Miss us yet? Welcome to another week, How Do You Like it So Far? crew! Henry and Colin welcome science fiction writer, blogger, and policy advocate, Cory Doctorow. His newest book, Radicalized, is a collection of four science fiction novellas: “Unauthorized Bread,” “Model Minority,” “Radicalized,” and “Masque of the Red Death.” Through social, technological and economic visions, each story paints a vivid picture of what America could look like in an all too near future. Through a bold sense of humor, especially as we are bombarded by anxiety inducing daily headlines, Doctorow explores our dark, technologically ambiguous present through a sharp, witty and political lens. Inequities in technology in our modern times have highlighted that America in 2019 is broken. Doctorow, through the chaos of the Trump Presidency, tries to make sense of it all. He posits the urgency of using Sci-Fi as a medium for imaging alternate realities around our society’s reliances and roadblocks to imaging a peaceful existence. Doctorow’s insightful interview shines a light on the perils of technology through the amalgamation big tech companies and their individual histories of adversarial interoperability. Listen in as Doctorow breaks down the current (scary) state of technology by analyzing where we have been in the past and where we might go in the future if we do not imagine a new reality. He even drops a hint on what his next book will be!
Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper:
Cory’s Blog Boing Boing
Cory’s Books:
Radicalized – Collection of the four novellas above
Down & Out in the Magic Kingdom
Eastern Standard Tribe
Little Brother
Policies and Laws Mentioned in this episode:
Section 12.1 of the Digital Millennium Protection Act in 1998
Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Chaos of the Trump years
Copyright infringement and the Unintended Consequences of DMC
Cybersecurity Issues → firmware updates in pacemaker
Shitty technology adoption curve
Matt Taibi’s book on the Eric Garner case
Michael Weinberg’s Book
Adversarial interoperability:
Facebook’s history of adversarial interoperability
Apple’s iWork Compatible Suite
Douglas Rushkoff – Programmed or Be Programmed
Ed Felten on how keeping honest users honest is like keeping tall users tall
Cyberpunk Writers
Rudy Rucker
William Gibson
Lawrence Lessig’s Four Forces Model
AOC and Naomi Klein’s Animated Science Fiction Short
Ronald Coase’s Theory of the Firm
Naomi Klein’s No Is Not Enough
Facebook lost largest body of users → who went to Instagram
Facebook’s violation of antitrust laws
John Gilmore, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”
Anti-trust and tech companies – No Poaching Agreements; Digital Privacy is Making Anti-Trust Interesting Again; How Elizabeth Warren Came Up with a Plan to Break Up Big Tech
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