A difference engine: computing the solution to a polynomial function

Computer laboratory, Moody Hall, James Madison University, 2003

Wikimedia servers

Computing is the activity of using computer hardware and software.

Definitions[link]

Computing Curricula 2005^[1] defined "computing" as:

"In a general way, we can define computing to mean any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Thus, computing includes designing and building hardware and software systems for a wide range of purposes; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific studies using computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; creating and using communications and entertainment media; finding and gathering information relevant to any particular purpose, and so on. The list is virtually endless, and the possibilities are vast."

The term "computing" has sometimes been narrowly defined, as in a 1989 ACM report on Computing as a Discipline^[2]:

The discipline of computing is the systematic study of algorithmic processes that describe and transform information: their theory, analysis, design, efficiency, implementation, and application. The fundamental question underlying all computing is "What can be (efficiently) automated?"

Computing Curricula 2005^[1] also recognizes that the meaning of "computing" depends on the context:

Computing also has other meanings that are more specific, based on the context in which the term is used. For example, an information systems specialist will view computing somewhat differently from a software engineer. Regardless of the context, doing computing well can be complicated and difficult. Because society needs people to do computing well, we must think of computing not only as a profession but also as a discipline.

The term "computing" is also synonymous with counting and calculating. In earlier times, it was used in reference to mechanical computing machines.

A computer is a machine that reads, stores, manipulates and displays data. The most common example are the various personal computers. Other common examples include: mobile phones, mp3 players, or video game consoles.

Computer[link]

A computer is a machine that manipulates data according to a set of instructions called a computer program. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute the instructions. The same program in its human-readable source code form, enables a programmer to study and develop the algorithm. Because the instructions can be carried out in different types of computers, a single set of source instructions converts to machine instructions according to the central processing unit type.

The execution process carries out the instructions in a computer program. Instructions express the computations performed by the computer. They trigger sequences of simple actions on the executing machine. Those actions produce effects according to the semantics of the instructions.

Computer software[link]

Computer software or just "software", is a collection of computer programs and related data that provides the instructions for telling a computer what to do and how to do it. Software refers to one or more computer programs and data held in the storage of the computer for some purposes. In other words, software is a set of programs, procedures, algorithms and its documentation concerned with the operation of a data processing system. Program software performs the function of the program it implements, either by directly providing instructions to the computer hardware or by serving as input to another piece of software. The term was coined to contrast to the old term hardware (meaning physical devices). In contrast to hardware, software "cannot be touched".^[3] Software is also sometimes used in a more narrow sense, meaning application software only. Sometimes the term includes data that has not traditionally been associated with computers, such as film, tapes, and records.^[4]

Application software[link]

Application software, also known as an "application" or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with documents. Apps may be bundled with the computer and its system software, or may be published separately. Some users are satisfied with the bundled apps and need never install one.

Application software is contrasted with system software and middleware, which manage and integrate a computer's capabilities, but typically do not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user. The system software serves the application, which in turn serves the user.

Similar relationships apply in other fields. For example, a shopping mall does not provide the merchandise a shopper is seeking, but provides space and services for retailers that serve the shopper. A bridge may similarly support rail tracks which support trains, allowing the trains to transport passengers.

Application software applies the power of a particular computing platform or system software to a particular purpose. Some apps such as Microsoft Office are available in versions for several different platforms; others have narrower requirements and are thus called, for example, a Geography application for Windows or an Android application for education or Linux gaming. Sometimes a new and popular application arises which only runs on one platform, increasing the desirability of that platform. This is called a killer application.

Computer user[link]

A user is an agent, either a human agent (end-user) or software agent, who uses a computer or network service. A user often has a user account and is identified by a username (also user name), screen name (also screenname), nickname (also nick), or handle, which is derived from the identical Citizen's Band radio term.

Users are also widely characterized as the class of people that use a system without complete technical expertise required to understand the system fully.[1] In hacker-related contexts, such users are also divided into lusers and power users.

In projects in which the actor of the system is another system or a software agent, it is quite possible that there is no end-user for the system. In this case, the end-users for the system would be indirect end-users.

