Last Friday, June 8, I was immensely, fantastically thrilled to receive an honorary doctorate in computer science from the Open University, an institution I have long held in high esteem and where it has been my privilege to serve as a visiting senior lecturer. The degree was conferred in a fabulous ceremony at the Milton Keynes Theatre, just one of the OU’s many graduation ceremonies for the year (the OU specialises in adult and continuing education and is a tremendously democratising force in UK education, and so awards huge numbers of non-honorary degrees every year). As I sat at the front of the stage with my OU colleagues, I had a great seat from which to observe the year’s grads, and to marvel at their diversity in age and background, and to delight in the cheers from the guests they’d brought with them to the event.

My own parents came from Toronto for the occasion, and I was also joined by my wife and daughter. Later in the day, we threw a party with many friends from around the world at Bletchley Park, a nearby historic site famous for being one of the birthplaces of modern computers and cryptography (Bletchley turns out to be a brilliant place to throw a party — take note if you’re thinking of having an event somewhere in the region).

I just wanted to put up a short post here to publicly thank the OU, especially my computer science colleagues Marian Petre, Blaine Price, Ray Corrigan, and Mike Richards, for this honour; and to thank again all the friends, colleagues, and family who made the day so special.

Ray Corrigan has posted Prof Marian Petre‘s introduction from the day, which sets out the case the degree. I was given a few moments to speak about what I think my work means; I’ve pasted that in below the jump.

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I wrote a piece for MIT’s Technology Review on the way that Internet privacy works, and the deficiency of our tools — browsers, phones — in protecting it:

Even if you read the fine print, human beings are awful at pricing out the net present value of a decision whose consequences are far in the future. No one would take up smoking if the tumors sprouted with the first puff. Most privacy disclosures don’t put us in immediate physical or emotional distress either. But given a large population making a large number of disclosures, harm is inevitable. We’ve all heard the stories about people who’ve been fired because they set the wrong privacy flag on that post where they blew off on-the-job steam.

The risks increase as we disclose more, something that the design of our social media conditions us to do. When you start out your life in a new social network, you are rewarded with social reinforcement as your old friends pop up and congratulate you on arriving at the party. Subsequent disclosures generate further rewards, but not always. Some disclosures seem like bombshells to you (“I’m getting a divorce”) but produce only virtual cricket chirps from your social network. And yet seemingly insignificant communications (“Does my butt look big in these jeans?”) can produce a torrent of responses. Behavioral scientists have a name for this dynamic: “intermittent reinforcement.” It’s one of the most powerful behavioral training techniques we know about. Give a lab rat a lever that produces a food pellet on demand and he’ll only press it when he’s hungry. Give him a lever that produces food pellets at random intervals, and he’ll keep pressing it forever.

The Curious Case of Internet Privacy

Tracey Hughes assigned Little Brother to her grade 10 students in Peterborough, Ontario (Canada), and developed some course materials that she’s generously agreed to share with other teachers to remix, adapt, and reuse. She writes:

The intent of sharing my teacher resources for Little Brother stems from my pleasure and success teaching the text with grade 10 English students. Having had such meaningful and engaged discussions with my class has lead to valuable learning experiences for them and lead to valuable teaching experiences for me. Doctorow’s novel has reminded me of the power of youth, the strength of a single voice, and the dangers of power, both universal and personal. It is my hope that these resources will serve as a stepping-off point for you as an educator – obviously posting the “tests” means you’ll need to alter some of the content. Take this work and make it yours! Mash it up, pass it on, share it around, and hey, send me your work. The open network of material sharing that happens on the net (and in the novel) is a reminder to all educators that we so often teach in a bubble where resources and ideas are locked in our classrooms.

1. Tests (1st and 2nd half of LB):
I have designed these tests to cover general content (short answer), thinking components (short paragraphs to demonstrate understanding of character and plot), and application (paragraph-answer questions focusing on themes and concepts found in the novel with extensions to the world of the student). These could be done as group assignments, individual writing tasks, in-class oral work (open book or not) and discussion activities instead of as standard tests.

