Little Brother - Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Amazon Link
This is a smart, funny little book about what happens to a bunch of pseudo-hacker kids when someone decides to bomb San Francisco. The bombing doesn't really matter, what matters is the knee-jerk over-reaction that follows it.
Set in the near future, things like RFID and security cameras with gait recognition software (think facial recognition but applied to body movements) are cheap, ubiquitous and all-too-readily deployed. The protagonist, Marcus, a bright 17-year-old, likes hacking his devices, home-brewing laptops and participating in ARGs. When the bombs go off, he and three of his friends get swept up by the DHS and transported to a secret prison. Although Marcus is released relatively quickly, his best friend stays missing, inspiring Marcus to launch a covert info-war against the newly-created police state that is San Francisco.
While the tech in this book is sound (Doctorow is, after all, coeditor of Boing Boing), it does come off more than a little paranoid and cyber punk-ish, reading like the bastard love child of George Orwell and William Gibson: entire pages are devoted to descriptions of how technology works, and then entire others to how the authorities are using this technology to track everyone. There's a wonderful little element were RFID are used to track library books so that shelves can tell the librarian where any given book is at any given time, though the same devices are used to track the transit uses of every rider on the BART. Despite such, it is eminently readable, and the in-narrative descriptions of the technology are useful enough to give any layman a good idea of just how scary data-mining techniques can be in the wrong hands. There is obviously an element in this of the cautionary tale, akin to Orwell's 1984(there are several nods in the book to its relation, not the least of which being Marcus' original handle of "w1n5t0n"), but instead of the tragic character of Winston, Marcus' successes and ultimate victory seem to point toward a more hopeful future, one in which the ability of individuals to manipulate information systems will keep authoritative elements in check.
Rightly shelved in the young adult section of your favorite bookseller, this work is accessible to any 15-year-old with more than three brain cells careening around his skull, but has much to offer to a more sophisticated reader. Behind the somewhat simplistic secondary characters(one actually says "I'm scared, you're white and I'm not" paraphrased) and predictable plot is a serious discussion on what it means to live in a society inundated with terrorism paranoia, where the government has the ability to track and data-mine every single citizen 24/7. It falls into preachy-ness at some points, but is quick-paced and stylish enough to more than make up for that fault.
Light and engaging, with a little more meat than your average pulp, Little Brother is a great book for a lazy Saturday afternoon spent, well, reading. Check it out.
Amazon Link
This is a smart, funny little book about what happens to a bunch of pseudo-hacker kids when someone decides to bomb San Francisco. The bombing doesn't really matter, what matters is the knee-jerk over-reaction that follows it.
Set in the near future, things like RFID and security cameras with gait recognition software (think facial recognition but applied to body movements) are cheap, ubiquitous and all-too-readily deployed. The protagonist, Marcus, a bright 17-year-old, likes hacking his devices, home-brewing laptops and participating in ARGs. When the bombs go off, he and three of his friends get swept up by the DHS and transported to a secret prison. Although Marcus is released relatively quickly, his best friend stays missing, inspiring Marcus to launch a covert info-war against the newly-created police state that is San Francisco.
While the tech in this book is sound (Doctorow is, after all, coeditor of Boing Boing), it does come off more than a little paranoid and cyber punk-ish, reading like the bastard love child of George Orwell and William Gibson: entire pages are devoted to descriptions of how technology works, and then entire others to how the authorities are using this technology to track everyone. There's a wonderful little element were RFID are used to track library books so that shelves can tell the librarian where any given book is at any given time, though the same devices are used to track the transit uses of every rider on the BART. Despite such, it is eminently readable, and the in-narrative descriptions of the technology are useful enough to give any layman a good idea of just how scary data-mining techniques can be in the wrong hands. There is obviously an element in this of the cautionary tale, akin to Orwell's 1984(there are several nods in the book to its relation, not the least of which being Marcus' original handle of "w1n5t0n"), but instead of the tragic character of Winston, Marcus' successes and ultimate victory seem to point toward a more hopeful future, one in which the ability of individuals to manipulate information systems will keep authoritative elements in check.
Rightly shelved in the young adult section of your favorite bookseller, this work is accessible to any 15-year-old with more than three brain cells careening around his skull, but has much to offer to a more sophisticated reader. Behind the somewhat simplistic secondary characters(one actually says "I'm scared, you're white and I'm not" paraphrased) and predictable plot is a serious discussion on what it means to live in a society inundated with terrorism paranoia, where the government has the ability to track and data-mine every single citizen 24/7. It falls into preachy-ness at some points, but is quick-paced and stylish enough to more than make up for that fault.
Light and engaging, with a little more meat than your average pulp, Little Brother is a great book for a lazy Saturday afternoon spent, well, reading. Check it out.