[kwlug-disc] Cory Doctorow tickets!

[Paul Nijjar]

Hey ho, 

So it looks as if there are tickets available for both the evening
event (which will be a lecture) and the afternoon event at the KPL
(which is mostly a book signing). Tickets are free, but please get a
ticket only if you will come. No-shows are a pain to deal with, and
the organizers want to have a full house.

Here is the ticket link for the full talk: 

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-tickets-39834896247

The talk is now open to the public, so you do not need to be a UW
member to attend (and you may let others know as well). 

Here is the link for the KPL talk (which links to Eventbrite): 

http://www.kpl.org/85-queen-afternoon-cory-doctorow-ticketed-event

Also: there might be some people needed to help volunteer at the event
(registering ticket holders, getting a queue of people without tickets
so that they can attend if there is space, etc). Is anybody available
Monday evening to help with this? I do not know for certain that they
need help but it is plausible. Having a laptop or tablet that you can
use for registrations would be helpful. 



Here is the abstract for Doctorow's talk:

------------------------------------------
Dead canary in the coalmine: we just lost the web in the war on general
purpose computing

This is the decade in which the unstoppable temptation to solve your
problems by breaking everyone else's computers really starts to chomp on
our collective butts. The World Wide Web Consortium just gave in to
Netflix's demand to break every browser in the world in order to make it
incrementally harder to pirate TV shows, while this year at a summit in
Ottawa, the Australians demanded that all the world's crypto be
sabotaged to make it incrementally easier to conduct mass surveillance.

The general purpose nature of computers, capable of running any program
that anyone can conceive of, is an iron law of nature, not a fetish of
mulish nerds who refuse to acknowledge the importance of catching bad
guys or watching TV in the proscribed manner.

The technical nature of this problem, the complexity of its contours,
and the awful fallout from ill-conceived "solutions" make for a toxic
brew. Any time you have a  problem that is boring, complicated and
important, you have big trouble (this is the origin of the climate
change crisis!).

Computer scientists and technical people have a solemn, urgent duty to
drag their less-informed peers into this debate, before it's too late.
After all, a car is computer you put your body into, and so is a campus
building, a skyscraper, and a Bombardier CS300. A pacemaker is a
computer you put in your body, and so is a cochlear implant and an
implanted defibrillator. A phone is a computer before whose cameras you
parade naked, while speaking your most sensitive secrets and living out
your most private moments.

If we don't get computers right, everything else will go terribly,
horribly wrong.
------------------------------------------


I have not publicized the talk on kwlug.org but I might do so later
this week. The people at UW want to get their own posters up for the
event too.



-- 
http://pnijjar.freeshell.org