John Walker's Electronic House

Rum Doings Episode 76 Special: Cory Doctorow & Alice Taylor

by on Jul.01, 2011, under Rum Doings, The Rest

In a very special edition of Rum Doings, Nick and John sit down with Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow, and MakieLab founder and former head of Channel 4 Games, Alice Taylor. Just like John and Nick, they too are a married couple, one half obsessed with copyright issues, the other with games. It only made sense.

For some reason we chose to make Nick sit in an echo chamber – sometimes he needs to be kept aside for our safety. We begin discussing Disney, considering dark rides as an art form, the nature of their theme parks’ sponsorship, and the consequences of their idealism. Which is the most evil games publisher of the day, did Blackbird destroy the internet, and are Adobe in trouble?

What happens when printers print something better than themselves? And then as inevitably as day turns into zombie apocalypse, we turn to intellectual property law. What copyright issues will 3D printing lead to? What code is running on our computers against our will? And will our predictions of the future always be “insufficiently weird”.

Amazingly we get onto the economy of Star Trek, via the consequences of teleporters. There is much discussion of the consequences of new technology on, well, everything. And then comes piracy, geocoding, and the surprise appearance of LittleBigPlanet developer, Luke Petre. Finally, we move on to talking about MakieLab’s project to develop 3D toys linked to online gaming.

Big thanks to Cory and Alice (and Luke!) for joining us!

Please consider writing a review on iTunes. It’s a really good way of raising our profile. And keep on tweeting and so forth.

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[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e76.mp3]
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6 Comments for this entry

  • Chris

    I’m actually quite optimistic about ‘transcendece through technology’ (or whatever you want to call it). Not because I think it’s particularly likely to happen, but that I think if I could replace all my squishy organic bits with synthetic parts, I think it would still be ‘me’. Why wouldn’t it be? Why is the reductionist approach wrong?

    Good podcast, by the way ;)

  • mister k

    Excellent podcast, some impressive guests indeed! Like Chris I’m not sure reductionism is obviously wrong. The “you” turing test doesn’t convince me- if I train for a month to become stronger, I’m not sure thats different to having robot arms, yet one makes me not me anymore?

    My big problem with the singularity is it always DOES assume we can get free energy. That if we get a big enough brain, we’ll be able to find new laws of physics which allow us to travel faster than the speed of light, and break every rule we currently believe about the universe. Its possible that that might be true, but theres no reason to think it will happen, other than optimism.

  • Xercies

    @Chris

    Because one of those squishy parts could be your brain that your replacing and once you replace that which is considered by scientist the place where the “you” you think you are resides, you have no clue whether you will actually be you or someone else.

  • Fiyenyaa

    @ Xercies

    The problem with that line of thought is that there is nothing to suggest that “you” is anything more than the sum of your parts (be they tangible or otherwise).
    Whilst it’s entirely possible that there is some kind of property that is not detectable and yet is somehow going to change the very essence of yourself should it be changed, since there is no evidence for such a thing there is no real reason to be worried about it.

    Somebody best invent a soul-o-meter or something.

  • Lord Fader

    Awesome show. Had to slow-down my brain to keep-up. It was like listening to the future. In which I am now catching-up on a few podcasts and writing back about the past as the present. Just heard Pod77 and felt guilty for never having posted anything- one of the silent thousands. Probably because I shout out all my comments to my myself when I listen in the park and then have nothing useful to type later. Like now. But I want John and Nick to know I care. We care. So many of us. So it was time to stand-up and stop the sloppy slide into Big Society apathy. And start saving-up for a 3-D printer. Thanks again (for the first time) for the RD podcast, I’ll try to say something relevant and useful next time. But perhaps this is the inevitable result of calling out to our devoted hearts for some response; any response. The garbled ramble of a talk-enabled dog eager to please its master now that the wagging tail is no longer enough.

    This is on behalf of all the non-mailing listeners wagging in silence.
    x

  • Baboon

    My big problem with the singularity is it always DOES assume we can get free energy. That if we get a big enough brain, we’ll be able to find new laws of physics which allow us to travel faster than the speed of light, and break every rule we currently believe about the universe. Its possible that that might be true, but theres no reason to think it will happen, other than optimism.

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