Wincing at Light

The Large Hadron Collider should be going on-line for the first time at the CERN lab on the Franco-Swiss border any…second…now, bringing with it either a fresh hope for all humanity, or the possibility of sub-atomic black holes devouring our reality, our space-time continuum and our pastrami sandwiches.

Or both.  I can’t decide.

Anyway, in the little time you (may) have left, you owe it to yourself to check out Cory Doctorow’s new Creative Commons release, Content.  From Cory’s blargh:

Hailed by Bruce Sterling as “a political activist, gizmo freak, junk collector, programmer, entrepreneur, and all-around Renaissance geek,” the Internet’s favorite high-tech culture maven is celebrated with the first collection of his infamous articles, essays, and polemics. Irreverently championing free speech and universal access to information—even if it’s just a free download of the newest Britney Spears MP3—he leads off with a mutinous talk given at Microsoft on digital rights management, insisting that they stop treating their customers as criminals. Readers will discover how America chose Happy Meal toys over copyright, why Facebook is taking a faceplant, how the Internet is basically just a giant Xerox machine, why Wikipedia is a poor cousin of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, and how to enjoy free e-books. Practicing what he preaches, all of the author’s books, including this one, are simultaneously released in print and on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their reuse and sharing. He argues persuasively that this practice has considerably increased his sales by enlisting readers to promote his work. Accessible to geeks and nontechies alike, this is a timely collection from an author who effortlessly surfs the zeitgeist while always generating his own wave.

Direct link to download page here.

Editorial Aside:  Though the above is the “official”/back-cover copy on Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future, I actually prefer Cory’s riff on what this collection is about:

In it are 28 essays about everything from copyright and DRM to the layout of phone-keypads, the fallacy of the semantic web, the nature of futurism, the necessity of privacy in a digital world, the reason to love Wikipedia, the miracle of fanfic, and many other subjects. The book sports a very fine Introduction by John Perry Barlow, and was designed by typography legend John D Berry.

I’m especially chuffed about John’s superb design, because I’m giving the whole electronic text away in the hopes of selling more printed objects, and the fact that this is one of the best-looking books I’ve ever read really makes the case for owning the p-book as well as the e-book (there’s an essay on this subject in the book, too, natch).

This book may very well change your life, or at least what’s left of it.  So get it now before time runs out.  Cory is chuffed.  You should be, too.  I am, and I haven’t even read it yet.

Chuffed, I say.

(And if you like Cory’s work as much as I do, really do please give at least a little thought to donating toward the cause or buying a print copy.  Authors have to eat, too.  And if you’re going to buy this one, you might as well buy Little Brother, too, though Cory will let you download that one for free, also.  Good stuff.)

That’s it.  I’ve gotta run.  Chuff to do before the world ends.

D.