P2P Video of the Day: The coming war on general computation - Cory Doctorow @ #28C3

Cory Doctorow speaking at the 28th Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin:

The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.
The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to “secure” anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

4 Comments

Thomas Ruddy January 1, 2012 at 8:00 pm

This quote is indeed thought-provoking, but quite hard to understand when taken outside its original context. I attended the CCC Congress and heard Cory. A “computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones” is what lobbyists and many others are calling for.
Free and Open-Source Software is one alternative preferable to their proposed solution. Likewise Jonathan Zittrain with his book, the “Future of the Internet”, goes in a similar direction. Coincidentally his book would also be hard to understand without its subtitle “…and How to Stop it”.

Thomas Ruddy January 2, 2012 at 2:32 pm

Transcript of the complete Doctorow speech is here.

felix stalder January 3, 2012 at 1:39 pm

The fact that this “war” on the general purpose computer would require retooling the entire computing infrastructure makes me somewhat optimistic that the dog is too big to be wagged by the tail. The more insidious trend seems to be that software as service trend and the general centralization of platforms that goes by the name of web2.0. The way youtube control video is far deeper than anything the retooling of the computer could achieve.

Thomas Ruddy January 11, 2012 at 10:53 am

Cory has a blog post now on his speech, http://bit.ly/x0eTMP

4 Comments →

Thomas Ruddy January 1, 2012 at 8:00 pm
This quote is indeed thought-provoking, but quite hard to understand when taken outside its original context. I attended the CCC Congress and heard Cory. A “computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones” is what lobbyists and many others are calling for.
Free and Open-Source Software is one alternative preferable to their proposed solution. Likewise Jonathan Zittrain with his book, the “Future of the Internet”, goes in a similar direction. Coincidentally his book would also be hard to understand without its subtitle “…and How to Stop it”.
Thomas Ruddy January 2, 2012 at 2:32 pm
Transcript of the complete Doctorow speech is here.
felix stalder January 3, 2012 at 1:39 pm
The fact that this “war” on the general purpose computer would require retooling the entire computing infrastructure makes me somewhat optimistic that the dog is too big to be wagged by the tail. The more insidious trend seems to be that software as service trend and the general centralization of platforms that goes by the name of web2.0. The way youtube control video is far deeper than anything the retooling of the computer could achieve.
Thomas Ruddy January 11, 2012 at 10:53 am
Cory has a blog post now on his speech, http://bit.ly/x0eTMP