfight, climate, class war) in the Sydney Morning Herald
Chris Zappone’s published a long, wide-ranging interview with me in the Sydney Morning Herald where I try to connect the dots between digital rights, surveillance, climate change, and wealth disparity.
Doctorow points to the internet itself and inequality – two things that have a surprising link.
“I think wealth inequality is related to the internet in lots of ways, partly because globalisation is an internet phenomenon.”
Global corporations relied on globalised supply chains enabled by...
