børge forteller om livet

I will always remem­ber Mon­day 14/09 as the day I almost got an exclu­sive inter­view with Cory Doc­torow, entirely by chance.

Update: The first audio recor­ding is now back. Sorry about that, and thanks for the patience.

Cory Doc­torow. Vesle­bror ser deg in the front. Licensed CC BY-SA 2.0 by NRKbeta.

In con­nec­tion with the trans­la­tion of his latest novel, the bril­li­ant Little Brot­her, into Nor­we­gian (“Vesle­bror ser deg”), Cory Doc­torow hop­ped on a plane and flew to Nor­way. Here the Nor­we­gian pub­lis­her of Little Brot­her, Sam­la­get, was pla­ning two gigs for him: First a meeting with school child­ren at 13:00, and then a debate at 19:00. Meeting with school child­ren was a great idea, since that’s who the book is for, and it’s cru­cial for our future that young people get more aware of the threats on our free­doms that Little Brot­her talks about. The pro­blem was just that Nor­way had the audacity to arrange an election on the same day, and thus all school child­ren had the day off. Sam­la­get became aware of this only a short time in advance, so they didn’t have much time to announce that anyone could come.

When I arrived at the venue ~ 12:30 there was no one there that looked like they had any­thing to do with the talk. 15 min­utes later I still saw no signs of eit­her other specta­tors or the arran­gers. Shortly after two women from the pub­lish­ing house showed up and ope­ned the doors to the audi­to­rium. When Cory Doc­torow came in the door, there was only me, the two women who wor­ked there, and one more specta­tor present.

It was kinda bizarre to sit down with one of the webs grea­test cele­bri­ties (for doing impor­tant things, not for stupid/unimportant rea­sons like many other cele­bri­ties), and a man that has been my hero for many years, in such a small set­ting. The audi­to­rium was packed full of people that night, but now we where only five people. It was no per­so­nal chat, of course, and the other specta­tor was a free­lance jour­na­list, so he asked some inter­viewee ques­tions, which Cory answe­red with mostly the same things I’ve heard, and read, him say in inter­views, on Boing Boing, etc. many times before. But still; it was quite awesome! Unfor­tu­nately I’m an idiot and did not take any pic­tu­res to prove this crazy hap­pen­stance, but you can see the video taken by the other specta­tor here (and you can see my knee!). But my audio recor­ding con­tains more of it, so lis­ten to that instead )Please still keep in mind that the ques­tions you hear is being asked by the other guy. I’m the first per­son who talks to Cory in this recording):

[audio:http://forteller.net/nedlasting/opptak/lyd/14–09-09-doctorow/doctorow-2009–09-14.mp3]
Down­load (.mp3, 23 min 30 sec, 23,4 MB)

If I had been the only per­son who wasn’t there because I was paid to take care of him, I guess Cory Doc­torow would’ve excu­sed him­self and done somet­hing more impor­tant, like wor­king on the two books he’s in the process of finish­ing, or some of the other thou­sand things he does. And rightly so.

But still: After this I have not been able not to think that I was one per­son away from get­ting an exclu­sive interview/recorded chat with The Cory Doc­torow for my blog. Except that I didn’t know it in advance, so I guess it would mostly have been a waste of his time. If, how­e­ver, I had known, and I did get an exclu­sive inter­view, this is some of the things I would’ve asked:

