According to his own biography, Cory Doctorow is a
“science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of young adult novels like PIRATE CINEMA and LITTLE BROTHER and novels for adults like RAPTURE OF THE NERDS and MAKERS. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.”
Doctorow feels it is important to make his books available for free…
- makes it easy for people who love them to help other people love them
- We are in the 21st century & art is made with the intention of it being copied
- Copying stuff is natural, & the way we learn.
Little Brother was Cory’s first young adult novel in 2008 that tells the story of a group of
Cory Doctorow Shadow Photo. Source: Neil Perkin
San Francisco hacker kids who use technology to take on the Department of Homeland Security after being accused of having involvement with a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge and BART. Throughout this story the group of four friends face issues such as invasion of privacy and constitutional rights, while learning to stay loyal and standing up for what they believe in.
“This book is meant to be part of the conversation about what an information society means: does it mean total control, or unheard of liberty? It’s not just a noun, it’s a verb, it’s something you do. You can use the ideas to spark important discussions with your friends and family. You can use those ideas to defeat censorship and get onto the free Internet, even if your government, employer or school doesn’t want you to.”
This post will only address the first half of the novel.
It is apparent that Little Brother is a novel of examples of how people are photographed, logged, tracked on a daily basis. Doctorow mentions that in his afterword there are resources for ways to increase your online freedom.
“Little Brother is a scarily realistic adventure about how homeland security technology could be abused to wrongfully imprison innocent Americans. A teenage hackerturnedhero pits himself against the government to fight for his basic freedoms. This book is actionpacked with tales of courage, technology, and demonstrations of digital disobedience as the technophile’s civil protest.”
Bunnie Huang, author of HACKING THE XBOX
Examples from Little Brother:
BART pass was telling government officials where he was going and when. It allowed the government to unknowingly spy on Marcus.
Gait: a system their school has to distinguish who is who, where they are going and when. The system determines students’ inch-by-inch walk, personalizing it to every student.
Library Book Tracker: tells you who is carrying which book and where they go with that book.
FasTrak: an electronic system that allows people to pay tolls on bridges without stopping. People started to notice after paying attention that electronics like these don’t have off-switches.
As a story, I am finding that Little Brother is quite intriguing. Seeing as I have only read chapters 1-10, I look forward to reading more. This novel touches on a variety of themes, some more serious than others. I feel that Doctorow did a good job writing on the touchy subjects, seeing as this is a young adult novel.
Your post was very well written. I also agree that this book was very intriguing and interesting. The way that Doctorow writes this book, it makes the reader keep wanting to read more. I thought it was really cool how this book was located in SF, and they use a lot of memorable places that both of us know of. I can’t wait to see what Marcus and his friends are going to do fighting against DHS, in these next two chapters!