Talk in Milan, Italy

I will speak at 17:15 on May 26 in the Politecnico di Milano, in Milan, Italy at Piazza Leonardo Da Vinci 32, Room 9.1.2.

Topic: Computing freedom, software, and services

We understand that the uses of computing can be unjust. Most do not realize that the mechanisms of computing can be unjust at their own level in their own ways.

A nonfree program is one that that the users do not control. If that does your computing, its owners control your computing. This is the basic idea of the free software movement -- but what about using services?

When you use a service to do your own computing, the service's owner controls that computing. If that owner isn't you, this is unjust. By contrast, if your computer talks to a store's server on your behalf, to arrange a deal between you and the store, your side of that can be fully under your control. Society and powerful institutions lure and pressure people into a tangled web of online dis-services and nonfree software which may seem impossible to escape. But you can start by rejecting a few of them. Saying no even once is helping!