Portrait of Cory Doctorow, Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA (by Alex Schoenfeldt Photography, www.schoenfeldt.com , CC-BY)
After finishing Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother all I can say is wow. Apart from the storyline, which I loved, it also brought up some important issues that are important to recognize in society today.
The obvious issues are freedom in terms of the bill of rights and government surveillance. However, there are also issues of morality and how private corporations track consumers as well. One of the best examples of this is when Marcus decides to get the video footage on the air. While this is a great example of selfless service to a cause, it also highlights the main character’s growth through the entire ordeal.
One of the biggest iss
ues that I had with the ending is the fact that despite the evidence going public of government corruption and complicity in the detention of American citizens, no punishments were handed out. This isn’t just a fictional occurrence, when operations go south, government closes rank. Often, this leads to just one or two persons being punished, while everyone else who was complicit in the event gets away punishment free.
These ideas are just some of the issues that are presented in Little Brotherbut they are all overshadowed by an even more interesting message: Get Out And Vote. Out of all of the possible ways to end the book, a Get Out And Vote campaign was the last thing I expected. But in retrospect, it makes sense considering that a great deal of the book was based on the idea that governments are c
reated for the people, by the people.
The fact that Marcus and his community did not like what the government was doing serves to show that the government that they existed within had stopped serving its people, and as such they were forced to undermine that government’s rule in order to try to establish one that would serve the greater good of the people.
While we can’t all go and change government by hacking their servers or software, there is one tool that is readily available: voting. This is the point that Marcus wanted to make at the end of the book, and it’s something that we should all keep in mind, especially since we just went through a very historic election last Tuesday.
I see you brought up a big point in freedom and the issue of privacy. In reality our lives are tracked in so many different ways, that we don’t even see it as out of the ordinary any more. I am curious how many of these was are intruding… Rather than being helpful in some way. Are all of the ways we are tracked in real life an invasion of privacy. How do we know that this information won’t be used against us.