(The World) Behind the Glass

 
We Want Whuffie!

In the near-future utopian world of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, death has been defeated and everyone's basic needs are taken care of by nanotechnology. Since there is no material scarcity...no one needs money anymore. Instead the members of the Bitchun Society use a reputation currency known as "Whuffie", based on a sophisticated real-time system for peer approval, which serves in some ways as a monetary replacement.

Cory Doctorow's vision of the future, is an interesting and colorful exploration of transhuman life, as experienced by Jules (who is a young man - at only a little over 100 years of age).

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom was listed by Entertainment Weekly as number five on the list of the 10 Best Novels of 2003.
In December '03 the paperback edition was called "New and Notable" by the New York Times.

Cory's second novel, Eastern Standard Tribe is being made available as a free download, just as he did with his first novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and of course both books are available through bookstores.

Cory's position on all of this is articulated in this essay.

Cory also recently appeared at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, and gave a talk called Ebooks: Neither E, Nor Books, which he informs us was:
*a text...written word for word, in advance of the presentation
*a free...public domain file, which was released for public consumption just moments before he get off the stage

...and because he kindly provided the link...here's that text for you to read.


> This isn't to say that copyright is bad, but that there's such a
> thing as good copyright and bad copyright, and that sometimes,
> too much good copyright is a bad thing. It's like chilis in soup:
> a little goes a long way, and too much spoils the broth.
>
> From the Luther Bible to the first phonorecords, from radio to
> the pulps, from cable to MP3, the world has shown that its first
> preference for new media is its "democratic-ness" -- the ease
> with which it can reproduced.
>
> (And please, before we get any farther, forget all that business
> about how the Internet's copying model is more disruptive than
> the technologies that proceeded it. For Christ's sake, the
> Vaudeville performers who sued Marconi for inventing the radio
> had to go from a regime where they had *one hundred percent*
> control over who could get into the theater and hear them perform
> to a regime where they had *zero* percent control over who could
> build or acquire a radio and tune into a recording of them
> performing. For that matter, look at the difference between a
> monkish Bible and a Luther Bible -- next to that phase-change,
> Napster is peanuts)

You can read about some of the details surrounding this visionary and entertaining writer, by checking out the latest news as he describes it himself.

Cory is all about the FUTURE!

Cory Doctorow currently works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). His weblog (boingboing.net), coedited with Mark Frauenfelder and David Pescovitz, is read by more than 130,000 unique visitors every month. In 2000, the World Science Fiction convention voted him the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Both his innovative tales and the Modus Operandi for the distribution of his creative output, are bold departures from the current state-of-affairs in the world of writing and publications. Marketing types should also be taking notes...Cory sold every single book on the original printing for his first novel, and yet, is at the fore-front of the newest of all models for literary dissemination. He is an advocate of the new approach to the copyright process called Creative Commons.

If you are interested in hearing more about the efforts of the people that are part of this movement or if you're fascinated by the continuing adventures of one of Science Fiction's brightest new talents (who was recently nominated for a Nebula award for his novelette "0wnz0red"), AND if you live in the Tucson area and want to meet others who are interested in all of the above...come and see us at the next International Cory Doctorow Meetup Day.



find out more at corydoctorow.meetup.com

BTW, here are more FREE downloads from Cory's collection of short stories -
A PLACE SO FOREIGN AND EIGHT MORE.
Enjoy these as much as I did!


by PABlo Bley aka Paul Alan Bley [Everything is destined to reappear as simulation.]