For better or worse, Cory Doctorow was a big influence on the way I grew up to view technology. 

He also has an article about how smart cities don't have to be oppressive dystopian nightmares. For the record I think "smart" is a dumb prefix but I admire his optimism.  

Also, he got Mercedes Lackey on board with fanworks, soooo... kudos there. 

These are two of my favourite stories from his early short story collections. 

Cory Doctorow: I, Robot

link

This story is set in North York! That never happens! It's also a satisfying story about non-Asimov-compliant robots. I love the possibilities presented by Eurasian society. My other favourites from the Overclocked collection include After the Siege, and When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth.

The metal man bowed, its symmetrical, simplified features pleasant and guileless. It clicked its heels together with an audible snick as those marvelous, spring-loaded, nuclear-powered gams whined through their parody of obedience. “Acknowledged, Detective. It is my pleasure to do—”

“Shut up. You will discreetly surveil 55 Picola Crescent until such time as Ada Trouble Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Social Harmony serial number 0MDY2-T3937 leaves the premises. Then you will maintain discreet surveillance. If she deviates more than 10 percent from the optimum route between here and Don Mills Collegiate Institute, you will notify me. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged, Detective. It is my—”

He hung up and told the UNATS Robotics mechanism running his car to get him down to the station house as fast as it could, angry with himself and with Ada—whose middle name was Trouble, after all—for making him deal with a robot before he’d had his morning meditation and destim session. The name had been his ex-wife’s idea, something she’d insisted on long enough to make sure that it got onto the kid’s birth certificate before defecting to Eurasia with their life’s savings, leaving him with a new baby and the deep suspicion of his co-workers who wondered if he wouldn’t go and join her.

Cory Doctorow: Epoch

Link

A story about how AI is neither as useful as humanity hoped it would be, nor as easy to shut down.

"You're thinking about that fire-ax again," I said.

She nodded.

"OK, a fire-ax through the main cable would definitely be terminal. The problem is that it would be mutually terminal. There's 66 amps provisioned on that wire. You would be a cinder. On Mars."

She folded her hands. She had a whole toolbox of bossly body-language she could deploy to make me squirm. It was impressive. I tried not to squirm.

"Look, I'm not trying to be difficult, but this is how it goes, down at the systems level. Remember all those specs in the requirements document to make our stuff resistant to flood, fire, avalanche, weather and terrorist attack? We take that stuff seriously. We know how to do it. You get five nines of reliability by building in six nines of robustness. You think of BIGMAC's lab as a building. It's not. It's a bunker. And you can't shut him down without doing something catastrophic to the whole Institute."