Cory Doctorow, "Technology, Self-Determination, and the Future of the Future"




CERIAS Weekly Security Seminar - Purdue University show

Summary: Self-determination is the key to human thriving; it's also the enemy of both dictatorships and monopolies. It's no coincidence that commercial imperatives of tech monopolies create the infrastructure for political oppression. The public-private-partnership from hell looks like this: companies install surveillance and other system of control to extract higher rents from their customers and ward off competitors. Then states seize that surveillance and control apparatus to gain and consolidate power. That's the bad news. The good news is that it means that those of us fighting dictatorships have natural allegiances with those fighting monopolies -- and vice versa.