Cory Doctorow: The coming war on general computation [28C3]

The coming war on general computation
The copyright war was just the beginning


The last 20 years of Internet policy have been dominated by the copyright war, but the war turns out only to have been a skirmish. The coming century will be dominated by war against the general purpose computer, and the stakes are the freedom, fortune and privacy of the entire human race.

The problem is twofold: first, there is no known general-purpose computer that can execute all the programs we can think of except the naughty ones; second, general-purpose computers have replaced every other device in our world. There are no airplanes, only computers that fly. There are no cars, only computers we sit in. There are no hearing aids, only computers we put in our ears. There are no 3D printers, only computers that drive peripherals. There are no radios, only computers with fast ADCs and DACs and phased-array antennas. Consequently anything you do to "secure" anything with a computer in it ends up undermining the capabilities and security of every other corner of modern human society.

And general purpose computers can cause harm -- whether it's printing out AR15 components, causing mid-air collisions, or snarling traffic. So the number of parties with legitimate grievances against computers are going to continue to multiply, as will the cries to regulate PCs.

The primary regulatory impulse is to use combinations of code-signing and other "trust" mechanisms to create computers that run programs that users can't inspect or terminate, that run without users' consent or knowledge, and that run even when users don't want them to.

The upshot: a world of ubiquitous malware, where everything we do to make things better only makes it worse, where the tools of liberation become tools of oppression.

Our duty and challenge is to devise systems for mitigating the harm of general purpose computing without recourse to spyware, first to keep ourselves safe, and second to keep computers safe from the regulatory impulse.

Speaker: Cory Doctorow
EventID: 4848
Event: 28th Chaos Communication Congress (28C3) by the Chaos Computer Club [CCC]
Location: Berlin Congress Center [bcc]; Alexanderstr. 11; 10178 Berlin; Germany
Language: english
Start: 27.12.2011 20:30:00 +01:00
License: CC-by-nc-sa

Category:

Education

Tags:

• CCC
• Chaos Computer Club
• 28C3
• Talk
• Lecture
• Cory Doctorow
• Cory
• Doctorow
• war
• computation
• copyright
• computer
• technic

[pangmotte]

Transscript: github.com/jwise/28c3-doctorow­/blob/master/transcript.md

[CCCen]

@pangmotte Thanks for the transcript... I'm trying to import it into the video-captions. Thx :-)

[VieuxMalcommode]

AMAZING talk. A real eye opener for its eloquence, crystallizing in clear terms the war on personal computing that has been going on for the past 15 years.

A MUST SEE, and a MUST DOWNLOAD!

[johnwck90]

I wrote and published a book and several other things and I have to agree, copyright is no issue, as a producer you just want people to actually engage with your product.

[MyAniMovies]

very educational - And Check Out "You Can't Be Free in a Surveillance Society" response to Internet Surveillance Bill WORSE Than SOPA, now playing on MyAniMovies Channel...

[KenRocker1968]

... HELP!!! I'M A HOSTAGE BEING HELD CAPTIVE!!!

[DukeNavarre]

What the fuck? This isn't what I want to hear! This is scary and makes me feel uncomfortable, and is therefore false!

I am intelligent and well-informed.

[roeladema3]

it's heaven's library :P

[reddingsdienst101]

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[AeroNY28]

@danfromabove it's all fubar we already are in a big brother age and have been for many years, governments know what people want but their there to line their pockets not look after the general public. They are only ever guilty of being caught.

[BeyondNeptune]

who cares what this jew thinks

[danfromabove]

@AeroNY28 What, you looked at the title and then got disappointed when there weren't any explosions?