Today, in this country, we are suffering from a mass contraction of the heart. And I firmly believe that it is artists that can reopen the heart of America. It is our duty and our responsibility to do this. The day after the election I was terrified. I didn’t want to get out of my bed. I sat in my bedroom crying. But I remembered the young women that I had told just the night before that it was going to be okay. So I did the only thing that I could do. I got up and I got to work.
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Conspiracies are perfect for simple thinking. Because conspiracy is by definition something that explains everything. A really great conspiracy explains something that has already happened and something that’s going to happen.
I’m going to make an argument in this talk that dissent is valuable not merely to establish your moral dimension or to make a moral act or moral posture. It’s essential to scientific progress. So we can’t do without dissent; it’s not an affectation.
I don’t want to live in a world where ISIS is scarier than hackers, especially in 2016. We previously held the title in 2013, ’14, and ’15. And to be honest I was a little bit disappointed when I saw this result. So I thought I’m in my 40s now, there’s a lot of young hackers in the audience, and I’m not going to pass the baton to you guys unless we have that number one spot back in our pile.
Black folks have consistently been denied the rights to privilege that come with citizenship that so many of us take for granted. And that’s why so many of us are no longer satisfied with the compromises and negotiations that happen behind the scenes, that continue to leave out too many people whose lives depend on the ability to participate in the decisions that impact their lives.
The whole Library Freedom Project, everything that we do is very deeply inspired by Aaron’s spirit, his work in resistance, his legacy. And every day that we go into libraries and teach practical privacy trainings, I feel like Aaron is very much present in all that we do.
I’m going to discuss the theme of interface and maybe the politics of interface through the communication cycle, the idea of protocols, and then I’ll try to suggest interfaces for resistance, and ways for that to be addressed as well.