Hacking the Future: Privacy, Identity, and Anonymity on the Web with Cole Stryker and More

• Books & Literature

How does online anonymity enable free speech and how is it a threat? Computer technologies have changed many things, one of the most profound being their ability to empower individuals to redefine themselves in social environments—to hack into their personhood and truly become who they want to be online. Yet, as online identities become increasingly prismatic, this rise in social engineering has been accompanied by an unsettling accumulation of private information given over to corporations willingly by those who wish to seamlessly engage with the Web. Although the general trend across human history has been towards open systems of freedom and speech, the sheer power of the Web has frightened us into balking at offering the same level of freedom for communication online that we allow it offline.

Please join Cole Stryker, author of Epic Win for Anonymous as we celebrate the release of his latest book Hacking the Future: Privacy, Identity, and Anonymity on the Web (Overlook Press, 2012). Stryker will be joined by Clay Shirky, Whitney Phillips, John Young, and Deborah Natsios for a conversation examining why the identity issue may be the most crucial decision we face in the coming decade.