Little Brother
I've been reading the book Little brother by Cory Doctorow these past two days, even though I think it's a pretty terrible book personally. Basically the plot is this: Marcus Yallow, briefly knowns as W1n5t0n on the net, and his friends end up in the wrong place at the wrong time during a terrorist attack in San Francisco, and end up whisked away by the Department of Homeland Security for five days, and one of their friends ends up missing as well. When he gets out, he starts to see the DHS do more and more invading sort of things, like tracking movements, using heuristics to "identify" potential risks, and that sort of thing, and he gets angry, and ends up setting up "Xnet" an anonymous network that everyone can use, and creates a movement and stuff.
I haven't finished it yet, it's a bit of a hard read since the format of the book is:
Plot
Mention using technology x
Explain technology x
Plot
Mention evil capitalistic practice y
Explain evil capitalistic practice y
Plot
Bash Microsoft
Praise Linux
Repeat
And... this irks me. I think this is an incredibly important subject, and I know lots of other people think so too, as it's been getting good press everywhere. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor Books, has said he would like to be remembered for helping bring this book to print, which is pretty high praise from someone I respect. I just think it's a knee-jerk reaction about a book that tries to talk about an important subject, and make it accessible, when the quality isn't good, nor is the underlying message, that the government is evil, and wants to take your freedom. That being scared and backing off is always a bad thing. Even its handling of race is pretty bad, as the main character's friends at the beginning happen to be racially diverse, but they all drop away, one just by cowardice, the other because "the penalties are harder if you're not white". Which I think is true, but is the author trying to argue that, or is it that it should be the white kid that saves everything. I don't really believe that Doctorow's being racist, I just think he makes the same mistake most authors do, their main character needs to be fairly similar to himself, and he didn't really think out the racial message in his book.
In the fourteen (fifteen?) chapters I've read so far, it seems like Cory Doctorow is more skilled at arguing against strawmen, then against real issues. The government stooges (and yes, they are stooges, not members of the government, or workers, but honest to god, one-dimensional stooges) are inept, half-dimensional, and evil. You can see them getting together, drinking coffee, and talking about how evil they all really are. The main characters themselves are a handful of stereotypes, "The smart, suave, charismatic-but-really-I'm-not-despite-everyone-listening-to-me hero", the "smart, strong chick who loves the main dude, but totally flakes out because, hey she's a chick and a minority" I'm bitter about that one, because she's Korean and all, and then... gets sideline by the "cute, spunky, quirky, punk gal who's totally into sex, drugs, and rock and roll". The side characters aren't much better, there's the free-spirit noble teacher (who predictably gets canned), the evil administrator, the admin's flunky, the loving, caring mother, the disagreeable father, and oh god, will this stereotypes ever end in this book?
Yet... yet I still think people should read this book. As much as I hate the technology monologues, because I know a lot about them already, they are useful for people who don't know so much about it. And talk of civil liberties is important, look at what's been happening recently, photographers are constantly harassed if they take pictures, everything is labeled terrorism, going through the airport you hear all the shit about threat levels. And none of us, none of us are safer. And Little Brother takes that conclusion to the extreme. It's not as impressive as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, the words and prose are clumsier, very much the work of someone who hasn't, or at least hasn't seemed, to have dealt with the very thing he fears, but someone who disagrees with the politics, someone who still has ideals, but not a realistic view of what he's fighting against. Worst of all, he does what most protesters do, marginalize their enemies, their opponents into subhuman goons. And that is something that will never work, is a message that no one can really get behind.
Little Brother is freely available in a lot of formats, text, pdf, html, latex, I think people should read it. Maybe it's just me that's jaded, or maybe the hype just got to me. But I do think it's an important read, I wouldn't call it literature perhaps, but... it has some points to be made. Just ignore the fact that the characters are cogs in a machine that tells you a message, that you don't learn what the main character actually looks like until chapter 14ish, just pretend it's not a story, but a message perhaps, and that may work better.
I haven't finished it yet, it's a bit of a hard read since the format of the book is:
Plot
Mention using technology x
Explain technology x
Plot
Mention evil capitalistic practice y
Explain evil capitalistic practice y
Plot
Bash Microsoft
Praise Linux
Repeat
And... this irks me. I think this is an incredibly important subject, and I know lots of other people think so too, as it's been getting good press everywhere. Patrick Nielsen Hayden, an editor at Tor Books, has said he would like to be remembered for helping bring this book to print, which is pretty high praise from someone I respect. I just think it's a knee-jerk reaction about a book that tries to talk about an important subject, and make it accessible, when the quality isn't good, nor is the underlying message, that the government is evil, and wants to take your freedom. That being scared and backing off is always a bad thing. Even its handling of race is pretty bad, as the main character's friends at the beginning happen to be racially diverse, but they all drop away, one just by cowardice, the other because "the penalties are harder if you're not white". Which I think is true, but is the author trying to argue that, or is it that it should be the white kid that saves everything. I don't really believe that Doctorow's being racist, I just think he makes the same mistake most authors do, their main character needs to be fairly similar to himself, and he didn't really think out the racial message in his book.
In the fourteen (fifteen?) chapters I've read so far, it seems like Cory Doctorow is more skilled at arguing against strawmen, then against real issues. The government stooges (and yes, they are stooges, not members of the government, or workers, but honest to god, one-dimensional stooges) are inept, half-dimensional, and evil. You can see them getting together, drinking coffee, and talking about how evil they all really are. The main characters themselves are a handful of stereotypes, "The smart, suave, charismatic-but-really-I'm-not-despite-everyone-listening-to-me hero", the "smart, strong chick who loves the main dude, but totally flakes out because, hey she's a chick and a minority" I'm bitter about that one, because she's Korean and all, and then... gets sideline by the "cute, spunky, quirky, punk gal who's totally into sex, drugs, and rock and roll". The side characters aren't much better, there's the free-spirit noble teacher (who predictably gets canned), the evil administrator, the admin's flunky, the loving, caring mother, the disagreeable father, and oh god, will this stereotypes ever end in this book?
Yet... yet I still think people should read this book. As much as I hate the technology monologues, because I know a lot about them already, they are useful for people who don't know so much about it. And talk of civil liberties is important, look at what's been happening recently, photographers are constantly harassed if they take pictures, everything is labeled terrorism, going through the airport you hear all the shit about threat levels. And none of us, none of us are safer. And Little Brother takes that conclusion to the extreme. It's not as impressive as 1984 or Fahrenheit 451, the words and prose are clumsier, very much the work of someone who hasn't, or at least hasn't seemed, to have dealt with the very thing he fears, but someone who disagrees with the politics, someone who still has ideals, but not a realistic view of what he's fighting against. Worst of all, he does what most protesters do, marginalize their enemies, their opponents into subhuman goons. And that is something that will never work, is a message that no one can really get behind.
Little Brother is freely available in a lot of formats, text, pdf, html, latex, I think people should read it. Maybe it's just me that's jaded, or maybe the hype just got to me. But I do think it's an important read, I wouldn't call it literature perhaps, but... it has some points to be made. Just ignore the fact that the characters are cogs in a machine that tells you a message, that you don't learn what the main character actually looks like until chapter 14ish, just pretend it's not a story, but a message perhaps, and that may work better.