Enthusiast computing[link]

Enthusiast computing refers to a sub-culture of personal computer users who focus on extremely high-performance computers. Manufacturers of performance-oriented parts typically include an enthusiast model in their offerings. Enthusiast computers (often referred to as a "box", "build", or "rig" by their owners) commonly feature extravagant cases and high-end components, and are sometimes liquid cooled.

Although high-end computers may be bought retail in the same manner as the common computer, they are frequently built by their owners. Enthusiasts build their systems in order to produce a computer that will out-perform an opponent's computer, thereby "winning" in a contest; to simply enjoy the best images and effects a new PC game has to offer; or even simply to obtain the best possible performance at a variety of tasks.

Computer programming[link]

Computer programming in general is the process of writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code and documentation of computer programs. This source code is written in a programming language, which is an artificial language often more restrictive or demanding than natural languages, but easily translated by the computer. The purpose of programming is to invoke the desired behaviour (customization) from the machine. The process of writing high quality source code requires knowledge of both the application's domain and the computer science domain. The highest-quality software is thus developed by a team of various domain experts, each person a specialist in some area of development. But the term programmer may apply to a range of program quality, from hacker to open source contributor to professional. And a single programmer could do most or all of the computer programming needed to generate the proof of concept to launch a new "killer" application.

Computer programmer[link]

A programmer, computer programmer, or coder is a person who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to programming may also be known as a programmer analyst. A programmer's primary computer language (C, C++, Java, Lisp, Python etc.) is often prefixed to the above titles, and those who work in a web environment often prefix their titles with web. The term programmer can be used to refer to a software developer, software engineer, computer scientist, or software analyst. However, members of these professions typically^{[citation needed]} possess other software engineering skills, beyond programming; for this reason, the term programmer is sometimes considered an insulting or derogatory oversimplification of these other professions^{[citation needed]}. This has sparked much debate amongst developers, analysts, computer scientists, programmers, and outsiders who continue to be puzzled at the subtle differences in the definitions of these occupations.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

Computer science[link]

Computer science or computing science (abbreviated CS or compsci) is the scientific and mathematical approach in information technology and computing.^[10][11] A computer scientist is a person who does work at a professional level in computer science and/or has attained a degree in computer science or a related field.

Its subfields can be divided into practical techniques for its implementation and application in computer systems and purely theoretical areas. Some, such as computational complexity theory, which studies fundamental properties of computational problems, are highly abstract, while others, such as computer graphics, emphasize real-world applications. Still others focus on the challenges in implementing computations. For example, programming language theory studies approaches to description of computations, while the study of computer programming itself investigates various aspects of the use of programming languages and complex systems, and human-computer interaction focuses on the challenges in making computers and computations useful, usable, and universally accessible to humans.

History of computing[link]

The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and modern computing technology and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper or for chalk and slate, with or without the aid of tables.

Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers. But long before abstractions like the number arose, there were mathematical concepts to serve the purposes of civilization. These concepts include one-to-one correspondence (the basis of counting), comparison to a standard (used for measurement), and the 3-4-5 right triangle (a device for assuring a right angle).

Eventually, the concept of numbers became concrete and familiar enough for counting to arise, at times with sing-song mnemonics to teach sequences to others. All the known languages have words for at least "one" and "two" (although this is disputed: see Piraha language), and even some animals like the blackbird can distinguish a surprising number of items.^[12]

The earliest known tool for use in computation was the abacus, and it was thought to have been invented in Babylon circa 2400 BC. Its original style of usage was by lines drawn in sand with pebbles. Abaci, of a more modern design, are still used as calculation tools today. This was the first known computer and most advanced system of calculation known to date - preceding Greek methods by 2,000 years.

Computer network[link]

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information.^[13] Where at least one process in one device is able to send/receive data to/from at least one process residing in a remote device, then the two devices are said to be in a network.

Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics such as the medium used to transport the data, communications protocol used, scale, topology, and organizational scope.

Communications protocols define the rules and data formats for exchanging information in a computer network, and provide the basis for network programming. Well-known communications protocols are Ethernet, a hardware and Link Layer standard that is ubiquitous in local area networks, and the Internet Protocol Suite, which defines a set of protocols for internetworking, i.e. for data communication between multiple networks, as well as host-to-host data transfer, and application-specific data transmission formats.

