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

By: Thomas Ruddy

Thomas Ruddy — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:53:25 +0000

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

By: felix stalder

felix stalder — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 11:39:55 +0000

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.

By: Thomas Ruddy

Thomas Ruddy — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:32:55 +0000

Transcript of the complete Doctorow speech is here.

By: Thomas Ruddy

Thomas Ruddy — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:00:55 +0000

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”.