April 16, 2006

12:41 AM

Short notice I know but are any Sydneysiders going to the Cory Doctorow debate on Wednesday? If so, do you want to catch up for a quick one afterwards?
posted by tellurian to MetaFilter gatherings at 12:41 AM (25 comments total)

How can you have a debate with only one person?
posted by delmoi at 12:47 AM on April 16, 2006

Sounds like the perfect debate for Doctorow.
posted by zabuni at 1:51 AM on April 16, 2006

Hatas to the right please. Move along.
posted by tellurian at 4:40 AM on April 16, 2006

I heard about this and there is about a 30% chance I'll go. If so I'll email you.
posted by peacay at 4:54 AM on April 16, 2006

Excellent! peacay. Emails sent to t'others.
posted by tellurian at 6:41 AM on April 16, 2006

Cory Doctorow LOL!
posted by quonsar at 7:26 AM on April 16, 2006

Move to the right please quonsar (unless you wanna come downunder).
posted by tellurian at 7:49 AM on April 16, 2006

You fool! He's standing to the left of you! You've doomed yourself!
posted by cortex at 12:04 PM on April 16, 2006

Right! No left! No he's got me aaaaaaugh
posted by blacklite at 1:37 PM on April 16, 2006

I would, but my family are out from the U.S. and i'm currently engaged in not killing my four-year-old brother. Copious amounts of snark and alcohol would probably push me over the edge. But thanks for the offer. I've never done a MeFi meetup and I'd love to be at the next one...
posted by web-goddess at 2:24 PM on April 16, 2006

Sydney LOL!
posted by Jimbob at 2:51 PM on April 16, 2006

You gotta admit that it's funny that Cory Doctorow would hold a "debate" with just himself present. That's the best thing I've read all weekend.
posted by xmutex at 7:09 PM on April 16, 2006

The first three comments pretty much sum up the thread.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:33 PM on April 16, 2006

Very unlikely I can make it.
posted by dhruva at 7:37 PM on April 16, 2006

Sorry, don't think I can make it. Still, I wasn't even sure who Cory Doctorow was until I read through the link and did some Googling. So I would suppose I'm not his audience anyway. I guess I'm not as hip as I thought that I was. Although I would have been all over the star wars kid giving a debate...

Would love to have a Sydney meeting up in the near future, nonetheless (assuming everyone is OK with my apparent un-hipness).
posted by qwip at 8:12 PM on April 16, 2006

He's not debating himself. He's debating THE DIGITAL FUTURE.
posted by RustyBrooks at 10:11 PM on April 16, 2006

Hey Tellurian, debating if we can take Doctorow for that long, but I'll send you an email. If not, I say its about time we had a meet-up soon.
posted by arha at 2:51 PM on April 17, 2006

unless you wanna come downunder

IYKWIMAITYD.
posted by kindall at 3:26 PM on April 17, 2006

I'll skip the debate, but been on the lookout for a Sydney meetup.
posted by Chimp at 3:43 PM on April 17, 2006

Well, I went and it was well worth it. Every seat was taken. This man can talk. He makes sense. He's convincing. Although not a debate as such, when the compere - a filmmaker (who didn't seem to have any idea of who Doctorow was [Introduction: "and I've taken this information from his website, he's a science fiction writer who allows you to download his books for free from his website!, I'm sure we'll all be interested in how this works"]), threw him curlys about financing, Doctorow was very comfortable with his replies.
The worst thing was, MeFites of Sydney - the free tickets gave us entry to the VIP bar, and we weren't all there to trash it:-)
posted by tellurian at 6:45 AM on April 19, 2006

well i was worried he was full of (self-important) shit, but knowing that doctorow won a debate against an uninformed compere and convinced someone as sceptical as a metfilter reader, i must say i am now thoroughly converted. thank-you.
posted by andrew cooke at 6:11 AM on April 22, 2006

andrew cooke move to the right please. Doctorow made an impassioned and totally credible argument for the reasons why data in whatever form it be; music, film, literature, etc should be freely available to everyone, to everyones advantage was wholly credible, reasoned and without promotion and (self-important) shit.
posted by tellurian at 7:29 AM on April 22, 2006

and how many times do i have to say that repeating yourself is not an argument in itself?
posted by andrew cooke at 7:39 AM on April 22, 2006

Only once. Your point is? I'm saying [from my point of view] that this man makes an argument that is hard to disagree with, and he does it well. Despite any problems you may have (I'm assuming you do, otherwise, why the vitriol?) with Boing Boing or his science fiction writing, he is spot on with his DRM and 'free flow of information' campaigns.
posted by tellurian at 8:24 AM on April 22, 2006

> and how many times do i have to say that repeating yourself is not an argument in itself?

Only once.

Ha! Well played, you two.
posted by cortex at 8:27 AM on April 22, 2006