2. Chapter Questions:
The questions are intended to allow students to engage with the material in the novel. They explore more than just content and ask students to make assumptions, to extrapolate, to make connections to their own world, to do a little research for cultural context references, and to question the author’s intent in specific artistic choices in his writing. They will allow for deep discussion and do not focus solely on general comprehension.

3. Essay Assignment:
I have designed the essay assignment to cover two levels of classes (Applied and Academic) with a focus on understanding themes of power, morality, freedom, truth, and security. Students are asked to move through a number of pre-planning steps and to identify significant quotations from the novel to support their argument. The assignment culminates in a full essay, but can easily be adapted to any form of short writing, arts-extension, group presentation, or individual study activity.

My latest Publishers Weekly column is “Publishing’s Virtue,” a look at the relative moral uprightness of trade publishing, especially when compared to the record labels and movie studios, with their just reputation as rapacious crooks who rip off artists at every turn. if you’re trying to convince Internet users to buy instead of pirate because they’ll support the artists by doing so, it would be a good idea to mention the fact that your industry actually pays its creators, unlike the balance-sheet fiddlers in Big Music and Big Movies.

Yes, making the case against illegal downloading can be hard graft. So, without quality, price, convenience, or the threat of punishment, how can publishers convince people to do the right thing and buy? Basically, with an appeal to decency: you should buy our goods because it’s the right thing to do.

It sounds too simple, but it can be effective. No matter how many worthy people support their families with corporate paychecks, corporations in the age of Citizens United and Occupy Wall Street make poor poster children for a sympathy campaign—and audiences are especially suspect of corporations that operate in the arts. Record labels, movie studios, and, yes, publishers, too, are commonly viewed as rapacious scoundrels that prey on artists, exploit a stranglehold on distribution, and force content owners into abusive contractual relationships.

But trade publishing is different, especially when it comes to fiction. Unlike musicians, we novelists give limited licenses to our publishers, licenses that we can terminate if the publisher doesn’t actually get our creations into retail channels. If a song isn’t available for download, it’s often the case that some record company owns the rights and can’t be bothered to do anything with it. If you can’t get a book it’s usually because no one wants to publish it, not because some faceless corporate bean-counter has decided to sit on the rights.

And unlike musicians, authors are not commonly charged for production expenses. A recording contract typically requires musicians to sell enough to pay for all the production, publicity, and marketing before they see a penny in royalties. In publishing, the publisher pays these expenses out of its pocket, and the author isn’t expected to pay it back.

Finally, authors’ advances are (usually) only charged to their current books, or sometimes across a single deal. Unlike musicians, who are often required to pay back shortfalls from their last project before they can start earning on their latest one, authors’ balance sheets are zeroed out with each new book. If your last book tanks, your next book usually doesn’t have to pay back its advance. Publishing doesn’t do debt slavery.

Publishing’s Virtue

My next YA novel is Pirate Cinema, which hits stands on Oct 2. The book has been complete for a long time, and now is the part in its lifecycle where it is in ballistic flight, having been launched from my device with all the skill and concentration that I can muster, with nothing else for me to do until it arrives at its destination. It’s a bit of a nailbiting interlude in the lifecycle of a writer, and that’s why it was such a treat to read Daniel Kraus’s starred review of it in the next Booklist. I don’t think I’m supposed to quote the whole thing, so here are some highlights:

…Doctorow’s series starter is his most cogent, energizing call-to-arms to date, an old-fashioned (but forward-thinking) counter-culture rabble rouser that will have dissidents of all ages dying to stick it to the Man…

It’s generally accepted that fussing with computers is a narrative buzzkill, yet Doctorow’s unrivaled verisimilitude makes every click as exciting as a band of underdog warriors storming a castle. It’s not exactly Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book (1971), but with its delirious insights into everything from street art to urban exploring to dumpster diving to experimental cinema, it feels damn close.

Color me delighted! I’ll be on tour with Pirate Cinema in October, and Charlie Stross and I will also be touring our novel-for-adults, Rapture of the Nerds, in early September.