Fantastic talk and a terrific write-up. Whether or not you agree with Doctorow's proposed solutions, I think his analysis of the problem and how we got here is pretty compelling.
I'm not sure that's fair. He's an author primarily, not a tech person, and he's only really been producing for like 15 years. It's been I think 10 years since he joined the EFF and starting banging the drum. Burden of proof is on me for this but unfortunately I can't grab some sources at the moment. In the last five years he has definitely gotten more vocal and it's only recently that he's really had solid proposals for solutions to the problem, but he's been a good advocate for a while. He also puts his money where his mouth is (for example he could make a lot more money on his books if he put them on Kindle/Audible, but he doesn't).
Regardless I'd much rather someone come late than never. This is (IMHO) one of the most important fights we have today, yet it's mostly just neck beards talking about it. We're definitely in the late stage and we're definitely losing the war, but I would welcome anyone to this fight. If Tim Cook (among the worst offenders) woke up tomorrow and jumped on the cart with us, I'd be ecstatic.
Fantastic talk and a terrific write-up. Whether or not you agree with Doctorow's proposed solutions, I think his analysis of the problem and how we got here is pretty compelling.
If you want to watch the talk (linked to from TFA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydVmzg_SJLw
I you want to go even deeper, I also highly recommend his book, "The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation"
[dupe] Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44113735
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I'm not sure that's fair. He's an author primarily, not a tech person, and he's only really been producing for like 15 years. It's been I think 10 years since he joined the EFF and starting banging the drum. Burden of proof is on me for this but unfortunately I can't grab some sources at the moment. In the last five years he has definitely gotten more vocal and it's only recently that he's really had solid proposals for solutions to the problem, but he's been a good advocate for a while. He also puts his money where his mouth is (for example he could make a lot more money on his books if he put them on Kindle/Audible, but he doesn't).
Regardless I'd much rather someone come late than never. This is (IMHO) one of the most important fights we have today, yet it's mostly just neck beards talking about it. We're definitely in the late stage and we're definitely losing the war, but I would welcome anyone to this fight. If Tim Cook (among the worst offenders) woke up tomorrow and jumped on the cart with us, I'd be ecstatic.
So he's good at one of the two hard problems—naming things.
He's a science fiction author, not a tech exec or statesman. The bar is low.
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