On Monday 24th March 2008 I attended the last day of the Eastercon science fiction convention held in London called Orbital 2008, my first time at such an event.
I gave out NO2ID Campaign badges, to many very receptive people, or to people who turned out to already be signed up or pledged as NO2ID supporters.
I managed to strike up conversations with some really interesting and intelligent people, with whom I will be happy to chat to over a drink again in the near future.
Cory Doctorow, who read from Chapter 12 from his new book aimed at young adults called Little Brother which is due to be published in the USA on April 29th, but which, incredibly is being talked about as a 2011 release by a UK publisher ! Given that Cory is an advocate of electronic publishing, this UK publisher seems to be utterly out of touch with the 21st Century.
200 free copies of Little Brother for high-school newspaper reviewersMy next novel, Little Brother, is coming out in about six weeks, on April 29. It’s a book for young adults, about freedom, surveillance, and how technology can be used to free you or to lock you up. It’s about a gang of hacker/gamer kids in San Francisco who use technology to restore freedom to America, despite the damndest efforts of the Department of Homeland Security to take it away in the name of fighting terrorism.
Cory's reading from Chapter 12 was really good - the audience laughed aloud over the use of diluted pepper spray "effectively an anti-personnel weapon" as a condiment for spicy Mexican food. There was a description of a rousing illegal open air music concert, in a park in the Mission District of San Francisco, which seems to have been organised via the underground network of Linux hacked Xboxes
This is probably similar to the concept of the TOR onion routing project
The concert crowd shouted "Bring it back" after being exhorted "Don't trust anyone over 25", and the story changed mood with the description of the tender fondlings of the young hero and heoine, who seem to have met at a PGP Key Signing Party, after which the laptop computers which had been used to generate cryptographic keys were smashed to pieces.
These tender moments were interrupted by a heavy handed crowd dispersal tactics of the Police and the Department of Homeland (in)Security using high powered sonic weapons / public address systems, and helicopter crowd dispersal pepper spray.
Cory answered questions and made sensible comments on publishing, on his own writing methods and on how to improve science fiction conventions/
Cory mentioned William Gibson's Spook Country as an example of a futuristic novel set in the "unevenly distributed" future/ present of last year. Cory made the important technical criticism of the Spook Country draught before publication, pointing out to William Gibson that GPS satellite tracking does not actually work (on its own) indoors, without a clear view of (usually) 4 satellites, which led William Gibson to make more use of WiFi in his Locative Art installation descriptions. I mentioned my participation in the Node magazine and the hyperlink cloud annotation of Spook Country, even before it was officially published.
Apart from Cory's session, there were plenty of other interesting sessions:
CSI: Rubbish - the Fact and Fiction of Forensic Science
Dr Christine Davidson from the University of Strathclyde.
Everyone's curiosity was piqued by a glimpse of some real life forensic techniques ad procedures, contrasted with some acute observations on clips from the popular TV series CSI Las Vegas e.g. especially regrading cross contamination of samples, and the fact that female CSI actresses always seemed to have their labcoats open, whilst the men had theirs tightly buttoned up. Christine Jones assured us that real Crime Scene Officers in the UK do not rely on handheld electric lamps and torches like the fictional CSI teams do, presumably just for atmospheric tension effect. Real life forensics is much, much slower than the portrayal on TV, and far less specific in terms of identifying an individual suspect.
The Mathematics of Knots
A talk by Dr. Nicholas Jackson of the University of Warwick.
Interesting mathematics, worthy of greater study, if time permits.
The Future of Privacy in a Surveillance Society
an expert on Internet searching ad in urban exploration.
Iain Coleman, - a bio science writer and Scottish Liberal Democrat council election candidate.
Phil Huggins. Chief Technical Officer of http://www.irmplc.com/index.php" target="_irmp" title=" Information Risk Management plc - ew window">Information Risk Management plc
Preaching to the converted - nobody in the audience of over 50 people was happy with the Government or Commercial snooping and surveillance of innocent people like ourselves. Many were scathing of the bungling and incompetence. Several people were regretting having been so open free and easy with their teenage online writings, now that they wanted to be respectable adult citizens in search of jobs etc. The next generation of political leaders and celebrities may well be already choosing not to expose themselves on Facebook and other social media websites, as it is too easy to stalk people electronically
Identity Management in the Internet Age
Claire Brialey, Abi Brown, Caroline Mullan, Charles Stross and Richard Lake
Interesting experiences of multiple personal or corporate identities on the internet. Science Fiction author Charlie Stross is not longer quite as free, for example, to criticise other authors anonymously, because his original bog and his formerly private blog are now both associated with him publicly. Corporate legal persons also face similar issues to those of individuals, especially in establishing and maintaining a trustworthy online reputation. Some people choose pseudonyms, just for fun. he logistics of maintaining several online personas is tedious and error prone, but it seems to be difficult to foresee how they can be merged back into one online life story, given the pressures put on people's private lives by employers or the electorate etc.