Tomorrow night, I’ll be at Edinburgh’s Pulp Fiction Books for a talk and signing! It’s free to attend (but ticketed, due to limited space), and runs from 7PM to 8:30. Hope to see you!
In my latest Guardian column, I suggest that we have reached “peak indifference to spying,” the turning point at which the number of people alarmed by surveillance will only grow. It’s not the end of surveillance, it’s not even the beginning of the end of surveillance, but it’s the beginning of the beginning of the end of surveillance.
We have reached the moment after which the number of people who give a damn about their privacy will only increase. The number of people who are so unaware of their privilege or blind to their risk that they think “nothing to hide/nothing to fear” is a viable way to run a civilisation will only decline from here on in.
And that is the beginning of a significant change.
Like all security, privacy is hard. It requires subtle thinking, and the conjunction of law, markets, technology and norms to get right. All four of those factors have been sorely lacking.
The default posture of our devices and software has been to haemorrhage our most sensitive data for anyone who cared to eavesdrop upon them. The default posture of law – fuelled by an unholy confluence of Big Data business models and Greater Manure Pile surveillance – has been to allow for nearly unfettered collection by spies, companies, and companies that provide data to spies. The privacy norm has been all over the place, but mostly dominated by nothing-to-hide. And thanks to the norm, the market for privacy technology has been nearly nonexistent – people with “nothing to fear” won’t pay a penny extra for privacy technology.
Here’s part two of a reading of my novella Lawful Interception, a sequel, of sorts, to Little Brother and Homeland. In addition to the free online read, you can buy this as an ebook single (DRM-free, of course!)
(Image: Yuko Shimizu)
Mastering by John Taylor Williams: wryneckstudio@gmail.com
John Taylor Williams is a audiovisual and multimedia producer based in Washington, DC and the co-host of the Living Proof Brew Cast. Hear him wax poetic over a pint or two of beer by visiting livingproofbrewcast.com. In his free time he makes “Beer Jewelry” and “Odd Musical Furniture.” He often “meditates while reading cookbooks.”
In this week’s installment of my podcast, I break my long hiatus with the first part of a reading of my novella Lawful Interception, a sequel, of sorts, to Little Brother and Homeland. In addition to the free online read, you can buy this as an ebook single (DRM-free, of course!).
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I’m heading to Melbourne, Australia next week to do a series of events with the Center for Youth Literature of the State Library of Victoria. I’m doing four events: The science of fiction, Creative versus Commons, Digital fiction masterclass, and Future fiction with teens. I hope you’ll come out to them!
Holy. Cats. My novel Little Brother has made it into the CBC’s Canada Reads Top Ten. It is in astoundingly great and humbling company, including Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood and Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda. I’m so, so pleased by this — thank you to everyone who supported the book. And I hope you check out the whole top ten, which is quite a list of wonderfulness.
Holy. Cats. My novel Little Brother has made it into the CBC’s Canada Reads Top Ten. It is in astoundingly great and humbling company, including Margaret Atwood’s Year of the Flood and Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda. I’m so, so pleased by this — thank you to everyone who supported the book. And I hope you check out the whole top ten, which is quite a list of wonderfulness.
My new Locus column, Collective Action, proposes a theory of corruption: the relatively small profits from being a jerk are concentrated, the much larger effects are diffused, which means that the jerks can afford better lawyers and lobbyists than any one of their victims. Since the victims are spread out and don’t know each other, it’s hard to fight back together.
Then I propose a solution: using Kickstarter-like mechanisms to fight corruption: a website where victims of everything from patent trolls and copyright trolls, all the way up to pollution and robo-signing foreclosures, can find each other and pledge to fund a group defense, rather than paying off the bandits.
It’s the Magnificent Seven business model: one year, the villagers stop paying the robbers, and use the money to pay mercenaries to fight the robbers instead.
These two young fellows are brothers from Palo Alto who’ve set out to produce a series of videos explaining the technical ideas in my novel Little Brother, and their first installment, explaining Bayes’s Theorem, is a very promising start. I’m honored — and delighted!
Technology behind “Little Brother” – Jamming with Bayes Rule
These two young fellows are brothers from Palo Alto who’ve set out to produce a series of videos explaining the technical ideas in my novel Little Brother, and their first installment, explaining Bayes’s Theorem, is a very promising start. I’m honored — and delighted!
Technology behind “Little Brother” – Jamming with Bayes Rule
