rwmtest

Two articles crossed my desk today that I thought were interesting contrasts. Hackers, Amusement Parks, and Activism: Where to Start with Cory Doctorow is a review on Tor, a site for SF and fantasy readers. Cory is a science fiction author that I'm a fan of both for his fiction storytelling as well as his political views that are well grounded in science and evidence-based thinking. John Degen: On Creative Commons and the future of the sharing economy is a familiar angry rant from John Degen about how the "free culture movement" is trying to make it hard for authors to make a living. I put "free culture movement" in quotations as his (ab)use of that term wouldn't be recognized by those who are part of the movement, such as Cory Doctorow. The two have a few things in common: both have released some of their own under creative commons licenses, and both are people I've sat down and spoken with in person (not surprisingly, copyright came up -- see notes f...

My wife and I went on a vacation to London, leaving Ottawa on July 18th, and returning August 1'st. While we did the traditional tourist things, this is not what has been stuck in my mind since. I was a Copyfighter in London, so of course I sent an email to Cory Doctorow to see if we could meet in person. We met on the 26'th at Shoreditch House , his club. Among other things he handed me a discussion draft of his latest young adult book: Pirate Cinema (Third manuscript printing from May 18, 2011). From the beginning there was a familiarity that I loved from when I read Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town . Someone was set in Toronto, and had fictional characters doing things which were part fiction, part science, that made the line between what was real, what could be real, and what was pure fantasy sometimes a bit of a blur. Pirate Cinema is set in London, surrounding many of the places I had been which made reading it feel like an extension of my vacation. It w...