Cory Doctorow
Science Fiction Author, Boing Boing Co-Editor
We have a hard time motivating people to do stuff in the service of abstract nouns like 'liberty,' but 'singularity' is so abstract as to make 'liberty' seem as concrete as 'imminent car-wreck.' The singularity needs to be the mere abstract cherry on the concrete cake: the funny curiosity to consider as the end-point of a bunch of imminent, relevant, concrete changes in our lives that we need to prepare for and prepare the way for.
Biography
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing, and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non–profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. In that capacity, he worked to balance international treaties, polices and standards on copyright and related rights, advocating in the halls of governments, the United Nations, standards bodies, corporations, universities and non–profits. His novels are published by Tor Books and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re–use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He co–founded the open source peer–to–peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc, and Onion Networks.