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Civil War General-Purpose Computing | Cory Doctorow | Talks at Google

Talks at Google · 91.2K views · 2012-08-22 · 1:10:23

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Overview

Cory Doctorow's Talks at Google lecture on the coming civil war over general-purpose computing. He argues that locked-down devices, DRM, and surveillance threaten user control of computers.

On Hacker News

It is HN's go-to reference whenever device lockdown, DRM, or restrictions on installing software come up, with commenters noting how prescient it was.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 6 months · HN mentions 2012–2026

Topics

Hacker culture & free softwarePrivacy, surveillance & cybercrimeFree speech, censorship & civil liberties
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cory doctorowdrmdigital rightsdevice lockdownsurveillance

What people said

freedomben · 2018-01 · Strong recommendation

Always interested in what Cory Doctorow has to say. While this particular blog post isn't about DRM, his work is benefiting everyone (except those who would rather enrich themselves at the expense of humanity). It's probably bigger than you think. I highly recommend reading up on what Cory has to say on DRM and the war on general purpose computing. It may change your mind. [LINK] [LINK] Also watch the various youtube videos of his talks, like this one: [VIDEO]

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est31 · 2022-05 · Recommendation

There is this talk about the civil war on general purpose computing by Cory Doctorow: [LINK] He gave the same talk at Google: [VIDEO] It's slowly becoming reality.

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freedomben · 2019-02 · Recommendation

> Really? We're there now? It's become Apple's "responsibility" to police every last corner of iOS? I find it disgusting, but really Apple is the only one to blame for that when they started aggressively policing and removing apps, and then marketing to customers based on that. I've heard people on HN state ad nauseam that they love that Apple does this, and that it's one of the reasons they live in the Apple ecosystem. They want to be protected from running apps that might do something objectionable (according to Apple's standard), and are absolutely willing to trade their freedom for some security. I obviously don't agree with this at all (I refer you to Cory Doctorow's War on General Purpose Computing: [VIDEO] ) but it is a position I can understand.

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