Yup, folks came out in abundance to hear/see Cory Doctorow speak last night at SFU. Indeed, he received “Rock Star treatment” as he alluded too in his engaging spiel. Nice to hear someone roll on with respect enough for his audience that he didn’t pause to explain each nuance, he just rocked it out and assumed the audience was intelligent enough to get his quips (most were i think). In general, the audience were totally hip to what this renaissance dude is doing. Stirring shit up with the smarts to back himself up to anyone, anytime. He’s the People’s Champion for sure.
As a partner in an ISP, advocate of openness, multi-purpose artmaker and one who seeks to control my own public vs private demarcation line, I have extensive discourse bubbling in my head about his topics of net neutrality, personal/public/professional privacy, societal transparency, community tolerance, the the oppressive scare tactics of ch!ld pRon and “war on abstract nouns” fueling the pervasive ID-a-holic culture foisted upon us by those who think they are obliged to monitor everyone else, …
However, i have a scant few moments for repast at the day-job so instead, i will punt to my Seabus riding amigo Ianiv’s post at Now Public – to which i contributed a couple of snaps. Oh yeah go download his books and such from Craphound.com
You can listen to the whole recording Ianiv captured of Cory Doctorow’s speech, “Resisting the Totalitarian Urge” and Ianiv’s recap at Now Public (below) …
Cory Doctorow gave a talk yesterday at the Simon Fraser University downtown campus called “The Totalitarian Urge: total information awareness and the cosmic billiards”. He describes it as:
“It’s about how technology changes the way we view social problems. Older mechanical technologies make us see the world as deterministic, knowable and manipulable. New emergent technologies like the Internet teach us that control is an illusion, the universe is out of control and laughing at us, and that the more we watch and control, the more problems we have.”
He talked about things like DRM, privacy, Copyright and how this all comes together to change the way we live now and what the future may hold if we let governments and corporations do as they like, unchecked. More control is not always better.
Pingback: Ephemeral Feasthouse Baseball, Birthdays, Fireworks, Transit, Grateful Dead, Creative Commons and Geek Fests «
Pingback: Ephemeral Feasthouse Authors@Google: Cory Doctorow «
The audio of his speech the next day, on the hill at SFU, is on this page:
http://www.ecoshock.org/DNgreens.html
I recorded it for CFRO radio in Vancouver.
Alex
Radio Ecoshock
http://www.ecoshock.org