OEB 2015 - Opening Plenary - Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow - Writer, Blogger, Activist - USA

The Opening Plenary session of OEB 2015 looked at the challenges of modernity and identify how people, organisations, institutions and societies can make technology and knowledge work together to accelerate the shift to a new age of opportunity.

More info: http://bit.ly/1lugQWX

(Cory Doctorow) Thank you very much

So I'd like to start with something of a
benediction or permission.

I am one of nature's fast talkers

and many of you are not
native English speakers, or

maybe not accustomed
to my harsh Canadian accent

in addition I've just come in
from Australia

and so like many of you I am horribly
jetlagged and have drunkenough coffee

this morning to kill a rhino.

When I used to be at the United Nations

I was known as the scourge of the
simultaneous translation core

I would stand up and speak
as slowly as I could

and turn around, and there they
would be in their boots doing this

(laughter)
When I start to speak too fast,

this is the universal symbol --
my wife invented it --

for "Cory, you are talking too fast".
Please, don't be shy.

So, I'm a parent , like many of you
and I'm like I'm sure all of you

who are parents, parenting takes my ass
all the time.

And there are many regrets I have
about the mere seven and half years

that I've been a parent
but none ares so keenly felt

as my regrets over what's happened
when I've been wandering

around the house and seen my
daughter working on something

that was beyond her abilities, that was
right at the edge of what she could do

and where she was doing something
that she didn't have competence in yet

and you know it's that amazing thing
to see that frowning concentration,

tongue stuck out: as a parent, your
heart swells with pride

and you can't help but go over

and sort of peer over their shoulder
what they are doing

and those of you who are parents know
what happens when you look too closely

at someone who is working
beyond the age of their competence.

They go back to doing something
they're already good at.

You interrupt a moment
of genuine learning

and you replace it with
a kind of embarrassment

about what you're good at
and what you're not.

So, it matters a lot that our schools are
increasingly surveilled environments,

environments in which everything that
our kids do is watched and recorded.

Because when you do that, you interfere
with those moments of real learning.

Our ability to do things that we are not
good at yet, that we are not proud of yet,

is negatively impacted
by that kind of scrutiny.

And that scrutiny comes
from a strange place.

We have decided that there are
some programmatic means

by which we can find all the web page
children shouldn't look at

and we will filter our networks
to be sure that they don't see them.

Anyone who has ever paid attention
knows that this doesn't work.

There are more web pages
that kids shouldn't look at

than can ever be cataloged,
and any attempt to catalog them

will always catch pages that kids
must be looking at.

Any of you who have ever taught
a unit on reproductive health

know the frustration of trying
to get round a school network.

Now, this is done in the name of
digital protection

but it flies in the face of digital
literacy and of real learning.

Because the only way to stop kids
from looking at web pages

they shouldn't be looking at

is to take all of the clicks that they
make, all of the messages that they send,

all of their online activity
and offshore it to a firm

that has some nonsensically arrived at
list of the bad pages.

And so, what we are doing is that we're
exfiltrating all of our students' data

to unknown third parties.

Now, most of these firms,
their primary business is

in serving the education sector.

Most of them service
the government sector.

The primarily service governments in
repressive autocratic regimes.

They help them make sure that
their citizens aren't looking at

Amnesty International web pages.

They repackage those tools
and sell them to our educators.

So we are offshoring our children's clicks
to war criminals.

And what our kids do, we know,
is they just get around it,

because it's not hard to get around it.

You know, never underestimate the power
of a kid who is time-rich and cash-poor

to get around our
technological blockades.

But when they do this, they don't acquire
the kind of digital literacy

that we want them to do, they don't
acquire real digital agency

and moreover, they risk exclusion
and in extreme cases,

they risk criminal prosecution.

So what if instead, those of us who are
trapped in this system of teaching kids

where we're required to subject them
to this kind of surveillance

that flies in the face
of their real learning,

what if instead, we invented
curricular units

that made them real first class
digital citizens,

in charge of trying to influence
real digital problems?

Like what if we said to them:
"We want you to catalog the web pages

that this vendor lets through
that you shouldn't be seeing.

We want you to catalog those pages that
you should be seeing, that are blocked.

We want you to go and interview
every teacher in the school

about all those lesson plans that were
carefully laid out before lunch

with a video and a web page,
and over lunch,

the unaccountable distance center
blocked these critical resources

and left them handing out photographed
worksheets in the afternoon

instead of the unit they prepared.

We want you to learn how to do the Freedom
of Information Act's requests

and find out what your
school authority is spending

to censor your internet access
and surveil your activity.

We want you to learn to use the internet
to research these companies and

we want you to present this
to your parent-teacher association,

to your school authority,
to your local newspaper."

Because that's the kind
of digital literacy

that makes kids into first-class
digital citizens,

that prepares them for a future
in which they can participate fully

in a world that's changing. (5:18)