It’s the 21st century and the Internet is the nervous system of the information age. Treating it as a platform for jihad recruitment that incidentally does some ecommerce and video on demand around the edges is blinkered, depraved indifference.

The news that the world’s spies have been industriously converting every wire, fiber and chip into part of a surveillance apparatus actually pales in comparison to the news that the NSA spends $250,000,000 every year to undermine the security of the devices we trust our lives to — literally.

Can technology give us privacy, or only take it away? Are we headed for Orwell’s future? Huxley’s? Kafka’s? Do we have to choose, or do we get all three (if we’re not careful)?

The Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS), Henry Art Gallery, and the UW Tech Policy Lab recently sponsored a talk by author and activist Cory Doctorow: “Alice, Bob and Clapper: What Snowden taught us about privacy.”