My new DIY short story collection With a Little Help has garnered a positive writeup and review in the Wall Street Journal, thanks to Tom Shippey:

So far so good, but “With a Little Help” shows that Mr. Doctorow isn’t starry-eyed about what will happen next. State bureaucracies can use technology as well as individuals, and a struggle has already started over who will control the Internet. The evil side of the IT revolution is that the state can check on everything, and its data-banks get bigger all the time. Who has not cracked a joke in an email, or made some electronic comment, that could be taken the wrong way? Once you’ve attracted attention, the story “Scroogled” points out, “scroogled” is exactly what you could be.

Another Doctorow thought: Computer-guided traffic could be much more efficient, right? But would it be fair, or would the road clear magically for government apparatchiks and guys with the right microchip, while all the lights turn mysteriously red for those on some secret gray-list? The story “Human Readable” puts both sides of the argument.

Whatever the future, here and now Mr. Doctorow’s stories offer compelling images of the way it’s going to be. Venture capitalists? Forget them, says “Other People’s Money.” Big money is dumb money. Much easier, says one old-lady manufacturer to a smart young gigafund manager, for her to make and market her own product, and keep the money (just like Mr. Doctorow), than for him to find and fund a hundred products and take a rake-off. He only deals in six-figure multiples, and that’s no good: not nimble enough. And he has to get a return on all those billions, poor outdated soul.

The Author as Agent of Change

Tim “Undercover Economist” Harford’s feature with FiveBooks lists five “unexpected economics” books, including my novel For the Win:

It is for young adults – it’s an adventure-action story, it’s not that complicated. But it’s very well done and conveys a lot of really interesting economic ideas very well. For instance there’s the impact of globalisation, the possibility of bubbles occurring in economic systems, the idea of the race to the bottom, of sweatshops and the role of unionisation. Really key economic ideas.

Of course there are a lot of economic ideas that are not in the book. I would also say that Cory is well to the left of where I am. He thinks trade unions are incredibly important – I’m not so sure. But I was very impressed by the way he could take this novel and convey all these economic ideas without slowing the action down. There have been people who have tried to create works of fiction with an economic message – notably Ayn Rand, who has just had a film made about her work – but Cory has really done it very well. It’s a tremendous and very admirable achievement.

I’m coming to Toronto in early June on my way to Personal Democracy Forum in New York; while I’m there, I’ll be speaking at the SubtleTechnologies event in Innis Town Hall at 6:30PM on June 4. I’m sitting on a panel called “How can we build a city that thinks like the web?” with Mark Surman (Mozilla) and Sara Diamond (OCAD), chaired by the CBC’s Dan Misener. The event is free, but pre-reg is required.

Can you remake a city in the image of the web? Can the open, decentralized, real-time spirit of the online world be applied to the places we live to make them more creative and innovative? What are the opportunities and challenges of the so-called “networked city?”

How can we build a city that thinks like the web?

My new Guardian column, “My new Ubuntu-flavoured ThinkPad is computing heaven,” describes the miraculously drama-free life I’ve discovered by buying ThinkPads with extended warranties and running the Ubuntu flavor of GNU/Linux on them:

The problem with writing about switching to Ubuntu is that there’s very little to report on, because it is just about the least dramatic operating system I’ve used, especially when paired with the extended warranties Lenovo sells for its ThinkPads. By this I mean that Ubuntu, basically, just works as well as or better than any other OS I’ve ever used, and what’s more, it fails with incredible grace.

This graceful failure is wonderful stuff, and after a lifetime of using computers I’ve decided that it’s the thing I value most in my technology. Ubuntu is free – free as in beer, costing nothing; free as in speech, in that anyone can modify or improve it. That means that on those occasions where I’ve had a bad disk or some other problem, I could simply download a new copy of the OS, stick it on a USB drive and restart from the drive to troubleshoot and repair the OS. I don’t have to take a rescue disk on the road with me, don’t have to try to run out to the Apple store at 8:55PM to try to buy another copy of the OS before the shop closes. Anywhere I’ve got a working computer and an internet connection, I’ve got everything I need to fail gracefully.

My new Ubuntu-flavoured ThinkPad is computing heaven

I’m taking a day off from writing next week to speak at the Open University and Oxford. On May 18, I’ll give a talk on technology, regulation and general-purpose computing at the OU in Milton Keynes and at the Oxford University Scientific Society. Both talks are open to the public. Here are the details for each one:

Open University:
Date/Time: 18 May 2011 at 2PM
Venue: Jenny Lee Room 1 (Ground Floor, entrance via balcony)
Seating is limited, so if you plan to attend please email Mary McMahon (M.McMahon@open.ac.uk) as soon as possible so we can advise you if there is sufficient space.

Oxford:
Wednesday, 18th May 2011, 8.15 PM
University of Oxford, Inorganic Chemistry Lecture Theatre, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3QR, UK
Talks are FREE for members and cost £2 for non-members. Refreshments will be served after the talk. Each lecture is followed by a reception with drinks, snacks, and the opportunity to talk to the speaker. If you would like to come to dinner with the speaker beforehand, please email the President (aguharoy@gmail.com) before 12 midday on the day of the talk.