Computer networking is sometimes considered a sub-discipline of electrical engineering, telecommunications, computer science, information technology or computer engineering, since it relies upon the theoretical and practical application of these disciplines.

Internet[link]

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.

Computer industry[link]

The computer industry is made up of all of the businesses involved in developing computer software, designing computer hardware and computer networking infrastructures, the manufacture of computer components and the provision of information technology services.

Software industry[link]

The software industry includes businesses for development, maintenance and publication of software that are using any business model. The industry also includes software services, such as training, documentation, and consulting.

See also[link]

	Information technology portal
	Computer Science portal
	Computing portal

Wikiversity has learning materials about computing

• Index of history of computing articles
• List of computer term etymologies

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikibooks has more on the topic of Computing

Look up computing in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• http://foldoc.org/contents.html Free on-line dictionary of computing
• http://pubs.doc.ic.ac.uk/ open-access repository of publications - Department of Computing - Imperial College London

This article contains Japanese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji and kana.

Michio Kaku (加来 道雄, Kaku Michio^?, born January 24, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist, the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics in the City College of New York of City University of New York, a co-founder of string field theory,^[1] a futurist, and a "communicator" and "popularizer" of science. He has written several books about physics and related topics; he has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film; and he writes extensive online blogs and articles. He has written two New York Times best sellers, Physics of the Impossible (2008) and Physics of the Future (2011). He has hosted several TV specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Science Channel.

Early life and education[link]

Kaku was born in San Jose, California to Japanese immigrant parents. His grandfather came to the United States to take part in the clean-up operation after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake^{[citation needed]}. His father was born in California but was educated in Japan and spoke little English. Both his parents were put in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center, where they met and where his two brothers were born.

At Cubberley High School in Palo Alto, Kaku assembled an atom smasher in his parents' garage for a science fair project.^[2] At the National Science Fair in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he attracted the attention of physicist Edward Teller, who took Kaku as a protégé, awarding him the Hertz Engineering Scholarship. Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1968 and was first in his physics class. He attended the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and received a Ph.D. in 1972, and in 1972 he held a lectureship at Princeton University.

During the Vietnam War, Kaku completed his U.S. Army basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia and his advanced individual training at Fort Lewis, Washington.^[3] However, the Vietnam War ended before he was deployed as an infantryman.

Academic career[link]

Kaku became a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton,^[4] and New York University.^[5] He currently holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York.^[6]

Kaku has had over 70 articles published in physics journals such as Physical Review, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics.^[7] In 1974, along with Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University, he authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form.^[8][9]

Kaku is the author of several textbooks on string theory and quantum field theory.

Popular science[link]

Kaku is most widely known as a popularizer of science.^[10] He has written books and appeared on many television programs as well as film. He also hosts a weekly radio program.

Books[link]

Kaku is the author of various popular science books.

• Hyperspace (1994)
• Beyond Einstein (with Jennifer Thompson) (1995)
• Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century^[11] (1998)
• Einstein's Cosmos (2004)
• Parallel Worlds (2004)
• Physics of the Impossible (2008)
• Physics of the Future (2011)

Hyperspace was a best-seller and was voted one of the best science books of the year by both The New York Times^[10] and The Washington Post. Parallel Worlds was a finalist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction in the UK.^[12]

Radio[link]

Kaku is the host of the weekly, one-hour radio program Explorations, produced by the Pacifica Foundation's WBAI in New York. "Explorations" is syndicated to community and independent radio stations and makes previous broadcasts available on the program's website. Kaku defines the show as dealing with the general topics of science, war, peace, and the environment.

