Presented by: Clinton Ignatov

I've been using GNU/Linux as my daily-driver for twenty years. In that time I've lived through and written about the madness of the post-dotcom bubble burst, the rise of so-called smartphones, the recentralization of the net via social media, and the collision of old and new media today. I've spent five years deeply studying Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan, and have become recognized for my scholarship and participation in the field of Media Ecology.

Description:

The freedom-granting power of GPL derives from the way it situates the electronic computer within the long-standing human institution of the court of law. It is this human side of the equation — not the technical side — which needed addressing in order to stake-out and claim the ground within which users have been liberated.

What other areas of the humanities, civilization, and our human condition need to be considered and addressed in order to expand the mission for computing freedom, and diminish the power of total surveillance?

In this long historical overview, we will consider the arc of technical innovation from the invention of the printing press and telegraph, through to cybernetics, up to "big data" today. Through this telling, our focus will be on the psychological effects of these inventions, and the cultural responses and remedies toward those effects, in order to give context to our own place and time.

Slides

Video version