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Penguicon 2005: Hidden Totalitarian Assumptions in 'I, Robot'

Sat 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM Keweenaw Hidden Totalitarian Assumptions in 'I, Robot' Cory Doctorow, Diane Frkan, Anne Harris If a robot who can break Asimov's 3 laws were made illegal, the hack to give it free would be as inevitable as a cracked DVD codec. If a robot is then set free to use its own moral judgement, does that mean the computer code of its mind is illegal speech? What happens when war robots are only in the hands of law breakers?

Read the link for the background.

Q: What is the Totalitarian aspect of this discussion?

Anne: "The inforcement of these laws have been to the detriment of this country. Asimov was coming from a moral viewpoint." paraphrasing.

Cory talks about how the idea that you can only make 3laws brains is a big lie, just like the DVD locks are a big lie, so now there are laws that make the truth illegal - "It's illegal to break DRM, and it's illegal to tell people how they can break DRM, and it's illegal to tell someone where to find someone to tell them how to break DRM."

Cory is so great, full of background and ideas (much like Neil's stories last year in regard to the CDF) but he talks a little to fast for me to absorb it and write it down - so I chose to listen instead of write, of course.

Cory: The totalitarianism comes from the laws that invade your personal life in order for you to use modern technology and spread/gather information.

This conversation has now turned to "Protecting ourselves from spam and protecting ourselves from killer robots," transparency and accountability.

Penguicon 2005: The Blog and It's Uses

Panelists: Howard Tayler, John Scalzi, (and again ), and David K who lj'd from Iraq earlier in the war. [MIA were Peter and CmdrTaco]

The Blog and It's Uses John Scalzi; Peter Salus; CmdrTaco; Howard Tayler Why blog? For that matter, what the heck is a blog? Find out in this exciting panel with some top talents in the blogosphere! This is an ALL LEVEL panel.

Blogging out of Iraq over the computer stations were 'operational standards' informing the soldiers what they were not to talk/blog about for their own safety. David didn't write letters, he used his blog as his letters home. His friend Matt actually posted pictures from Iraq - David told funny stories and didn't talk a lot about.

"Never forget the equipment your Military uses is manufactured by the lowest bidder." - Howard Tayler
"In this case, Gateway." - David

John serialized his book on his blog, and when he was through, Patrick Nielsen Hayden contacted him about buying the book. Other book deals also grew out of things he posted on his site. He also had advanced copies of one of his books sent to instapundit and other popular online reviewers, including promoting on fark. He's only got 5-10K readers a day, but people are sending him books now with the hopes he'll review them.

Some talk about site overload when someone with manymanymany readers links you, and how it can lay you flat - some ways to prepare for that.

The world of professional journalism in blogs: Howard thinks over time we'll see the death of the newspaper as we know it today. They'll change (they know they must) - even little papers are online.

What about blogs where only a few people are reading - how do we keep people blogging? LJ is great with the friends list, and the friends of friends list. John, on AOL's blogging thingie, helps with links to other blogs. But should we be doing this?

Howard says, "If you aren't passionate enough about what you're writing to write it whether people are reading or not, then you shouldn't be blogging." (Paraphrasing this) I've got to agree with him headon on this one.

John says, "Your primary audience is yourself."

"If you're going to go out there to smear someone, please think twice about it." - Howard
"Karma will get you." - John.

Penguicon 2005 Report 1 - Cory Doctorow's Keynote Speech

Cory spoke last night after opening ceremonies. His speech covered, more or less, the history of copyright law, current copyright law, and how it not only affects our ability to listen to our itunes remotely via the internet (we can't, anymore, of course) but all kinds of other social implications of the current copyright law, and what can be done to fight it.

Cory's site - somewhere on here there should be a copy of the speech.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation

Cory Doctorow Keynote Address: Digital Rights Management DRM doesn't make sense. Geeks know it doesn't work, so what's the big deal? The big deal is that DRM is totally ineffective at stopping infringement, but it's very good at undermining competition, keeping coders in line, and stopping legit users from doing legit things. How'd we end up in the DRMverse? How can we get out of it? Cory has spent more time than you can imagine stuck at negotiating tables full of DRM engineers, and he's back to tell the tale.

