Cory Doctorow hard at work. Plenty of inspiration
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction writer and author most famously of “Little Brother”, most recently of “Rapture of the Nerds”, and soon to be of “Little Brother”‘s sequel “Homeland”. He also developed an open source peer-to-peer software company called OpenCola. He has also contributed works to The Guardian, the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired and more. He was once the Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties.
“Little Brother” cover.
Doctorow published “Little Brother” in 2008. It’s a novel set in a dystopian San Francisco in which resident’s lives are monitored by the government through cameras and bugs. The story focuses on the lives of several high school students who are initially targeted by Homeland Security. The students decide to revolt by beating the DHS at their own game.
The first ten chapters of the novel involve the initial planning stages and implementation of Marcus (AKA M1k3y) and his friends’ plans. The students are very in touch with the technology of their time. They are actually a fairly rare breed compared to their contemporaries. I think this parallels the world we really live in. Although virtually everyone is completely plugged into the technological world, very few people really understand what it means to be constantly “wired in”. I could myself in the herd of blind technology users. Though I use a cell phone and Facebook regularly, I have don’t really know what that means for my privacy in the long run. “Little Brother” raises some interesting question on the consequences of our society becoming increasingly reliant on technology. It is possible that years down the road, the government will be able to track our every move via our personal technology, just like in Marcus’s world.