Downpour has published a DRM-free audio edition of my essay collection Context (with an intro by Tim O’Reilly), the companion volume to my collection Content (introduced by John Perry Barlow).

The collection is read by Paul Michael Garcia, who also read Content. As the subtitle (“Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century”) implies, it covers some pretty far-ranging ground!

One of the web’s most celebrated high-tech culture mavens returns with this second collection of essays and polemics. Discussing complex topics in an accessible manner, Cory Doctorow’s visions of a future where artists have full freedom of expression is tempered with his understanding that creators need to benefit from their own creations. From extolling the Etsy makerverse to excoriating Apple for dumbing down technology while creating an information monopoly, each unique piece is brief, witty, and at the cutting edge of tech. Now a stay-at-home dad as well as an international activist, Doctorow writes as eloquently about creating real-time Internet theater with his daughter as he does while lambasting the corporations that want to profit from inherent intellectual freedoms.

Context : Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century [Downpour]

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This week on The Command Line podcast, a recording of a live chat between host Thomas Gideon and myself at the New America Foundation, discussing (among other things), my new essay collection Context. (MP3)

Jan Rubak has once again set out to create a fan-audiobook of my essays, reading aloud from my book Context as he did with my earlier collection, Content. He’s a great reader, and he’s uploaded half the book so far, with the rest promised soon. Here’s an MP3 of his reading of “Think Like a Dandelion.”

“Context” by Cory Doctorow : Jan Rubak : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive

(Thanks, Jan!)

Travis Poling liked my essay “Writing in the Age of Distraction” from Context well enough to create a lesson plan based on it for his College Composition class.

Thomas Gideon at the Command Line podcast has done me the honor of selecting a couple of essays from my new collection Context for his latest podcast.

Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century, my second essay collection, is now officially available from Tachyon Books, and in finer bookstores everywhere. It features an introduction by the estimable Tim O’Reilly, as well as a walloping 44 essays that were previously published in various magazines, newspapers and websites. As with my other books, the whole text is available as a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA download for your remixing pleasure. I’m also in search of libraries and school that would like free copies of the book sent to them by donors.

From Tim’s introduction:

Edwin Schlossberg once said “The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think.” And oh, how we need that skill today!

In times of transition and upheaval, we are literally “off the map” of past experience that is our normal guide to what to expect and how to think about it. It’s at times like these that we need context-setters to shape how we understand and think about the changes facing us.

It was clear from the first that Cory Doctorow is one of the great context-setters of our generation, helping us all to understand the implications of the technology being unleashed around us. We are fortunate that unlike many who practice this trade, who look backward
at recent changes, or forward only a year or two, Cory uses the power of story to frame what is going on in larger terms.

Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century