Note: This is 3rd critique/discussion blog entry following FOR THE WIN part 1 and FOR THE WIN part 2
Part 3 “Ponzi” is the culmination of Cory Doctorow‘s novel For The Win. When I first started this conclusion, I was really excited to find out what happens when you have multiple characters/vignettes coming together. Matthew has just come out of jail (probably from a snafu with Boss Wing’s business, but it’s never really stated). He meets up with Lu and Jie who are running around South China. They rally up all the gamer workers (since it seems like most of the Webblie strikes happen in China). Mala, Yasmin, and Ashok are scrambling around India setting up a “ponzi scheme” that Big Sister Nor thought up. Wei-Dong travelled across the ocean from Los Angeles to China with the tools necessary to activate the troops everyone has been involved in so that they can take over the online gaming industry (economically and by labor). Meanwhile, Cola-Cola game economist Connor Prinkkel is tracking all their moves. Amidst violence and usage of Internet anonymity AND real-life interaction, everyone (ok, not everyone because some characters die — won’t spoil that!) descends upon Mumbai (India) where there’s no concrete ending of what happens next
If you’re confused by the above paragraph, you would be confused by Doctorow’s writing in Part 3. As I was reading, I knew that things were going to get complicated because there were so many characters and locations to keep tabs with. Then Doctorow inserts pieces describing ponzi schemes and overall scams that seem to not be related to the world of gaming or the story line itself. Yet, I think it’s genius that he does that because in the big picture of things, that’s what it all was.
Doctorow’s writing style and themes made it easy for me (and possibly any other reader) to get lost in it all – online community, real life events, and schemes.
As I read, I found it most interesting that perhaps the events in For The Win really do happen in real life so that it’s not just fiction. If you think about it, Dateline NBC always airs specials of the Nigerian con artist who steals money from innocent people simply because he sent them an e-mail enticing them with riches. Yet, our American law enforcement and banking systems can’t track these people and help repair the lives of those who lost the money? How hard is it to track people’s activity on the Internet?
Doctorow does an incredible job describing how gamers and hackers use networks and scrambling techniques to hide their physical location. On the flip side, he writes about Prinkkel’s ability to track the characters’ moves in a game!
Overall, although it was a tedious read because it was 475 pages… it was worth it. I’m not an online gamer, but I’m an avid Internet user. Most of my time is spent on studying chemistry and biology, so it was refreshing to read about a world that is way different from one that I experience on a daily basis. It was definitely like a movie, but I could pace out how fast I thought everything went because I was reading it rather than watching it. Plus, situations regarding online communities, adolescent transformation, economics, and social/political change was thought provoking for me because it helps me to look at Internet culture and its numerous facets in a different light. The possibilities are endless when it comes to interacting online and through technology.