Cory Doctorow

Uh, I worked as a programmer, uh,

I have a computer tattooed on my right bicep from when I was 18 and I stick my face in my computer every moment I can and I love it and it's like how I made my most important social connections and how I made my most important romantic and familial relations I live very far from my family it's how I stay in touch with them so I'm not anti-technology

So the other thing that I do in my life, and actually the thing I'm arguably better known for than this, is I write science fiction novels.

I'm a multi-best-selling science fiction novelist.

And the thing about science fiction writers is that people think that we're prophets, right?

That we're trying to think of new gadgets and describe what they do.

But there is no such thing as prophecy.

The world is contingent and up for grabs.

What we do matters.

We can change the future.

What science fiction writers do is not predict the future,

But try and imagine a different set of social relations for the technologies around us now, using futuristic parables.

We're not so much interested in what the gadget does, but who it does it for and who it does it to.

And I'm of the opinion that we could have friends on the internet without Mark Zuckerberg listening in on our conversations.

And that we could have phones that worked without Tim Cook deciding which apps we can use and charging everyone who makes an app that we love 30 cents out of every dollar we spend.

And then we can search the web without Satya Nadella or Sundar Pinchai knowing what color underwear we're wearing, right?

That we can like cleave off the parts that we don't like.

We can take this disgusting pre-feast menu that's got 18 courses that even a dog wouldn't eat.

And we can throw them away and make an a la carte offer where we just take the two things that we like and get rid of all the crap that tech bosses want us to like.

and anyone who's got like a one favorite, it's, it's a little, it's always a little sketchy.