Archive

Decentralize, Democratize, or Die

You might be more com­fort­able think­ing about deploy­ing math and code as your tac­tic, but I want to talk to you about the full suite of tac­tics that we use to effect change in the world. And this is a frame­work that we owe to this guy Lawrence Lessig.

You Are Not a Digital Native (and that’s OK)

You may have heard peo­ple come up to you and say like, Hey, you’re young. That makes you a dig­i­tal native.” Something about being born after the mil­len­ni­um or born after 1995 or what­ev­er, that makes you sort of mys­ti­cal­ly tuned in to what the Internet is for, and any­thing that you do on the Internet must be what the Internet is actu­al­ly for. And I’m here to tell you that you’re not a dig­i­tal native. That you’re just some­one who uses com­put­ers, and you’re no bet­ter and no worse than the rest of us at using computers.

The Coming War on General Computation

General pur­pose com­put­ers are in fact astound­ing. So astound­ing that our soci­ety is still strug­gling to come to grips with them. To fig­ure out what they’re for. To fig­ure out how to accom­mo­date them and how to cope with them.

Forbidden Research Welcome and Introduction: Cory Doctorow

At that moment when every­body is sud­den­ly car­ing about this stuff, that’s the moment at which nihilism can be avert­ed. It’s the moment in which nihilism must be avert­ed if you’re going to make a change. Peak indif­fer­ence is the moment when you stop con­vinc­ing peo­ple to care about an issue, and start con­vinc­ing them to do some­thing about it.

Where to From Here?

Although we haven’t reached peak sur­veil­lance, we’ve reached peak indif­fer­ence to sur­veil­lance. There will nev­er be anoth­er day in which few­er peo­ple give a shit about this because there’ll nev­er be a day in which few­er peo­ple’s lives have been ruined by this.

Ask a Prison Librarian about Privacy, Technology, and State Control

What does it mean to be pri­vate when you’re in a place where you have no right to pri­va­cy but are iron­i­cal­ly deprived of the thing that makes your pri­va­cy go away?