Here's the draft presentation abstract for the program:
Title: Post-truth and the Age of Literate Machines
Subtitle: Perspectives on Innovation and Infowar from Hackers, Heretics, and God-Kings
What can the ancient Babylonians teach us about infowar? Why did smuggling lead to copyright reform? How did religions help start multiple information revolutions? For the curious and the critical, the past is a mirror to possible futures. Join this session for a journey over the history of humanity that is equal parts delight, despair, and hope. We'll examine the patterns behind important historical events. We'll reflect on how past civilisations flourished or failed by their choices. We'll look deep into the mirror of history to see reflected futures of innovation, infowar, freedom, and - not least of all - truth.
... and here's the background:
In 2008, I designed and presented a keynote for the Mozilla Foundation that was called, "The Age of Literate Machines". It was written to motivate policy makers, business leaders, and apolitical open source contributors to take a progressive stand on adoption of open source and on legislation of the net and of digital technologies. For a few years, I presented it about once a month before putting it to rest.
A lot has changed in 10 years that have passed. In the FLOSS world, we've firmly entered the cloud era and are in the midst of another licensing and business model shakeup. At a larger scope, we've entered a post-truth era with algorithmically-driven id gratification. I've also gained experience and become a much more careful researcher.
I'd like to tackle the topic again, taking the same infotainment-driven approach to raise awareness and build understanding of key issues that FLOSS contributors can help address.
This is a research-intensive project. I'll be seeking a grant from Mozilla and others to update the work. I'll also seek out experts on critical topics to help ensure that my analyses are nuanced and reasonably correct.
I would present this for the first time at EclipseCon and might frame it as the alpha release.
