Last week I had the immense pleasure of keynoting at Fagdagen, the annual conference put on by NRK, Norway’s public broadcaster. NRK leads the world in internet-savvy public broadcasting, operating its own torrent server to deliver CC-licensed versions of its programming; they asked me to talk to them about what else they could do to ensure their future relevance. It was a good brief — and a great day!
Here’s part twenty-three of my reading of my 2005 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
In my latest Guardian column, “Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google,” I make the case that Google’s algorithms are editorial decisions, and that so much editorial power is better vested in big, transparent, public entities than a few giant private concerns:
It’s a terrible idea to vest this much power with one company, even one as fun, user-centered and technologically excellent as Google. It’s too much power for a handful of companies to wield.
The question of what we can and can’t see when we go hunting for answers demands a transparent, participatory solution. There’s no dictator benevolent enough to entrust with the power to determine our political, commercial, social and ideological agenda. This is one for The People.
Put that way, it’s obvious: if search engines set the public agenda, they should be public. What’s not obvious is how to make such a thing.
Search is too important to leave to one company – even Google
Here’s part twenty-two of my reading of my 2005 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
Here’s the video from the Open Rights Group benefit talk on privacy that Charlie Stross and I did, ably chaired by Ian Brown.
The excellent StarShipSofa podcast has a reading of my Locus article Extreme Geek in this week’s installment. It starts about 7 minutes in.
Here’s part twenty-one of my reading of my 2005 novel, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town.
Delighted to discover that True Names, the Hugo-nominated novella I co-wrote with Benjamin Rosenbaum, is up for a Sturgeon Award!
Paolo Bacigalupi “The Gambler” Fast Forward 2
Ted Chiang “Exhalation” Eclipse 2
Charles Coleman Finlay “The Political Prisoner” F&SF, August
Cory Doctorow & Benjamin Rosenbaum “True Names” Fast Forward 2
James Alan Gardner “The Ray Gun: A Love Story” Asimov’s, February
Kathleen Ann Goonan “Memory Dog” Asimov’s, Apr/May
Kij Johnson “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss”
NOTE: Johnson, a juror, removed story from consideration. Asimov’s, July
Ian McDonald “The Tear” Galactic Empires
Maureen McHugh “Special Economics” Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy
Hanu Rajaniemi “His Master’s Voice” Interzone 218
Michael Swanwick “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled”
