Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 74

Speaking at SXSW with Barton Gellman about Edward Snowden and NSA surveillance

I'll be returning to SXSW Interactive this March for the first time in more than five years, to interview Pulitzer-winning journalist Barton Gellman, who is one of the journalists who's been entrusted with some of the Snowden NSA leaks. We're doing a presentation called "Snowden 2.0: A Field Report From the NSA Archives," which follows an address by Glenn Greenwald. We're speaking on March 10 -- I hope to see you!

Today we reveal the addition of another session focused on this topic, “Snowden...

Podcast: Digital failures are inevitable, but we need them to be graceful

Here's a reading of my latest Guardian column, Digital failures are inevitable, but we need them to be graceful, about the social and political factors that make all the difference when choosing technologies.

Banshee fails gracefully because its authors don't attempt any lock-in. When I find myself diverging from the design philosophy of Banshee to the extent that I want to use a rival system to manage my music, Banshee is designed to assist me in switching. Unlike Apple, Microsoft, and others...

How to have a healthy relationship with technology

My latest Guardian column, "Digital failures are inevitable, but we need them to be graceful," talks about evaluating technology based on more than its features -- rather, on how you relate to it, and how it relates to you. In particular, I try to make the case for giving especial care to what happens when your technology fails:

Graceful failure is so much more important than fleeting success, but it's not a feature or a design spec. Rather, it's a relationship that I have with the technology...

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth: .mobi and .epub

Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson converted my story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth (from the collection Overclocked) into .mobi and .epub for easy viewing on an e-reader or mobile device. I probably get more fan mail for Sysadmins than for any other story, and it won the Locus Award the year it came out (it was later adapted to comics by JC Vaughn for the IDW book Cory Doctorow’s Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now). Give it a read!

He piloted the car into the data-center lot, badging in and peeling...

Flowers From Al 02

Here's the second, concluding part of my reading of my 2003 short story "Flowers From Al," written with Charlie Stross for New Voices in Science Fiction, a Mike Resnick anthology (Here's part one). It's a pervy, weird story of transhuman romance.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting...

Why fiction works

In my latest Locus column, "Cheap Writing Tricks," I ruminate on what makes fiction work -- why we perceive stories as stories, why we care about characters, and how the construction of stories interacts with the human mind (and why How to Win Friends and Influence People is a great writing tool).

There are lots of classes of problems you can throw at your character, from bombs to defuse to tricky parallel parking problems, but the stickiest, most nosiness-evoking problems are the ones that in...

Great Firewall of Cameron: the worst of all worlds for British parents

In my latest Guardian column, I explain how UK prime minister David Cameron's plan to opt the entire nation into a programme of Internet censorship is the worst of all worlds for kids and their parents. Cameron's version of the Iranian "Halal Internet" can't possibly filter out all the bad stuff, nor can it avoid falsely catching good stuff we want our kids to see (already the filters are blocking websites about sexual health and dealing with "porn addiction"). That means that our kids will s...

Flowers From Al 01

Here's part one of my 2003 short story "Flowers From Al," written with Charlie Stross for New Voices in Science Fiction, a Mike Resnick anthology. It's a pervy, weird story of transhuman romance.

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes "...

Christmastime daddy-daughter podcast with Poesy

Every year, there's a day or two between the date that my daughter's school shuts and the day that my wife's office shuts for Christmas holidays. Those are the official seasonal mid-week daddy-daughter days, and for the past two years, my daughter and I have gone to my office to record a podcast. Last year's was great, but I think we hit a new high this year (MP3).

Lawful Interception 04

Here's part four of a reading of my novella Lawful Interception, a sequel, of sorts, to Little Brother and Homeland. In addition to the free online read, you can buy this as an ebook single (DRM-free, of course!)

(Image: Yuko Shimizu)

Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com

John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbre...