Cory Doctorow

Technology Activist, Journalist and Science Fiction Writer

BIG IDEAS

• What the Internet is for:
  The Internet is *so* good at copying that it's easy to forget what the net is *best* at: making it possible for groups of humans to work together to accomplish the "superhuman"—to transcend individual limitations and do more than any one of us could do alone. Keeping the superhuman in the net isn't easy, though: we need to design our systems and policies to keep the net open and free.
• Training kids to live online:
  Today, we protect kids online by spying on them and training them to accept surveillance and censorship. A better strategy for defending kids and teaching them to protect themselves is to train them to recognize surveillance and tracking online and in the world, and to give them the tools to win the technological arms race between surveillance and freedom.
• Copy-native business-models:
  The Internet is the greatest copying machine ever invented, and it's never going to get any harder to copy stuff. If your business-model depends on controlling copies or excluding access to information, you're working against the 21st century, not with it. But there's lots of money to be made and good things to be done in a world of cheap, infinite copying.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, The New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In 2007, he served as the Canada–U.S. Fulbright Program Visiting Research Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California. 

Cory co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc. in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc., the Organization for Transformative Works, Areae, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, and Onion Networks, Inc.

His novels are published and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel, The New York Times Bestseller Little Brother, was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright and the Future of the Future (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now. His next novel is Makers, due in October, 2009.  Cory is presently working on a new young adult novel, For the Win which is about union organizing in video games.

In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, "The William Gibson of his generation." He was also named one of Forbes Magazine's 2007/8 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders for 2007.

A Closer Look at Cory

FOCUS AREAS
What's on Cory's current research agenda?

Cory is presently at work on several fiction projects, the largest being For the Win, a young adult novel about labor struggles in video games that uses the boom-and-bust cycles in virtual gold markets to explain macroeconomics and globalism. Parts of the action are set in California, Singapore, the Pearl River Delta, and Mumbai and Pune.

He is also active on legislative issues related to net neutrality, censorship, network privacy and related issues, in US and global fora, especially the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty negotiations.

Cory is a leading commentator on open content business models, especially those that incorporate Creative Commons licenses. He is also a frequent speaker on practical strategies for equipping young people to safely and effectively use the Internet.

ENGAGEMENTS
How have other organizations utilized Cory's expertise, and what's ahead on his schedule?

Cory will be presenting at the upcoming events:

O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, NYC:  Keynote address on the risk to publishers of allowing retail channels to control their business through DRM.

Open University, Cambridge, UK: Large teleconference talk on Internet freedom, creative business models that embrace copying.

Meet the Media Guru, Milan, Italy: All-day sessions, meeting with local tech businesses, press outlets, and the newly launched Wired Italia. Large open forum talk on freedom of expression and copyright enforcement for creative people.

Convention on Liberty (sponsored by The Guardian), London: All-day forum on erosions to personal liberty in the UK and around the world, and strategies for turning the tide.

Re:publica, Berlin: Keynote on risks to free/open source software and blogging from legislative protection for anti-copying rules.

International Reading Association, Minneapolis: Keynote to teachers on protecting kids from internet surveillance and training them to use the Internet to safely and effectively explore their worlds.

Recent bookings include:

Confusion Science Fiction Conventions, Detroit, Michigan: Guest of Honor: a weekend's worth of talks on the future of publishing, cryptography, media and Internet, privacy, copyright legislation, as well as autographings, competition judging, etc.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Benefit, NYC: Double-header with DJ Spooky, talking about technology, freedom and copyright.

American Library Association, Anaheim: Panel on privacy, young people and libraries.

San Diego Comic Con: Guest of Honor: panels, signings, etc.

IDEO, San Francisco: Producing custom fiction and brainstorming on the future of networked objects.

Association for Computing Machinery: Custom fiction on the future of computing.

The Bookseller: Custom fiction on the future of publishing.

HarperCollins, UK: Companywide, day-long discussion of the future of publishing.

SPHERE OF INFLUENCE
Who shapes Cory's thinking and inspires his work?

Danah Boyd, Mimi Ito, John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Bruce Sterling, Jane McGonnigle and William Gibson.

RECOMMENDED READING
What's on Cory's must-read list?

Coming this year: Bruce Sterling's Caryatids and Ian McDonald's River of Gods

Recent releases include: Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, John Medina's Brain Rules, Leslie T Chang's Factory Girls, Charles Stross's Halting State, Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union, and Brian Francis Slattery's Liberation

Classics include: Bruce Sterling's Distraction, Henning Nelms's Magic and Showmanship, John Holt's How Children Learn and How Children Fail.

MIND FUEL
Which blogs, web sites, and industry events does Cory tap into to feed his mind and fuel his creativity?

Industry events include Game Developer's Conference, World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders, NotCon, Emerging Tech, World Science Fiction Convention, Tokyo Game Show, and San Diego Comic Con.

Blogs include: Beyond the Beyond, Consumerist, Boing Boing (natch), Make Blog, 3quarksdaily, Watchismo Times, BLDGBLOG, WorldChanging, Freakonomics Blog, Freedom to Tinker, Searchblog, JWZ, Memex 1.1, Modern Mechanix, Schneier on Security, Wonderland, ScienceDaily, ScienceBlogs, Slashdot, Squattercity, Terra Nova, The Shifted Librarian, Waxy, Ars Technica, Babygadget, ParentHacks, Ben Laurie's Links, Tor.com, The Dieline, FreeRangeKids, Architectures of Control in Design.

OUTREACH
What are Cory's pressing questions, and on which topics does he seek your feedback?

Cory loves crunchy, stat-rich studies about free culture and commercial returns; he is fascinated with behavioral economics and the use of architecture/infrastructure to produce deliberate outcomes.