How's Your Whuffie? Interview with Cory Doctorow

Richard Koman writes "My interview with EFF's Cory Doctorow just went up on O'Reilly. The interview is largely about his book, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom," but naturally veers towards discussing his view of Disney, programmers, and peer to peer. Then there's this: Doctorow: I think that Disney's art and technology kicks ass. But one thing you discover in the technology world, especially in free software, is that being a good programmer and being a good person are not necessarily correlated, or at least being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated."

Comments

Theory vs. Reality

[Sgs-Cruz]

What will be interesting will be to see if he actually does make money off his book. All the fabulous word-of-mouth in the world is no good to him if nobody actually buys it.

He does mention in the article, though, that it's first-time authors that lack reputation: maybe this is an indication that he's doing this for his first book to build reputation and then he will be getting a 'traditional' book contract for future books? Either way I support him. More work in the commons is always a good thing.

Re:Theory vs. Reality

[gpinzone]

I happen to have read his book online. The plot is as one-dimensional as they come. However, the cool aspects of the book are use of technology, the society that grew from it, and the excruciating detail about the Magic Kingdom, particularly, the Haunted Mansion.

That said, it's not exactly best-seller material. It's going to be a difficult task to evaluate exactly how much more or less in sales the book will make by offering it online for free. If anyting, it's made the author much more recognizable in the sci-fi community.

Myth

[Computer!]

being a good programmer and being a person with whom other people want to spend a lot of time, who has good hygiene and good social skills, are not correlated

Are people really still saying this about programmers? It's not 1989 any more. We may not be movie stars, but all the coders I know have sex at least semi-regularly, with people they don't have to pay. That indicates some level of grooming and social skills.

Re:No, no, no!

[sir99]

I take offense to that... I have poor hygiene and poor social skills, and it hasn't made me a good programmer!

Typical converse error ;-)

If you figure out what a converse error is, maybe you'll become a better programmer in the process. Then you can work on the social skills and...ah, screw it; programming's good enough!

The book itself...

[stang]

From the article:

What to make of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom , the first novel by Cory Doctorow, dot-com survivor, inveterate blogger, and now, outreach coordinator of the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Part organizational-intrigue novel, part post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and part Swiftian satire of the tech mentality, revolutionary impulses, and Disney itself, the book has acquired quite a bit of notice, at least in part for its bold use of the Net.

Having just finished the book, I can tell you what to make of it: A poor ripoff of John Varley's The Phantom of Kansas with karma added. Oh, and whereas Varley managed to pack his ideas into a well-paced short story, this one dragged out for 208 pages as it subjected us to Disney technical minutiae on the way to a disappointing resolution.

At least I found out how the ghost hall works in the Haunted Mansion.

Re:UGH

[reptilicus]

Well, I bought the book, despite it being available for free. But that's not the real point here. It was a book with a small print run by a first-time author. He's gotten way, way more press for putting it up for free than he would have otherwise. There was never a publicity budget for this tiny book, but tons of people know all about it now. He's got a new book, coming out from a larger publisher this fall. I assume this one won't come out for free, and will probably reap the benefits of the attentioned garnered by Down & Out.