Weird Futures

Abstract

If anyone’s going to rattle your cage, our next speaker will. His official biography describes him as an author, journalist, editor and critic. I think you could also say he has no time for people who take themselves too seriously, so watch out. He wrote the Hacker Crackdown, a study of electronic crime and civil liberties that led to the creation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990. He edited Mirrorshades, the definitive document of the cyberpunk movement. He writes a pop-science column for the magazine Fantasy and Science Fiction and a critic’s column for Science Fiction Eye. He’s also written seven novels, the most recent of which, Holy Fire, is absolutely great. He’s on the board of directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in Austin, Texas, and he serves on the police liaison committee of the local electronics civil liberties group—if anything electronic can be said to be local.