I am not in a position or qualified to write anything meaningful about Cory Doctorow other than my humble opinion, which is “This guys gets it !”

He understands what is happening in the ‘online world’ relative to IP, Content, copyright, law, and the future of the Web and the Internet.

craphound

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 Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

Cory_Doctorow

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Trotskyist teachers, Doctorow was raised in a Jewish activist household, working in the nuclear disarmament movement and as a Greenpeace campaigner as a child. He later served on the board of directors for the Grindstone Island Co-operative on Big Rideau Lake in Ontario, helping to run a conference center devoted to peace and social justice education and activist training. He received his high school diploma from SEED School, a free school in Toronto, and dropped out of four universities without attaining a degree.

In 1999, Doctorow founded Opencola along with John Henson and Grad Conn. Opencola was a software company, which distributed their product’s source code under GPL. In 2003, Opencola was sold.

Doctorow moved to Los Angeles in mid-2006 from London, where he had worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years, helping to set up the Open Rights Group, before quitting to pursue writing full-time in January 2006. Upon his departure, Doctorow was named a Fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Doctorow spent the 2006-2007 academic year teaching as a visiting professor at the University of Southern California, despite not holding any academic degree. He then returned to London. He is a frequent public speaker on copyright issues.

laughingsquid

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular blog Boing Boing, and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. Cory is an EFF fellow and the former Director of European Affairs at EFF. Cory will be reading from his novel, “Little Brother,” a story of high-tech teenage rebellion set in the familiar world of San Francisco. As he currently calls the UK home, this is a rare opportunity to to hear Cory read from his work in person.

Kutiman Rules !

New YouTube and viral sensation Kutiman !

My GL Misha ran up stairs the other night to my lil office and pointedly said – “You have to see this !” – Now, she is skeptical of some of my online interests, so, for her to get so enthusiastic about something in the online world makes me stand up and pay attention !

Time Magazine:

That Viral Thing
Kutiman: YouTube’s Most Famous DJ
By M.J. Stephey Friday, Mar. 20, 2009
Israeli mash-up artist Kutiman.

If you’ve ever posted a video on YouTube, then Kutiman is coming for you. On Mar. 7, the Jerusalem-born DJ (whose offline name is Ophir Kutiel) launched ThruYOU, a project with a simple enough premise: to create visual symphonies using random YouTube footage of school concerts, piano lessons, weirdly intimate soliloquies and American Idol-esque performances uploaded by people across the world. In one of his creations, dubbed “This Is What It Became,” the 26-year-old artist juxtaposes clips of a “Glitch Monster Love Bot,” a tutorial called “How to Play Conga Drums,” a dimly lit monologue for the legalization of marijuana and a demo for a toy keyboard/ tape deck that YouTuber CosmoHelectraStudio, who posted the video of the gadget, describes as “a very bad sound” and “a poor tape player.”

And that’s why Kutiman’s viral orchestras are so fascinating. Unlike Philadelphia mash-up guru Gregg Gillis (a.k.a Girl Talk), who mixes hit pop songs and familiar classics, many of the YouTube clips selected by Kutiman, when viewed apart from one another, are … well… bunk. Who wants to watch — or, for that matter, hear — a vintage fire siren wailing away on a piece of plywood? Or a Cuban percussion instrument made from a gourd. OK, that one is kinda cool, but footage of a trombone recital recorded by an unsteady, possibly intoxicated cameraman? No, thank you. In the Israeli maestro’s hands, though, such raw material becomes … well… awesome. See for yourself:

ThruYOU

Nuff Said !