Our speaker this month will be Christopher Brown. Christopher Brown is an Austin-based science fiction writer and technology lawyer. He is the World Fantasy Award-nominated author of Tropic of Kansas, a novel published by Harper Voyager in 2017 that Cory Doctorow called “spookily prescient…timely, dark and ultimately hopeful,” NPR described as “a modern dystopian buffet…the nightly news with the volume turned up to 11,” and Booklist said reads like “Cormac McCarthy meets Philip K. Dick.” His novel Rule of Capture, the beginning of a series of speculative legal thrillers about a criminal defense lawyer in an authoritarian USA, is forthcoming from Harper in 2019. He has taken two tech companies public as general counsel, including Austin fintech company NetSpend, led the corporate practice in the Austin office of Baker Botts, and served as a staff lawyer to the Senate Judiciary Committee, experiences he now brings to bear as a solo practitioner focused on the representation of mission-oriented start-ups.
Website: http://christopherbrown.com or brownlawatx.com
Twitter: @NB_Chris
Christopher is going to be speaking to us about the tyranny of contract, about how click-wrap agreements and NDAs have subverted the emancipatory potential of the Internet, indentured its creators, and enabled our current dystopias—and how new technologies may help us build a new paradigm. In the words of Prof. Joshua Fairfield: “If courts won’t protect consumers, robots will.”
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Join us for the discussion from 7:00PM-9:00PM, followed by drinks and camaraderie from 9:00PM-10:00PM at Firehouse Lounge (605 Brazos St).
Capital Factory is located at 701 Brazos Street, on the 16th floor of the Omni Hotel. Once on the 16th floor, there should be a sign at the front desk directing you to our meetup. If there is no sign, and no one is on duty at the desk, we are usually in the room to the left of the front desk.
Talk will be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/user/austintechlive
Parking for the Omni Garage can be validated at the Capital Factory front desk, reducing the cost from $16 to $5. Details: https://capitalfactory.com/parking/
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https://www.meetup.com/EFF-Austin/events/bbzmhnyxhbsb/
https://www.facebook.com/events/170417760341121/
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