In April 2006, Kaku began broadcasting Science Fantastic on 90 commercial radio stations, the only nationally syndicated science program on commercial radio in the United States. It is syndicated by Talk Radio Network and now reaches 130 radio stations and America's Talk on XM. The program is formatted as a live listener call-in show, focusing on "futurology," which he defines as the future of science.^{[citation needed]} Featured guests include Nobel laureates and top researchers on the topics of string theory, time travel, black holes, gene therapy, aging, space travel, artificial intelligence, and SETI. When Kaku is busy filming for television, Science Fantastic goes on hiatus, sometimes for several months. Kaku is also a frequent guest on many programs, where he is outspoken in all areas and issues he considers of importance, such as the program Coast to Coast AM, where on 30 November 2007, he reaffirmed his belief that there is a 100% probability of extraterrestrial life in the universe.^[13]

Kaku has appeared on The Opie and Anthony Show a number of times, discussing popular fiction such as Back to The Future, Lost, and the theories behind time-travel that these and other fictional entertainment focus on.

Television and film[link]

Kaku has appeared in many forms of media and on many programs and networks, including Good Morning America, The Screen Savers, Larry King Live, 60 Minutes, Nightline, 20/20, Naked Science, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, Al Jazeera English, Fox News Channel, The History Channel, Conan, The Science Channel, The Discovery Channel, TLC, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Colbert Report, The Art Bell Show and its successor, Coast To Coast AM, BBC World News America, The Opie & Anthony Show, The Covino & Rich Show, Head Rush, The Late Show with David Letterman, and Real Time with Bill Maher.

In 1999, Kaku was one of the scientists profiled in the feature-length film Me and Isaac Newton, directed by Michael Apted. It played theatrically in the United States, was later broadcast on national TV, and won several film awards.^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Kaku appeared in the short documentary Obsessed & Scientific. The film is about the possibility of time travel and the people who dream about it. It screened at the Montreal World Film Festival and a feature film expansion is in development talks. Kaku also appeared in the ABC documentary UFOs: Seeing Is Believing, in which he suggested that while he believes it is extremely unlikely that extraterrestrials have ever actually visited Earth, we must keep our minds open to the possible existence of civilizations a million years ahead of us in technology, where entirely new avenues of physics open up. He also discussed the future of interstellar exploration and alien life in the Discovery Channel special Alien Planet as one of the multiple speakers who co-hosted the show, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity on The History Channel.

In February 2006, Kaku appeared as presenter in the BBC-TV four-part documentary Time which seeks to explore the mysterious nature of time. Part one of the series concerns personal time, and how we perceive and measure the passing of time. The second in the series deals with cheating time, exploring possibilities of extending the lifespan of organisms. The geological time covered in part three explores the ages of the earth and the sun. Part four covers the topics of cosmological time, the beginning of time and the events that occurred at the instant of the big bang.

On January 28, 2007, Kaku hosted the Discovery Channel series 2057. This three-hour program discussed how medicine, the city, and energy could change over the next 50 years.

In 2008, Kaku hosted the three-hour BBC-TV documentary Visions of the Future, on the future of computers, medicine, and quantum physics, and he appeared in several episodes of the History Channel's Universe series.

On December 1, 2009, he began hosting a 12-episode weekly TV series for the Science Channel at 10 pm, called Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, based on his best-selling book. Each 30-minute episode discusses the scientific basis behind imaginative schemes, such as time travel, parallel universes, warp drive, star ships, light sabers, force fields, teleportation, invisibility, death stars, and even superpowers and flying saucers. Each episode includes interviews with the world's top scientists working on prototypes of these technologies, interviews with science fiction fans, clips from science fiction movies, and special effects and computer graphics. Although these inventions are impossible today, the series discusses when these technologies might become feasible in the future.^[14]

In 2010, he began to appear in a series on the website Gametrailers.com called Science of Games, discussing the scientific aspects of various popular video games such as Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.

Kaku is popular in mainstream media because of his knowledge and his accessible approach to presenting complex subjects in science. While his technical writings are confined to theoretical physics, his public speaking and media appearances cover a broad range of topics, from the Kardashev scale to more esoteric subjects such as wormholes and time travel. In January 2007, Kaku visited Oman. While there, he talked at length to select members of that country's decision makers. In an interview with local media, Dr Kaku elaborated on his vision of mankind's future. Kaku considers climate change and terrorism as serious threats in man's evolution from a Type 0 civilization to Type 1.^[15]

He is pictured in Symphony of Science's newest song (as of September 6, 2011), 'The Quantum World.'

