My latest Internet Evolution feature proposes that the best way for schools to protect their students on the Internet is to assign them curriculum that asks students to investigate all the ways that the school’s censorware sucks — blocks useful material, easily circumvented by students, interferes with teachers, invades privacy and enriches sleazy censorware companies. By systematically approaching the efficacy of censorware, students learn statistics, critical thinking, research skills, civics, and the scientific method — and they help to expose the worse-than-useless solution represented by using censorware on school networks.
Let’s start by admitting that censorware doesn’t work. It catches vast amounts of legitimate material, interfering with teachers’ lesson planning and students’ research alike.
Censorware also allows enormous amounts of bad stuff through, from malware to porn. There simply aren’t enough prudes in the vast censorware boiler-rooms to accurately classify every document on the Web.
Worst of all, censorware teaches kids that the normal course of online life involves being spied upon for every click, tweet, email, and IM.
These are the same kids who we’re desperately trying to warn away from disclosing personal information and compromising photos on social networks. They understand that actions speak louder than words: If you wiretap every student in the school and punish those who try to get out from under the all-seeing eye, you’re saying “Privacy is worthless.”
After you’ve done that, there’s no amount of admonishments to value your privacy that can make up for it.
As part of the ongoing serialization of Makers, my forthcoming book (late October 2009, from Tor USA and HarperCollins UK), Tor.com has commissioned a series of 81 interlocking, Creative Commons-licensed illustrations from Idiots’ Books. Each illustration’s four edges line up with any of the other illustrations’ edges.
Now Tor has released a Flash game that lets you arrange the tiles to form new illustrations, with new tiles being added three times a week, as each new installment comes online. Tile away!
Anticipation, the 67th World Science Fiction Convention (to be held in Montreal this year) is almost upon us, and the programming committee has put together a kick-ass program, and they’ve put it online. Here’s my program items — hope to see you there!
- Friday
- 10 AM: Intellectual Property and Creative Commons, with Laura Majerus and Felix Gilman (2-032, P-512CG)
- 12:30PM: The New Media, with Melissa Auf der Maur, Tobias Buckell, Neil Gaiman, and Ellen Kushner (2-126, P-511BE)
- 3:30PM: Reading, with Charlie Stross and Connie Willis (2-224R, P-512AE)
- 8PM: Prometheus Awards, with Fred Moulton, Jo Walton, John C. Wright and Charlie Stross (2-349, P-524A)
- 9PM: Cecil Street Irregulars: A Canadian Writing Group, with Doug Smith, Karl Schroeder, Madeline Ashby, Michael Skeet, Dave Nickle, Jill Snider Lum and Sara Simmons
- Saturday
- 9AM: Stroll With the Stars (a morning walk!), with Ann Vandermeer, Gay Haldeman, Joe Haldeman, Peter Atwood and Stu Seigel, 3-005, Riopelle Fountain
- 10AM: Autographs, with Ellen Datlow, Jean-Claude Dunyach, David Anthony Durham, Felix Gilman and Robert Silverberg, 3-053S
- 5PM: Kaffeeklatsch, 4-263K, P-521C
- 9PM: Gaiman Reads Doctorow (Neil records one of my stories for an upcoming audiobook), with Neil Gaiman, 3-342, 5-511BE
- Monday
- 9AM: No User Servicable Parts Inside, with C Meeks, Howard Davidson and Jack William Bell
Oh, and a note to Montrealers: the convention centre WiFi is CAD$395 a day!, so I’m hoping to rent someone’s 3G modem, like the Fido Stick modem. I’ll pay your whole month’s data-tariff and I promise not to download porn or warez or anything else likely to get you in trouble with your ISP. I’ll need it from Aug 6-10 (and ideally, I’d like to rent two, so my wife can have one.) If you’re headed to the cottage for the weekend or similar, I’d really appreciate it.
I’m headed to Anticipation, the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal, Canada at the start of August (Aug 6-10) and I’d like to rent someone’s 3G modem. The conference centre charges $395/DAY (!!!) for WiFi. I’ll happily pay your whole monthly data tariff for the favour. If you’re in Montreal and you can part with your modem for a few days (maybe you’re going camping?) send me an email, doctorow@craphound.com. I promise not to download porn, pirate movies or music, or anything else that might get you in trouble with your ISP. And if you’ve got two 3G modems, I’ll rent ’em both, as my wife needs one too!
Here’s a question for the hivemind: a typographer friend of mine is laying out a book for me, and delivering a printer-ready PDF. After he sends me the PDF, I need to be able to make minor edits and corrections to the type, preferably using Linux. How can I do this?
Update: So it may be that PDF is a poor choice here. My designer uses InDesign and can deliver a file in any of its standard output formats. Is there something that InDesign can produce that I can maintain under Ubuntu?
What I’ve tried so far: (None of this stuff works for my purposes)
* PDFEdit
* OpenOffice PDF Editor
* Scribus
* Inkscape
* PDFScape
Here’s part twenty-nine of my reading of my 2005 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Thanks to John Williams for mastering!
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
Sage Tyrtle and the QN Podcast team created a full-cast radio drama based on my apocalyptic, award-winning, Creative Commons licensed short story When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth. I had no idea they were working on it until they told me they’d completed it — it blew me out of the water. What a fantastic piece of work — and what a great surprise!
Here’s part twenty-eight of my reading of my 2005 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Thanks to John Williams for mastering!
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a full-time self-employed audio engineer, producer, composer, and sound designer. In his free time, he makes beer, jewelry, odd musical instruments and furniture. He likes to meditate, to read and to cook.
