A graduate of Williams College and the University of Chicago, Evan Miller earned his 15 minutes of Hacker News fame with Chicago Boss, the disgruntled Erlang web framework. He currently earns his keep with Wizard Pro, a data visualization and predictive modeling tool for Mac, and maintains his open-source karma with Hecate: The Hex Editor From Hell.
Is open source software good for democracy? Stallman's free software movement began with explicitly democratic goals -- the protection of user freedom -- but now we're facing the depressing reality that open-source software can just as easily be used to spy on entire societies and deny individuals their rights. In this desultory talk I'll explore the role of democratic values in open-source software development, from individual motivations to collective decision-making processes, as well as the role that software developers as a profession are currently playing in the construction of a worldwide Red-Pill dystopian drone-strike hellscape.
Location: Illinois A
Time: Saturday 11:00AM — Saturday 11:50AM