On October 11, 2010, Michio Kaku appeared in the BBC program "What Happened Before the Big Bang" (along with Laura Mersini-Houghton, Andrei Linde, Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Neil Turok, and other notable cosmologists and physicists), where he propounded his theory of the universe created out of nothing.^[16]

Social policy advocacy[link]

Kaku has publicly stated his concerns over matters including the anthropogenic cause of global warming, nuclear armament, nuclear power and the general misuse of science.^[17] He was critical of the Cassini–Huygens space probe because of the 72 pounds (33 kg) of plutonium contained in the craft for use by its radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Conscious of the possibility of casualties if the probe's fuel were dispersed into the environment during a malfunction and crash as the probe was making a 'sling-shot' maneuver around earth, Kaku publicly criticized NASA's risk assessment.^[18] He has also spoken on the dangers of space junk and called for more and better monitoring. Kaku is generally a vigorous supporter of the exploration of outer space, believing that the ultimate destiny of the human race may lie in extrasolar planets; but he is critical of some of the cost-ineffective missions and methods of NASA.

Kaku credits his anti-nuclear war position to programs he heard on the Pacifica Radio network, during his student years in California. It was during this period that he made the decision to turn away from a career developing the next generation of nuclear weapons in association with Edward Teller and focused on research, teaching, writing and media.^{[citation needed]} Kaku joined with others such as Helen Caldicott, Jonathan Schell, Peace Action and was instrumental in building a global anti-nuclear weapons movement that arose in the 1980s, during the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Kaku was a board member of Peace Action and on the board of radio station WBAI-FM in New York City where he originated his long running program, Explorations, that focused on the issues of science, war, peace and the environment.

His remark from an interview in support of SETI, "We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even know.", is used in the third Symphony of Science installment "Our Place in the Cosmos".

Personal life[link]

Kaku is married to Shizue Kaku and has two daughters.^[19]

Bibliography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Michio Kaku

Listen to this article (info/dl)

This audio file was created from a revision of the "Michio Kaku" article dated 2007-07-08, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

• Official website
• Michio Kaku on Twitter
• Getting Physical: Dr. Michio Kaku Explains Einstein's Genius
• Russia Takes Aim at Asteroids, op-ed on asteroid defense, Wall St. Journal, Jan. 5, 2010
• The Skeptics' Guide To The Universe interview
• Michio Kaku at the Internet Movie Database
• Michio Kaku on National Public Radio
• About Michio Kaku
• Video: Michio Kaku discusses Physics of the Future on March 23, 2011, on Forum Network.
• In Depth interview with Kaku, October 3, 2010

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow signing a book during June 2010.
Born	(1971-07-17) July 17, 1971 (age 40) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Author, blogger
Genres	Science fiction, postcyberpunk
Notable work(s)	Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Little Brother
Notable award(s)	John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Prometheus Award, Sunburst Award
Spouse(s)	Alice Taylor
Children	Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow
Influences William Gibson [1]
craphound.com

Cory Efram Doctorow (/ˈkɒri ˈdɒktəroʊ/; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British^[2] blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and "post-scarcity" economics.^[3]

Life and career[link]

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Trotskyist teachers,^[4] Doctorow was raised in a Jewish activist^[5] household. His father was born in a refugee camp in Azerbaijan^[6] and Doctorow became involved with nuclear disarmament activism and as a Greenpeace campaigner as a child. He received his high school diploma from SEED School, an anarchistic "free school" in Toronto, and attended four universities without attaining a degree. ^{[7] [8]}

He later served on the board of directors for the Grindstone Island Co-operative in Big Rideau Lake in Ontario.

During 1992 Doctorow went on a volunteer visit to Costa Rica with Youth Challenge International (YCI), which he found "profoundly good and profoundly enriching".^[9]

During June 1999, he co-initiated the free software P2P company Opencola with John Henson and Grad Conn. The company was sold to the Open Text Corporation of Waterloo, Ontario during the summer of 2003.^[3]

Doctorow relocated to London and worked as European Affairs Coordinator for the Electronic Frontier Foundation for four years,^[3] helping to establish the Open Rights Group, before quitting to pursue writing full-time during January 2006. Upon his departure, Doctorow was named a Fellow of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[3]

He was named the 2006-2007 Canadian Fulbright Chair for Public Diplomacy at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, sponsored jointly by the Royal Fulbright Commission,^[10] the Integrated Media Systems Center, and the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. The professorship included a one year writing and teaching residency at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.^[3][11]

He then returned to London. He is a frequent public speaker on copyright issues.

