Cory Doctorow

[kiyakotari]

I really admire Cory Doctorow's work. His narratives are both interesting and and pertinent to modern events - his stories function as commentaries on popular society, culture, and technology, with the added bonus of having fun characters and instruction-manual-style endnotes on the research behind the book and the gadgets in it. I love this, how transparent he makes things for the reader. (For those who aren't familiar with him, go take a look - he makes all his stuff available for free, on his website, and still manages to make the best-seller lists with his books!)

He's got a very interesting commentary on the iPad up on BoingBoing, and it really touched on some of the things that are driving my own uneasiness with the current trend in modern media technologies. The user as a consumer rather than an innovator being a big one. I'm the first to admit that I'm not the most techy of people - there are many things about computers and other tech that I almost know, but don't quite have a firm grasp on. But I don't want to be relegated to the role of helpless, resourceless consumer. I want to still be able to crack things open, get at their guts, and risk breaking them myself in order to make them work the way I want them to work.

Comments

[shipwreck_light]

I've been meaning to pick up one of his books for ages. It's just... the fact they're so easy to get makes them less glamorous I suppose.