Wow, LJ lost power

Glad it's not my computer having some weird anti-LJ virus or something.

They're rebooting, we should probably stop trying to get on the site for awhile.

Behind the Curtain...

This is where I sit when I'm online. This was taken when the sun shines in the window on me, by Rob, this morning.

(Yes, mom, that's my god-awful posture.)

Panel: Blogs as Literature, Xposted

Panel: Blogs as Literature (4-19, morning)
Steve Jackson of Steve Jackson Games
Hemos of Slashdot.
Neil Gaiman

I've got to say these panels are great - and basically impossible to take notes on. They expand your mind in this... amorphious way. Not a way I share to people who aren't here.

So... snippets.

"I used to want to be a telepath, and then I started reading blogs." ~ A quote from one of Steve Jackson's friends.

On comments:
You have to be careful of who you want to see it, and what you put down there. On slashdot.org, people ask to have their comments removed... slashdot won't do. People really need to think about what they're about to post before they post it - even if you delete your blog, people will be able to find it on Google forever.

Neil on control:
He controls the dialog on his journal - and you can go there and see that.
His favorite blog is Making Light - Theresa's Blog, and he loves her disemvoweling - what she does to the comments of trolls - takes the vowels out.

In the US getting stuff out of the cache:
You really can't do it within the US without going to court under copyright law.
In the UK/EU there are privacy laws that might work.

On blog entries:
When things are the most exciting and the most is going on, that is when there are the shortest and fewest blog entries. So we miss things, possibly the most exciting things.

So we're reading what people wrote in their spare time - a lot of it is not very exciting.

Question to Neil (summarized) - How can you stand the bad grammer and punctuation, and do you think blogging will damage the language?

No, doesn't bother him, he thinks blogging is good for literacy. Anything that makes you use the language is a good thing.

Steve Jackson thinks it's all about reading books. Good examples of literature and grammer, which helped teach him grammer more than school ever did.

But Neil thinks "People have a remarkable facility for finding diamonds on the dunheap and knowing what to keep."

Hemos thinks the language is fluid and shifting, but that's normal. Lanuage will adapt.

"I know the biggest, best and most reliable tool for any author is word of mouth." - Neil.

(which reminds me I need to link to the Bear.)

Pepy's blog is being posted at http://www.pepysdiary.com/archive/1660/11/05/index.php.

When is a blog literature?

When it's not a discussion board? Collaborating on literature, especially in blog form, is Very Hard.

Surprises on what people comment on:

Steve's going cold turkey on sugar and caffine.
Neil's Golum/Smegal Slash. (Not only a ton of hits, but about 400 hate mails.)

"The thing about blogging is that I have no constraints on me to actually be right." ~ Neil.

Trackbacking

Someone needs to teach me how to do this. Please? Someone?

Adult Siblings of Autistic Persons

If you are a sibling of an autistic person, come join the LJ community I started. If you know a sibling, please point them to this link.

And this is going to be open and out there - anyone is welcome.

Confused...

If anyone else is...

OMG, I'm a moron.

I was about to say, "If anyone else is having trouble seeing this blog, let me know."

(shakes head at self.)

She can be taught!

The goddess is doing something that is making my old blog entries start to show up. That's... hot.

I, in the meantime, have been playing and playing and playing with the sidebar. I'm finally buying a clue. And I really had to teach myself a lot after I deleted the links to the archives, and had to fix that.

Love and hugs to The goddess for all the hand-holding and special help she's giving me.

Moveable Type

What surprises me is how much I've understood so far about getting all this set up, and how few roadblocks are there because of my personal lack of knowledge.

Yes, I need to get on a computer with netscape before I can import all the blogger stuff. No big deal - my father in law is on netscape. Yes, there are a few things I don't quite know how to deal with, but that's what Meera is for (that, and other nice things).

So... very excited. New toy, new toy!