Abstract

This is the opening talk in the Arcadia Project 2009-10 Seminar series.

Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) 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. He is a Visting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

His novels are published by Tor Books and HarperCollins UK 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, 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 from Tor Books/HarperCollins UK in October, 2009.

He 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.

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.

The title of his seminar is taken from a recent interview in which he described his distinctive approach to publishing his work and disseminating ideas.