Episode: 1119
Title: HPR1119: Spread the Word
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1119/hpr1119.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 19:18:57

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You set your dial to tune in to Hacker Public Radio and the show that you're listening
to right now is called Spread the Word.
Looking through the content on my phone, I found this.
So a few months ago, I actually recorded an episode for HPR on my mobile phone and
forgot about it.
Listening to it, I found that it was rather hard to hear what I said.
I never checked the recording, but I've wielded some audio magic to see if I could make the
audio file a bit more coherent and easy to listen to.
So I think I've managed, but still it's not top notch, but I think you'll find it adequate.
You see, I would like to tell you a little story.
I would like to talk about something that I really haven't talked about before.
I mentioned many a time that I am a teacher in the secondary educational system here in
Sweden.
I teach young adults in the age of 15 to 18 years old.
And I work at a school with a bit over a thousand students.
So we are quite a few teachers there, and for the last two semesters, I've worked with
a teacher in English and Swedish, who was put together with our computer teachers, just
to make it easier for her to interact and take care of the technical students.
And she really appreciated some of the things I could tell her and show her.
You see, we are deep.
We know things that other don't.
What do I mean with this?
Well, you all probably know of Cory Doctoro, right?
He is an author who writes science fiction, and he releases everything he does under a creative
commons license.
You can buy his books and he has written quite a few at Amazon or in book stores or wherever.
And he is a really talented writer.
I have read a few of his short stories, and he is really talented in lifting up problems
that we face in the human society now, but in a science fiction setting, which makes
reading his stories thought provoking, and it makes you reflect on who you are and what
your role in society is right now, as it should be with good science fiction, hard science
fiction, and with hard science fiction, I mean science fiction that is really scientifically
as correct as it can be regarding that it is made up, that is.
And Cory Doctoro is a master of this, and since he releases everything under a creative
commons license, there has been quite a few translations and alterations of his works.
So you can go to his web page, which I will link to in the show notes, and you can download
in EPUB or in PDF or HTML.
You can download his books anyway you like, but there are also people who have done podcasts
of the book, that is they have read them out and recorded it.
And you and I, we know that these are the things that hackers do.
This is the community, this is how we work.
If we see something we like, we try to adapt it and improve it and help with it.
But this English and Swedish teacher I mentioned before, well she is not a hacker, she doesn't
know what the community is capable of and are doing right now.
So when I told her about this, when I showed her what was available, she nearly slipped
her lid, she was ecstatic, this was something of the best she had ever seen.
Because now she can, instead of using dusty old textbooks that doesn't have anything related
to modern life in it, she can have the students read, thought provoking and intelligent stories
in English, but also with someone reading it.
I know that's often the problem, not only getting something that you can use and you're
allowed to use, as if this is creative commons, it's not a problem, but also getting an audio
version of it, since it's easier when you're learning language to both read and listen
to it, both read it and hear it.
And she was replaced recently, she had a child and moved on.
She was replaced with a new English and Swedish teacher, of course, and today I talked to
her a little bit and I asked her just a little bit carefully, you know, you don't want to
step on someone's toes, especially when it's someone you don't know yet and you don't
know if they appreciate someone coming with suggestions, so I approached it rather
openly and asked if she would just told her about what it was and if she would be interested
in such a resource and she was very interested.
So don't be afraid to talk about, if we're going to get a moral from this story, don't
be afraid to talk to other people about the things that we as hackers, the things that
we as a part of the hacker community take for granted, everything around the community,
which perhaps isn't about using free and open source software, but instead promote
what they would really find useful, so think about it, think about what could people in
your vicinity find useful, what could they perhaps need in their private life or in their
work life and try to spread the word, that's all from me for today, thank you very much
for your attention and I'll be back soon.
So that was the message of the day, the moral, spread the word, tell people, not only
about free and open source software, but also about creative commons and other goodness
that comes from our community.
To find me as usual on all in IT radio, that's a-i-i-t dot-s-e slash radio, or on identity
and Twitter as at altinomite, a-l-l-t-i-n-o-m-i-t.
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