Cory Doctorow. Source: Wiki
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who also serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and supports the Creative Commonsorganization, a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.
Little Brother Book Cover. Source: Wiki
Doctorow released the best-selling novel Little Brother, which is about four teenagers in San Francisco who are faced defending themselves against the Department of Homeland Security. The teenagers are assumed to be apart of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system when they are found with “a number of suspicious devices” on them. That mixed with the fact they were near the site of the terrorist attack leads the Department of Homeland Security to assume they are potential enemies of the United States of America.
Doctorow’s work is an enlightening piece that portrays how technology can indeed pose potential harm for the future. He prefaces Little Brother with an introduction that explains, how as a seventeen year old, the transformation of computers as basic forms of communication (e-mailing) changed into “being co-opted, used to spy on us, snitch on us” for him. Published and released a mere four to five years ago, the concept of this novel still rings true in the modern day world. We have become a society so advanced, so focused on how we can make things better, faster, stronger than their previous version, that we don’t even realize the self-inflicting harm.
Doctorow uses the main protagonist, Marcus, as an example of someone so consumed with the “benefits” of technology that he ultimately ends up faced in a life or death situation. Marcus builds his own custom devices that help him hack and manipulate systems. This infatuation with technology, specifically with an ARG (Alternate Reality Game), is what leads to the unfortunate coincidence and misconception of his participation in the terrorist attack.
Little Brother tackles both themes of civil liberties and social activism, yet also brings light to how technology, when heavily relied on, can interfere with reality. While caught up in his game world, (and using measures of hacking to help), Marcus gets woken up by reality and the severity of his actions.
A video interview with Doctorow, (below), shows his personal take on how Little Brother contrasts with George Orwell’s 1984, which also explores the themes of technology and control, but in a negative light. Doctorow makes it clear that he believes Little Brother “is a turning point from technology that asserts control to a technology that doesn’t”.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2lEZ3tDmHw[/youtube]
The statement that stuck out most to me in this video is Doctorow’s stance on technology’s influence and presence within society:
What I see is an encroachment on personal autonomy that’s much greater than anything we’ve seen before, but I also think that within our technological world the seeds of another generation of technology that will take that back
In the introduction to Little Brother, Doctorow himself states, “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?” So my question, to whomever is reading this, is how do you define information society? Does it result in total control? Or is it an unheard of liberty?