• What can we do to pre­vent a future remi­ni­scent of the one descri­bed in Little Brot­her, where our human and citizen rights are taken away even more so than they are today as a natu­ral evo­lu­tion of the path we’re alre­ady walking?
• How do we get more people aware of these dan­gers, and how do we make them care?
• I’ve been following the piracy/copyright debate closely for quite some time, but it’s not­hing com­pared to you. Even though I see how impor­tant this is, and I’m per­so­nally enga­ged in it, I find myself tiring of it. You have to keep up with every min­ute detail, year after year. Don’t you ever get sick and tired? What else do you care about? Do you ever wish you could work on some of those issues, but you just don’t have the time?
• I would not use the iPod because of its tie-in with Apple’s DRM and because of its almost mono­po­li­s­tic strangle­hold over the “mp3-player” minds­hare (and thus the mar­ket) (and because I don’t want to give money to a com­pany that works so hard to lock in their users). Even though you’re one of the grea­test figh­ter we have for digi­tal rights and free­dom, and even though there are very many bet­ter alter­na­ti­ves (qua­lity– and price-wise at the same time) in the pocket-jukebox mar­ket, you still use the iPod. Why is that?
• Can you say any­thing about the movie based on Little Brot­her? ETA, stu­dio, will it have famous actors, anything?
• You fly a lot, and I have no objec­tion to this, because that’s just what you have to do. But do you think about your eco­lo­gical foot­print, and do you pay for off­sets? (I actually did ask him this, and I recor­ded part of his answer (yes))
• Update: I did ask about using Identi.ca, the Free/Open Source micro­blo­ging tool (simi­lar to Twit­ter, built on Sta­tus­Net and using the Open stan­dard OMB to be dis­tri­buted). He told me it was on his to-do list, but that he’s just too busy right now. I had stop­ped my recor­ding before I asked this. If you care about digi­tal free­doms I would highly recom­mend you to use Identi.ca (in addition to Twit­ter. It can auto-crosspost every tweet, so it’s no more work). Read more about it here [no]
• Update: Since Little Brot­her is a book that partly is about teaching how to use todays avai­lable tech­no­logy to cir­cum­vent the sur­vei­lance society, will you update the book as new tech­no­logy develops?

At the debate that same night the place was packed (as I said), and Cory held a great talk. Again I knew most of what he had to say, but it’s always good to be remin­ded, and you can’t help but being cap­ti­vated by Corys talks, no mat­ter how many times you’ve heard the facts. After the event he told some­one that he had learned from Lawrence Les­sig to give the same talk over and over again, so he can prac­tice it and make it bet­ter. Les­sig knows what he does, for his talks are renow­ned for their greatness.

Panel with Doc­torow, Newth, Kals­nes, Buset. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 by NRKbeta.

[audio:http://forteller.net/nedlasting/opptak/lyd/14–09-09-doctorow/doctorow-debate-2009–09-14.mp3]
Down­load talk + debate (.mp3, 86.2 MB)

The debate wasn’t all that good, but I don’t think anyone expec­ted it to solve the pro­blem (even though Cory tried to at the end), and Eirik Newth and Bente Kals­nes came with some good points that made it wort­hwhile to lis­ten to. I can’t say I was very impressed by Bjarne Buset, the repre­sen­ta­tive from Gyl­den­dal, one of the lar­gest pub­lish­ing hou­ses in Nor­way. He was quite cle­arly on the other side of the debate from Doc­torow, though far from as bad as the RIAA and MPAA.

After­wards Cory Doc­torow stayed for an ama­zingly long time, and I stayed and chat­ted with more natio­nally impor­tant (and very nice) people like Tho­mas Gram­stad from EFN, the Nor­we­gian equ­vil­ant of EFF, Mar­tin Bekkel­und from the Nor­we­gian Open Source Com­pet­ence Cen­ter, a couple of people from Fri­Bit, Espen Ander­sen, Eirik Sol­heim from the Nor­we­gian pub­lic broad­cas­ter NRK, and lots of other great people.

Update: Lastly I must give huge kudos to Sam­la­get for trans­la­ting the book, but at the same time I can’t help but being mad at them for not inclu­ding the after­words or (more impor­tantly) the lite­ra­ture list. That was a very impor­tant resource for those that want to learn more, and we need kids that learn more about these things! It would also’ve been bet­ter if the trans­la­tion was Crea­tive Commons-licensed.

Others wri­ting about the book, the gig, or the man in con­nec­tion to this (Nor­we­gian): Klasse­kam­pen, TU (Anders Brenna var selv­sagt til­stede og kom­mer med et inter­vju med Doc­torow senere), NRK­beta, Dags­avi­sen, Aften­pos­ten Si;D, NRK. Le Monde har en sak som ikke hand­ler om Doc­torow, men like­vel tar opp opp­havs­rett, over­vå­king, osv. og er vel­dig akutell.

PS: This is my first blog­post in eng­lish. Hey all inter­na­tio­nal people! I’d appreciate it if you’d like to leave a com­ment and tell me how you think it went. :)