Ecology of the Noosphere

I don't speak on behalf of Penguicon and I'm not claiming the views expressed here are representative of anyone else running it. That's as it should be. Penguicon is all about 1. Fun, 2. More Fun, and 3. Keep Fun First. It's not about ideology. But Penguicon has two incidental side benefits that get me excited and are very fun for me. One is spreading Free and Open Source Software to fans of science fiction, fantasy, games, anime, and comics, who aren't technically skilled. The other is to use the political and social visions of science fiction to interest some of those hackers who are not yet interested in Hacktivism. I want to get them excited about how the fight for “knowledge goods”-- not just code alone-- benefits hackers, how non-engineer users benefit hackers, and how damage to the knowledge ecology harms innovators first like canaries in a coal mine. Specifically, I want to get more hackers interested in contributing to software for non-engineer users, and keeping non-engineer users around with volunteer tech support.

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