Hacker Visions

We stand today at the brink of a cyborg revolution. We’ve been implanting little machines (e.g. pacemakers) in people to improve on their natural states for a while now, but more and more the machines keep shrinking and their uses keep growing. Every day, more and more people are becoming less and less human.

This is exciting!

It’s also scary. There are two main ways to make software: You can go closed source and get code riddled with bugs because only a few people ever saw any given section of code. Or you can write your code in the open source way, which has proven to reliably generate the most robust software around. I don’t know about you, but I’d want my pacemaker to be described by words like “robust” and “reliable” rather than “bug-riddled”.

The cyborg revolution is just beginning. It started with remedial implantable medical devices and minor (cosmetic) enhancements, but real enhancements like cochlear implants are here and poised to explode. As the chips gets smaller and faster, we’re going to keep finding new ways to stick them inside people. You can read more about why the coming golden age of cyborg tech needs to be open and free in an article by Karen Sandler of SFLC, who is a cyborg herself and knows what she’s talking about.

Debian Day will be on Sunday, August 1, 2010 from 10AM to 6:40PM at Columbia University. They’ve got a
great lineup of speakers.

After ten editions in nine different countries spanning four continents, and for the first time in the United States, the Debian project is holding their annual Debian Developer conference, DebConf, at Columbia University in New York City. DebConf includes Debian Day, when it opens its doors to the general public. Debian Day kicks off DebConf, is free of charge, and open for everybody interested in Free Software. During this event, there will be a full day of talks on several subjects such as free software in government, design and free software, free software advocacy as well as string of talks about the Debian project and operating system.

The Debian Project is an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free and open operating system. This operating system that we have been creating is called Debian GNU/Linux, or simply Debian for short. Every year, DebConf allows new and existing Debian project participants from around the world to assemble, share knowledge and ideas, make collaborative contributions to Debian, build tighter community bonds and improve communication within the project.

The event is free but registration is required. To register, please send an email with intent to attend to: debianday@debconf.org If you are registered for DebConf, you do not need to register for Debian Day.

Ian and I demoed our design-complete prototype for Forbes, and they did a good writeup on the device. This will help get the word out. Tell your friends, warn your enemies: BookLiberator is coming, and it will scan your books!

We’re excited that these prototypes are shippable. All we need is to nail down the manufacturing process and we’ll be shipping these in time for the holidays!

Free Software projects publish more than just software. They usually publish mailing lists, blogs, forums, and planets, all of which facilitate speech among the community. But providing stages for people to speak to each other comes with downside: people say stupid stuff on the internet.

By stupid, I mean the stuff that makes them regret how easy it is to hit send, the stuff that makes them glad their grandmothers don’t use the internet, the stuff that they would never say face to face without body armor. This is the stuff of incitement and defamation. These words born of anger and pseudonymity spill out on the screen and people quite naturally worry that the legal consequences of saying a stupid thing will attach to those who provided the forum in which it was said.

If you are lucky, your project will grow to attract enough passion that you will face such questions. Before you go off banning people, rewriting the historical record, or shutting down your forums, there is something you should read: the EFF rundown of the law that provides some protection in these circumstances. Strangers posting on your forum are not terribly likely to trigger giant liabilities for your project.

Now that you’ve read EFF’s wisdom, take the next step. Realize that the problem here is less legal than social. People who abuse your forums in this manner are not your friends. And when dealing with any member of the community who is not your friend, feel free to ban, rewrite the historical record (there really isn’t any good reason to preserve offensive material), or turn off communication channels sapped of productivity by rancorous primadonnas.

Projects are never quick enough to ban people. Freedom of expression is good, but the guy (it’s always a dude) who occasions hand-wringing and internal reflection about the edges of community standards is a distraction and a cancer. He is a net drag on your project’s work. You should cut him loose, if only to prevent further retardation of your efforts. Your project is not a pleasure cruise. Anybody who isn’t rowing in sync with the team must be tossed overboard. Carrying his weight isn’t fair to the crew. And bans should be permanent. Reconsidering people six months from now is just letting them rise from the deep to steal your precious time, energy and productivity from beyond the grave.

Here’s where I deliver the tough love: your project is too nice. Stop letting immature, self-styled gadflies take advantage of your good, open nature.

To me, a Google Group is just an email list. It’s a shorthand email for reaching a group of people. But just like Google thinks of email as a conversation, it conceives of a group as a relationship. Google wants to associate an identity and let you pick options, and it has no easy way to let you direct mail to one of several addresses. Plus, multiple Google accounts that don’t easily map to email addresses can make things even more confusing.

If all you want is to join the email list, and and to forgo all the fancy stuff Google layers on top. Fill in this form, click submit and Google should do the right thing from there.

A note about privacy: this form is just a bit of javascript that redirects you to Google. It doesn’t show me your email address, so I don’t store your information. After you give your data to Google, however, you’re on your own.

Thanks to Onlygizmos.com for the url construction instruction.