{"id":129,"date":"2012-11-09T13:55:43","date_gmt":"2012-11-09T21:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/?p=129"},"modified":"2012-11-09T13:55:43","modified_gmt":"2012-11-09T21:55:43","slug":"little-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/2012\/11\/09\/little-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his books. Doctorow is\u00a0blogger, journalist, and science fiction author of the novel Little Brother<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The story revolves around a rebellious San Francisco High School student named Marcus Yallow, who is also well known by his internet username w1n5t0n (pronounced Winston).\u00a0One afternoon when playing an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) called Harajuku Fun Madness with his friends Darryl and a couple other friends. They witness a massive terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge. While trying to get help for Darryl, who was stabbed in the ensuing chaos,\u00a0Marcus and his friends were all taken into custody to a secret location and falsely identified as terrorists by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). After several days of questioning and miserable conditions he along with with other friends, besides Darryl, \u00a0are released. non of them are aware what has happened to Darryl.\u00a0When they return to San Francisco they discover that the city has come to a halt and that the DHS has turned the city into a police state with checkpoints, surveillance, and internet monitoring. \u00a0Marcus decides to use his advanced technological knowledge to fight back against the DHS and find out what happened to his friend Darryl.\u00a0Under the name M1k3y he started Xnet that united the rebelling teenagers, allowing them to organize anonymously. They started jamming DHS\u2019s tracking system by switching peoples\u2019 identity on transportation passes<\/p>\n

I thought I’d mention that it was rather nice that throughout the novel Doctorow begins each chapter with a little paragraph where he describes to whom the chapter is dedicated. Each paragraph is dedicated\u00a0to a different bookstore that he loves and has helped him in his career.<\/p>\n

All the events that occured up to chapter 10, I thought were pretty crazy.\u00a0Marcus gets his \"\"<\/a>debit card refused, because the government used cards to spy on people. He\u00a0<\/em>goes back to school and sees a camera in his classroom. The Government put a camera there to keep the children safe. It kind of makes me wonder whether theirs really freedom in a place where we can always constantly be watched. There are magnetic barcode labels and cameras everywhere. We live in a 24hr surveillance society especially in our digital age where majority of the people carry electronic devices like: ipads, ipods, cell phones, laptops etc.<\/p>\n

In chapter 5 Marcus was creating an\u00a0alternate operating system called\u00a0ParanoidXbox, a system that\u00a0assumes that its operator is under assault from the government\u00a0and it\u00a0does everything it can to keep your communications and documents a secret. As he’s creating the operating system he talks about how technology made him feel. It made him<\/p>\n

feel: in control. My\u00a0technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It\u00a0wasn’t spying on me.\u00a0This is why I loved technology: if you used\u00a0it right, it could give you power and privacy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this doesn’t leave any power and privacy for us, non-internet savvy people. it’s is almost as if the power and privacy is for an elite group, seeing as since not everyone on the planet, I’m sure, can create an alternate operating system or even anything along those lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his books. Doctorow is\u00a0blogger, journalist, and science fiction author of the novel Little … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":1,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"erozil","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/author\/erozil\/"},"qubely_comment":1,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his books. Doctorow is\u00a0blogger, journalist, and science fiction author of the novel Little … Continue reading →","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/321"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/webculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}