Episode 086: Cory Doctorow

There are worse places to conduct an interview with Cory Doctorow than the press center above the New York Comic Con show floor. Granted, it’s still fairly low and a bit hectic that high up, but there’s want for conversational inspiration. In fact, if there’s a complaint to be had, it’s that 45 minutes is only enough to start scratching the surface.  Boing Boing blogger, science fiction author, digital rights and privacy advocate, Doctorow is one of those rare instances of an interview subject  with whom a few externally imposed conversational restraints might actually come in handy. But as a leading voice in the battle for freedom of information, Doctorow certainly isn’t going to be the one to enforce them. As it happened, the writer was on-hand to promote In Real Life for First-Second, a YA graphic novel produced with Los Angeles cartoonist Jen Wang that tackles the subject of human rights through the lens of online goldfarming. By sheer coincidence, I also happened to receive an email from McSweeney’s, asking if I’d like to speak to the author for his upcoming treatise, Information Doesn’t Want to be Free: Laws for the Internet age. The best option seemed to be to simply sit down and see where the conversation took us. The result is a free ranging discussion that manages to covered a whole lot ground, while leaving me wishing for just a few more hours. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.