This was one presentation that I looked forward to immensely. Cory Doctorow not only writes great books and gives them away for free online, but he is also one of the most incisive minds looking at the Internet today. Here are my notes from his presentation:
Libraries are about navigating authority and the Internet has fragmented that
Good librarians empower users to look for information online in the best possible way
Everything we use to measure quality of life goes up with Internet access – compared neighboring housing areas, one with Internet, one without
Makerspaces – where networked making takes place
Effective way of learning how to make things is to talk to other makers
Find someone who has gotten 80% of the way there then network the rest
Useless machine – playful side of making but real world skill development
Entrepreneurial side to these spaces
Reuses e-waste
Imagine libraries as the place you build your next computer that you get to take home
Taking things apart is a powerful subversive act
Feral robot dogs
Makerkids.ca – if you make something new, you get to take it home
Technical literacy is vital for libraries and society
Everything we do is computerized
A user should be able to terminate any process on any computer they own
What happens when Monsanto needs to break your computer? They are much larger than copyright holders.
If you can build a computer, you are like the samurai who can make their own sword
3d printers are sensitive to breezes but there is a patent for walls on 3d printers – put your own sides on.
Algorithms are running our world and we believe they are objective. We don’t understand them because they are clearly coded by humans.
It is an editorial job just like a masthead for a magazine.
Libraries should be Book-lined computer filled information dojos.
** James Boyle – network ecology, information and knowledge economy
We exist in a single networked ecology.
We must change our consciousness before we can solve the problem.
Complex sets of vulnerabilities because of copyright law (DMCA)
Creative Commons licenses for his books
1. Promotion of his work
Doing a name your price humble bundle sort of thing for authors
Identifies OS and challenges them. Can give money to specific parts of the project to support open source.
Shut Up & Take My Money – launching this fall and will be kickstarted
2. Artistic
Contemporary
3. Moral
Everyone copies it’s innate
We have a name for things that don’t copy, we call them extinct.
Writers have become human shields in the fight to stop copying
He refuses to contribute to that
Stop talking about metadata like it’s no big deal
No definition of anonymizing information has been made
There are lots of kinds of metadata too
Libraries as 501(c)3 for publisher ebooks to get them real data quickly unlike Amazon and Google and Apple
Gateway drug to making stuff is breaking stuff
Low cost of failure
Terms and conditions
Are you in the rules = are you making or having a copy?
Hyper inflation in copying
Should not apply to regular people outside the industry
We are hitting 12 year olds writing fanfic with land mines
They should never apply to people just industries
We already have tons of rules that regulate individual use
You should not need a license to access information if you are just a person
They are unjust on their face and they are farcical
