In Part 2 of our three-part series on the new economy, Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcome New York Times bestselling author and Forbes.com
Web Celeb Cory Doctorow to FastForward Radio to discuss his novel
Makers.
Set in a highly plausible near future, Makers is the story of the next great economic boom and bust cycle -- empowered by 3D printers, useful refuse, and the unstoppable hacker urge to get out there and make something cool. Along the way we meet inventors, bloggers, Big Money Men, sexy political activists, house-proud squatters, evil Disney execs, and a goth kid with a heart of gold. New industries rise and fall. Obesity is cured. The world changes radically, and yet stays very much the same.
Is this our future? How will the ongoing (and closely related) trends of increased productivity and increased individual control of production impact our economy? Are we heading for a world in which, as we discussed
in Part 1, robots take all our jobs away? If so, how much of that damage will be offset by technology that let's us "print" the stuff we need -- including housing?
What does the future hold in store for us -- the consumer welfare state? The luxury shanty town? Or something else altogether? Tune in and find out.
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger. He is a co-editor of one of the greatest sites ever, Boing Boing. He also blogs at his own site, which has one of the greatest names ever, craphound.com. He is a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, as well as a number of other newspapers, magazines and websites. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and he is a co-founder the UK Open Rights Group. He has also recently been listed by Forbes as one of the top 25 web celebs , a list to which he is no stranger. Cory's bestselling novel Little Brother was nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula, Sunburst and Locus Awards. His current novel is called Makers and it's available in bookstores now.
Cory Doctorow also allows fans to download (and even remix) all his novels for free. Download Makers here. Donate a paper copy of Makers to a library by going here.
The band Esteban returns this week to play us out with "Shanty Mansion." Hear it in stereo at musicalley.com.
