I was honored to be invited to contribute to the New York Times‘s excellent “Op-Eds From the Future” series (previously), with an op-ed called “I Shouldn’t Have to Publish This in The New York Times,” set in the near-future, in which we have decided to solve the problems of Big Tech by making them liable for what their users say and do, thus ushering in an era in which all our speech is vetted by algorithms that delete anything that looks like misinformation, harassment, copyright infringement, incitement to terrorism, etc — with the result that the only place where you can discuss anything of import is newspapers themselves.
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In which I tie together infosec, monopoly, corruption, human rights and conspiracy theories
I’m all for making Big Tech small again and fixing the internet so that it’s not just five giant websites filled with screenshots from the other four, not to mention doing something about market dominance, corporate bullying, rampant privacy invasions and so on.
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From 6PM-730PM this Thursday, May 23, I’m presenting at the Exposition Park Library (Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Regional Library, 3900 S Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90062) on the problems of Big Tech and how the problems of monopolization (in tech and every other industry) is supercharged by the commercial surveillance industry — and what we can do about it. It’s part of the LA Public Library’s “Book to Action” program and it’s free to attend — I hope to see you there!
A couple of weeks ago, I recorded a long, in-depth discussion on the subject of “What does it mean to keep the internet free” with Jack Russell Weinstein from Why?, the Institute for Philosophy in Public Life’s program on North Dakota Public Radio (MP3). Weinstein and I ranged pretty far and wide about what internet freedom really means, what threatens it, and how we can defend it.
Naked Captalism is one of my favorite sites, both for its radical political commentary and the vigorous discussions that follow from it; now, John Siman has posted a review of my latest book, Radicalized, which collects four intensely political science fiction stories about our present day and near future.
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This Saturday, May 18, I’ll be appearing at the Nebula Awards Conference, at the Marriott Warner Center in Woodland Hills: I’ll be participating in the 1:30PM mass signing in the Grand Ballroom and then I’ll be on the “Megatrends for the Near Future” panel at 4PM in A/B Salon.
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I’m one of the guests of honor at this weekend’s Comicpalooza festival in Houston, Texas: in addition to my keynote and signing, you can catch me at panels on copyright, robots and AI, cyberpunk, copyright (again!).
My latest Locus column is “Steering with the Windshield Wipers,” and it ties together the growth of Big Tech with the dismantling of antitrust law (which came about thanks to Robert Bork’s bizarre alternate history of antitrust, a theory so ridiculous that it never would have gained traction except that it promised to make rich people a lot richer).
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