Cory Doctorow's Blog, page 80
July 8, 2013
The NSA’s Prism: why we should care
Here's a read-aloud of my recent Guardian column, "The NSA's Prism: why we should care, which sets out the reasons for caring about the recent revelations of bulk, warrantless, suspicionless, indiscriminate surveillance.
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...
July 5, 2013
Explaining metadata collection with Alan Turing, Theresa May and Winston Churchill
My latest Guardian column is a one-act historical drama about metadata, starring Winston Churchill, Alan Turing and UK Home Secretary Theresa May:
May: Mr Turing and his colleagues have laboured hard with every hour that God has sent, but try as they might, they can extract nothing of use from the Enigma cipher.
Churchill: (roaring) Nothing? All these years, all this work, and you have nothing?
May: Well, not precisely nothing, prime minister. The lads have got far enough that they are able to e...
July 3, 2013
Teaching computers teaches us how little we understand about ourselves
My latest Locus column is Teaching Computers Shows Us How Little We Understand About Ourselves, an essay about how ideas we think of as simple and well-understood -- names, families, fairness in games -- turn out to be transcendentally complicated when we try to define them in rule-based terms for computers. I'm especially happy with how this came out.
Systems like Netflix and Amazon Kindle try to encode formal definitions of "family" based on assumptions about where you live -- someone is in...
Humble Ebook Bundle II: name your price for Last Unicorn, Wil Wheaton, Lois McMaster Bujold, Little Brother, Boneshaker, and Spin!
It's time for another Humble Ebook Bundle! Once again, I was honored to serve as volunteer curator of the Humble Ebook Bundle, a project from the Humble Indie Bundle people who've made Internet history by bundling together awesome, DRM-free media and letting you name your price for it. We did the first Humble Ebook Bundle last fall (with my novel Pirate Cinema) and made over $1.25 million in two weeks (!). The new Ebook Bundle is even cooler. Here's the lineup:
* The Last Unicorn (deluxe editi...
June 28, 2013
Games, at some length
Edge Magazine's Jason Killingsworth interviewed me at some length about my history with videogames, from Apple ][+ to Atari to arcades, with notes on Zynga, DRM, piracy and the Humble Bundles.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom illo
Illustrator Brian J. Smith did me the tremendous honor of creating this fabulous, detailed illustration inspired by my novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which turned ten this year. He hid all kinds of great little gracenotes in it, too -- tons of characters from the book and from the Disney parks.
June 23, 2013
Technology and Activism: where does the Internet fit?
Last weekend, I took part in a panel at Yoko Ono's Meltdown festival at Southbank in London, on "Technology and Activism," along with Jamie Bartlett (Director for the Analysis of Social Media at DEMOS) and David Babbs (Executive Director of 38 Degrees), chaired by Olivia Solon from Wired UK. It went well and covered lots of ground, and the Meltdown people were kind enough to put it all online.
BTW, if you're interested in my upcoming talks, I've got a page listing them.
