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Interview with Circulating Ideas library podcast

I did an interview with the Circulating Ideas library podcast (MP3) at the American Library Association conference this year. We talked about information politics, DRM and libraries, my own history with reading and books, and the future of librarianship.

Why Helsinki should host the WorldCon

Here's a video of me explaining why the Helsinki bid committee should be awarded the next World Science Fiction Convention -- it's a grab-bag of all the things I love about Finland. (Thanks, Eemeli)

Talking about the writing life

I did an interview with ShelfAwareness that came out well, I think (I wrote this a long while ago and it's just coming out now, so I have the necessary distance to say that). I particularly like my answer to "Name your five favorite authors": "My favorite authors are the ones living, dead, read and unread, published and unpublished, who write because they can't stop and because something inside them burns to be outside. That doesn't necessarily mean that I want to read their books, but they are all and every one my favorites."

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Little Brother inspired Google to encrypt its users’ traffic

On yesterday's "This Week in Google," a Google engineer called Matt Cutts revealed that the company started encrypting its queries in 2008 after reading my novel Little Brother, in which one of the plot-elements is a guerrilla movement that gets a friendly ISP to encrypt a lot of its traffic so that the movement's own encrypted connections won't stand out. I am incredibly honored and flattered to learn about this!

Coincidentally, I learned about this at the same time that Jens brought #oplittlebrother to my attention: it's a plan to organize a mass purchase of Little Brother on Saturday (tomorrow!).


This Week in Google 211: We Just Installed the Internet

Podcast of “Metadata – a wartime drama”


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

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Why writers should stand up for libraries

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.

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Teaching Computers Shows Us How Little We Understand About Ourselves

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."

MP3 link

My talk at Finland’s Assembly

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.

My workflow in the WSJ

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]

Little Brother-themed team scavenger hunt coming to San Francisco!


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.

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