Self-driving cars or armed autonomous military robots may make use of the same technologies. In a certain sense, we as software developers are helping to build and shape the future. What does the future look like and are we helping build the right one? Is technology a force for liberty or oppression.

Cory Doctorow is one of my favorite authors and also a public intellectual with a keen insight into the dangers we face a society. In this interview, I ask him how to avoid ending up in a techno-totalitarian society. We also talk about Turing, DRM, data mining and monopolies.

photo by Jonathan Worth, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0