During 2009, Doctorow became the first Independent Studies Scholar in Virtual Residence at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He was formerly a student in the program during 1993-94, but quit without completing a thesis.

Doctorow married Alice Taylor on Sunday, October 26, 2008,^[12] and together they have one daughter named Poesy Emmeline Fibonacci Nautilus Taylor Doctorow, who was born during 2008.^[13] Cory became a British citizen by naturalisation on 12 August 2011.^[2]

Other work and fellowships[link]

He served as Canadian Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America during 1999.

Together with Austrian art group monochrom he initiated the Instant Blitz Copy Fight project, for which people from all over the world are asked to take flash pictures of copyright warnings in movie theaters.^[14]

At the 2003 Torcon 3 World Science Fiction Convention, Doctorow was a featured guest.^{[citation needed]}

On October 31, 2005, Doctorow was involved in a controversy concerning digital rights management with Sony-BMG, as told in Wikinomics.^[15]

Cory Doctorow at the Singularity Summit at Stanford in 2006

Doctorow is a regular contributor to the TVOntario podcast Search Engine, formerly on CBC.

Fiction[link]

Doctorow began selling fiction when he was 17 years old and sold several stories followed by publication of his story "Craphound" during 1998.^[16]

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Doctorow's first novel, was published during January 2003, and was the first novel released under one of the Creative Commons licences, allowing readers to circulate the electronic edition as long as they neither made money from it nor used it to create derived works. The electronic edition was released simultaneously with the print edition. During March 2003, it was re-released with a different Creative Commons licence that allowed derivative works such as fan fiction, but still prohibited commercial usage. It was nominated for a Nebula Award,^[17] and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel during 2004. A semi-sequel short story named Truncat was published on Salon.com in August 2003.^[18]

Doctorow's other novels have been released with Creative Commons licences that allow derived works and prohibit commercial usage, and he has used the model of making digital versions available, without charge, at the same time that print versions are published.

His Sunburst Award-winning short story collection A Place So Foreign and Eight More, was also published during 2004: "0wnz0red" from this collection was nominated for the 2004 Nebula Award for Best Novelette.^[19]

Doctorow (left) pictured at the 2006 Lift Conference with fellow Boing Boing contributor Jasmina Tešanović (centre) and cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling (right).

Doctorow released the bestselling novel Little Brother in 2008 with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike licence.^[20] It was nominated for a 2009 Hugo Award, and won the 2009 Prometheus Award,^[21] Sunburst Award,^[22] and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

His novel Makers was released during October 2009, and is being serialized for free on the Tor Books website.^[23]

Doctorow's newest young adult novel, For The Win, was released during May 2010. The novel is available free on the author's website as a Creative Commons download, and is also published in traditional paper format by Tor Books. The book concerns massively multiplayer online role-playing games.^[24]

Doctorow's short story collection "With a Little Help" was released in printed format on May 3, 2011. It is a project to demonstrate the profitability of Doctorow's method of releasing his books in print and subsequently for free under Creative Commons.^[25][26]

In September, 2012, Doctorow will release The Rapture of The Nerds, novel written in collaboration with Charles Stross.^[27]

Nonfiction and other writings[link]

Doctorow's nonfiction works include his first book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction (co-written with Karl Schroeder and published during 2000), and his contributions to Boing Boing, the weblog he co-edits, as well as regular columns in the magazines Popular Science and Make. He is a Contributing Writer to Wired magazine, and contributes occasionally to other magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times Sunday Magazine, the Globe and Mail, Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, and the Boston Globe. During 2004, he wrote an essay on Wikipedia included in The Anthology at the End of the Universe, comparing Internet attempts at Hitchhiker's Guide-type resources, including a discussion of the Wikipedia article about himself.

