1. Who are you?
Cory Doctorow.

2. What do you do?
I am currently working on a project with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to end all DRM, everywhere in the world, within 10 years. It’s called Apollo 1201.

I write science fiction novels for adults and kids, as well as graphic novels and nonfiction books. Some recent ones: HOMELAND (a sequel to LITTLE BROTHER); INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE (with introductions by Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer); RAPTURE OF THE NERDS (with Charlie Stross) and IN REAL LIFE (with Jen Wang).

I co-own and co-edit Boing Boing.

I am involved with many tech/activist groups, including the Open Rights Group, which I helped found.

3. How did you end up here?
I was a computer kid, started a software company during the first dotcom bubble, moved to San Francisco (writing, blogging and publishing all the while) and ended up at EFF (which made sense, because I was raised by activist parents).

4. What current issue(s) is/are most important to you right now?
Global wealth disparity.

The remaking of information infrastructure as a tool of control, rather than liberation.

Surveillance, privacy and crypto usability.

5. Tell us more about your talk at Webstock – why should folks come listen?
I’m going to explain the secret history of how your world got stuffed full of computers that are designed to treat you as an adversary, what this has done to the state of freedom, justice and equity in the world, and how we’re going to change it.

6. Who are your greatest influences?
Seratonin, dopamine… (I kid).

Bruce Sterling, Shari Steele, Cindy Cohn, William Gibson, Abbie Hoffman, Rosa Luxembourg, Ian McDonald, John Gilmore, Woody Guthrie, Joe Hill, Thomas Piketty.

7. Tell us three things you love (eg movies, albums, songs, poems, artifacts) and why.
Aeropress: makes better coffee than pretty much anything, with less fuss, and fits in a suitcase.

Volante Designs: they make coats for superheros.

Ubuntu: an OS that Just Works and gets out of your way.

Cory is speaking at Webstock 2015 on Friday 20th Feb, at 4.35pm. Details here.