DULA 2009Since we're going to be a community, not just a class, for the next half year or so, I think it's our duty to the others to share any great books, films, music or other experiences with each other -- I also realize that I'm currently posting in a vacuum but the rest of you will wake up eventually and begin responding and posting. I especially want to hear if there is a genre component obviously.
With that said, I read an adult teen book during my political adventure in Virginia this week called Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow. (co-editor of Boing Boing)
The NY Times said "“Little Brother” is a terrific read, but it also claims a place in the tradition of polemical science-fiction novels like “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Fahrenheit 451” (with a dash of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”). It owes a more immediate debt to Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s comic book series “DMZ,” about the adventures of a photojournalist in the midst of a new American civil war. … MY favorite thing about “Little Brother” is that every page is charged with an authentic sense of the personal and ethical need for a better relationship to information technology, a visceral sense that one’s continued dignity and independence depend on it: “My technology was working for me, serving me, protecting me. It wasn’t spying on me. This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.”
The novel is also available for free on the author's website, as a Creative Commons download -- just go here.
So what's it about: There's a terrorist attack in San Francisco that results in a security crackdown by the Department of Homeland Security. A 17 year old Hacker and his friends take on the DHS after the government agency starts acting like its 1984. (The George Orwell novel)
There are great discussions on security vs. freedom, the Bill of Rights, the significance of the hippy movement in SF, Beat culture and Kerouac, and how new technology/hacker culture interacts with current security concerns over terrorism. (and it's really fun to read to boot, and can be plowed thru in a day and a half -- easy)
Neil Gaiman, author of Sandman and American Gods, describes it as "A wonderful, important book ... I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year."
So let us know what you're reading.
5 comments:
Well if Neil Gaiman like it, I'm in...
Moot the web developer of 4chan and its infamous /b/ board just came to talk to my compsci class- pretty interesting lecture on internet security (i.e. we have none). Here's an article on moot: http://tinyurl.com/56llu7.
Technology IF USED RIGHT is great- but what if it's misused? What is the ugly side of anonymity and web freedom?
Jim- NC went blue, can you believe it?!
There is no "ugly side" to web freedom just as there is no "ugly side" to the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. It is a glorious and wonderful thing for this country if the Klan can march in an Easter parade, if a professor or a preacher can say we deserved 9/11, or if creepy uncle Ed can write tales of child porn on his erotica internet site. These are all ugly things that exist in life, but in this country (in theory) and on the web (in application) these UGLIES are offset and marginalized by the greater BEAUTY of an unfettered information/communication system.
The first thing one learns in law school is the concept of the slippery slope. Allow laws against simulated child porn (I'm not talking the real stuff here, folks -- that's different/just like snuff films are different) and the next thing -- no nipple shots. No Klans -- no Gay Pride Parade. No Ward Churchill, no Frederic Jameson.
We have to love the freedom, warts and all. That's one of the debates in Little Brother.
Wow, Janet -- thanks for making me sound radical before we even have our first class.
And speaking of Neil Gaiman, have you read any more Sandman. If not, we have to get you back on track. Give poor Sam his Invincible's and
go buy some paperback volumes of Sandman. You left just before it became brilliant (as it switched over from fantasy to a more documentary approach :)
No, I completely disagree even though I'm tickled by your affection for uninhibited freedom and your devil's advocacy for the purpose of proving a point. I bet you love Gibbs.
I don't think acknowledging the problematic means an end all to freedom. Maybe I'm the idealistic one, or just being practical, but while I think censorship is wrong, a claim that unlimited freedom has no ugly side seems (to me) naive. If a child commits suicide because a group of immoral idiots decided to exercise their "freedom" and anonymity on the intangible web, than, to me, that is hideous. That doesn't mean I think we should actively regulate or place restrictions on the web (well actually I do, because it's a cop out to say you're just providing the facility. It's like if you provided a hotel and you knew one room was being regularly used for child rape, but hey you just own the hotel, you don't judge who stays in it). But anyway, it means that I am accepting that things aren't always black and white, that there is nuance and complexity to freedom, and that by siding with pure unadulterated freedom, by deciding to see the beautiful and reduce the ugly for your ideological purposes, is also wrong, if not more wrong, than limiting freedom.
The corrupt don't have such accommodating ideals, that's why they can take advantage of us moral all-accepting believers in pure democracy. So call in the vigilantes.
Also, maybe you should just wear shoes with better grippage so you can have your way with the slope.
Wow. When did you become Rorschach? Hurrm.
I went back and looked at my post and nowhere do I use the word "absolute."
I respect laws of libel/slander/defamation. If I post on this blog that one of my students has a criminal record, and it isn't true, I should face civil consequences. You can't just make crap up.
I respect that you can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
I respect that an adult theater can be restricted by zoning ordinances not to be next door to a elementary school.
I respect that you can't follow someone for days yelling "Look, everybody, that guy's a real f%@#cker!"
There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech anywhere. That would lead to anarchy.
But all of the above are crimes against others as set forth by other laws and regulations. None of the above constitute prior restraint. It is acceptable to have time, place and manner regulations. It is content that must be protected.
As for the web abuse that causes suicide, of course it's hideous -- just like the Klan marching is hideous. But does that mean we require that our legal names be posted on all web entries. Because some individuals behave horribly -- we might as well outlaw cars, or alcohol, just because of the heinous act of a drunk driver killing kids on a school bus.
Facebook can be cruel. So can gym class. Think anyone's ever killed themselves because of what happens in the gym showers.
But the point of my post was to simply suggest that the book raises these issues in a provocative way and that it made me think, and that it was therefore worth recommending to others.
There are complex issues involved. And I do play Devil's Advocate. But compromise of inalienable rights leads to tyranny, not to security. If that makes me an idealist, I can live with that. If you think idealism makes one per se "naive" then I'd rather be labeled as such and name call back at you, you CYNIC you.
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