Doctorow contributed the foreword to Sound Unbound: Sampling Digital Music and Culture (The MIT Press, 2008) edited by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky. He also was a contributing writer for the book Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century.^[28]

He popularized the term "metacrap" by a 2001 essay titled "Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia."^[29] Some of his non-fiction published between 2001 and 2007 has been collected by Tachyon Publications as Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future.

Opinions on intellectual property[link]

Doctorow believes that copyright laws should be liberalized to allow for free sharing of all digital media. He has also advocated filesharing.^[30] He argues that copyright holders should have a monopoly on selling their own digital media, and copyright laws should only be operative when someone attempts to sell a product currently under someone else's copyright.

Doctorow is an opponent of Digital Rights Management, claiming that it limits the free sharing of digital media and frequently causes problems for legitimate users (including registration problems that lock users out of their own purchases and prevent them from being able to move their media to other devices).^[31]

In popular culture[link]

Cory Doctorow wears a red cape, goggles and a balloon as he receives the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award, spoofing an xkcd webcomic in which he is mentioned.

The webcomic xkcd occasionally features a partially fictional version of Doctorow who lives in a hot air balloon "up in" the "blogosphere" ("above the tag clouds") and wears a red cape and goggles, such as in the comic "Blagofaire".^[32] When Doctorow won the 2007 EFF Pioneer Award, the presenters gave him a red cape, goggles and a balloon.^[33]

Awards[link]

• 2000 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer^[34]
• 2004 Locus Award for Best First Novel for Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
• 2004 Sunburst Award for A Place So Foreign and Eight More
• 2007 The Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award^[35]

For Little Brother

• 2009 John W. Campbell Memorial Award^[36]
• 2009 Prometheus Award^[21]
• 2009 Sunburst Award^[22]
• 2009 White Pine Award^[37]

Bibliography[link]

Science fiction novels[link]

• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. Tor. 2003. ISBN 0-7653-0436-8.  with a Creative Commons licence
• Eastern Standard Tribe. Tor. 2004. ISBN 0-7653-0759-6.  with a Creative Commons licence
• Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. Tor. 2005. ISBN 0-7653-1278-6.  and with a Creative Commons licence.
• Little Brother. Tom Doherty Associates. 2008. ISBN 0-7653-1985-3.  and with a Creative Commons licence
• Makers. Tor. 2009. ISBN 0-7653-1279-4.  and with a Creative Commons licence.
• For The Win. Tor. 2010. ISBN 0-7653-2216-1.  and with a Creative Commons licence.
• Pirate Cinema. Tor. October 12, 2012. ISBN 0-7653-2908-5.  and with a Creative Commons licence.

Short stories and anthologies[link]

• 0wnz0red, short story, 2002
• Truncat (short story) -- a quasi-sequel to Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, 2003.
• A Place So Foreign and Eight More (short story collection, Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003).
• I, Robot (Hugo nominated short story, InfiniteMatrix.net, 2005)
• Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (short story collection, Thunder's Mouth Press, 2007) ISBN 1-56025-981-7
• Scroogled originally appeared in the magazine Radar, 2007.
• True Names, (short story with Benjamin Rosenbaum) in Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders, ISBN 978-1-59102-692-1, 2008
• There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow / Now is the Best Time of Your Life (97 pgs.; in an edited anthology, 2010)^[16]
• With a Little Help, (short stories collection, December 2010)
• Chicken Little (from short story anthology, Gateways, edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull, April 2011).

Other[link]

• Ebooks: Neither E Nor Books. (February 12, 2004)
• Glenn Yeffeth, ed., The Anthology at the End of the Universe?, chapter titled "Wikipedia: A Genuine H2G2-Minus the Editors", by Cory Doctorow, Benbella Books ISBN 1-932100-56-3.
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction (self-help, Alpha Books, 2000).
• Essential Blogging (tech help, O'Reilly and Associates, 2002). ISBN 0-596-00388-9.
• /usr/bin/god (novel; Tor Books) — In a June 11, 2008 interview with the Onion's A.V. Club, Doctorow stated that the book was "on the shelf more or less permanently, although it might be resurrected at some point".^[38]
• Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (September, 2008).
• Context: Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century (October, 2011)^[39]
• The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (November, 2011)^[40]

References[link]