In the currently installment of my podcast, I read aloud a recent Guardian column, “Metadata – a wartime drama, which imagines a dialog between Alan Turing and Winston Churchill that might have taken place if the UK Home Secretary Theresa May had been Turing’s line-manager
Earlier this summer, I worked with the American Library Association on their Authors for Library Ebooks project — which is asking authors to call on their publishers to offer ebooks to libraries at a fair price. Right now, libraries pay several times more for ebooks than people off the street — up to six times more! I recorded this video explaining why libraries and authors are natural allies.
In this week’s podcast, I read aloud my latest Locus Magazine column, “Teaching Computers Shows Us How Little We Understand About Ourselves”:
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2013/07/cory-doctorow-teaching-computers-shows-us-how-little-we-understand-about-ourselves/
which concerns itself with the ways that we’re recklessly formalizing critical elements of human identity such as “names” and “families” for the convenience of corporations and their IT systems and business-models.
“When a programmer instructs a computer to reject, or disregard, all input longer than 64 characters, she effectively makes it impossible for a bureaucrat – however sympathetic – to accommodate a name that’s longer than she’s imagined names might be. With a human bureaucrat, there was always the possibility of wheedling an exception; machines don’t wheedle.”
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.”
I went to Finland on Friday to give a talk at Assembly, the amazing games/demoscene/technology conference held annually in Helsinki. The organizers have already got the video online!
The world is made of computers, and so every problem has a computer in the middle of it. Naturally, politicians with problems to solve turn to the regulation of computers for a solution — with disastrous results.
I’m profiled in today’s Wall Street Journal, where they asked me about the tools I use to be productive, safe and happy on the road and at home.
Airport Wi-Fi is costly, slow and often heavily censored. I get around this by setting up my Android phone to share its cellular data connection as a Wi-Fi hot spot. Some wireless carriers around the world block this capability, but EasyTether ( mobile-stream.com ) circumvents this. Airports also often employ censorware and snoopware, which arbitrarily block websites and services, including, at times, my own site, as well as massive sites like Tumblr, based on the judgment of unaccountable censors who rate websites as “safe for airports” and “not safe for airports.” To beat this, I rely on a proxy service called iPredator ( ipredator.se ), which routes my connection through an uncensored server in Sweden.
AIRPORT WI-FI TOOLKIT: EASYTETHER, IPREDATOR [Laura Moser/WSJ]
My novel Little Brother is the “One City One Book” pick for the San Francisco Public Library this year; and in its honor, they’ve put together an amazing city-wide scavenger hunt called “Rogue Agent.” It features fiendish puzzles and awesome clues, and kicks off on September 14. It’s a team-sport, so start thinking about your teammates now; I’ll be at the SFPL at the end of September to read from the book and talk about it.
My novel Little Brother is the “One City One Book” pick for the San Francisco Public Library this year; and in its honor, they’ve put together an amazing city-wide scavenger hunt called “Rogue Agent.” It features fiendish puzzles and awesome clues, and kicks off on September 14. It’s a team-sport, so start thinking about your teammates now; I’ll be at the SFPL at the end of September to read from the book and talk about it.
My novel Little Brother is the “One City One Book” pick for the San Francisco Public Library this year; and in its honor, they’ve put together an amazing city-wide scavenger hunt called “Rogue Agent.” It features fiendish puzzles and awesome clues, and kicks off on September 14. It’s a team-sport, so start thinking about your teammates now; I’ll be at the SFPL at the end of September to read from the book and talk about it.
In honour of the Great Firewall of Cameron — the UK government’s plan to force ISPs to turn on network-level spying and censorship of “adult” material — I’ve read aloud There’s no way to stop children viewing porn in Starbucks, a column I wrote for the Guardian the last time the UK government floating this idiotic proposal, explaining, comprehensively, why this is such a stupid, stupid idea.
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.”
Hey, Londoners! I’m the speaker at tonight’s British Science Fiction Association meeting in the Cellar Bar at the Argyle Public House (1 Greville Street EC1N 8PQ). Kicks off at 6PM — I’ll be interviewed by Tom Hunter from the Arthur C Clarke award.
