Homeland

Homeland

Cory Doctorow

I wanted to write about Homeland for a couple of reasons.

·         First, I loved Little Brother, and Homeland is the sequel to that widely-praised book. (And did you see my signed copy?? ).

·         Second, I think the issues that Doctorow discusses in both books (and on his awesome website, craphound.com, and his tumblr, mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/ and via his twitter feed: @doctorow) are important.  Technology, privacy, surveillance, authority, intelligence…. These subjects collide and intermingle and transform as you read.

Homeland picks up the story of Marcus Yallow, gutsy geek protagonist of Little Brother, as he becomes involved in a Wikileaks / Edward Snowden-type situation:  he is given millions of pages of digital documents that detail government and corporate corruption.  Should he release them all?  Some of them? All the while, of course, there are local and federal agencies trying to find the documents – and find Marcus. It’s a great game of cat and mouse that will almost certainly piss you off if you believe in personal freedom and the openness of the internet.  Some of it will sound like conspiracy theory until you read about the latest NSA exposé…. 

Doctorow is probably the geekiest novelist I have ever read, and I say that with all respect! Reading Homeland I encountered treatises on a variety of tech / geek subjects.  Here’s a partial list of the subjects that Doctorow discusses and that sometimes sent me to Google:

·         Burning Man

·         cold-pressed coffee (which I have to try!)

·         3-D printing techniques

·         drones (or UAVs)

·         HERFS

·         “astroturf” political movements

·         keyfiles

·         darknet sites

·         BitTorrents

·         mic checks

·         and more

I have a lot to learn about these issues, I know.  But after I have been reading Doctorow, I feel both smarter and more curious. That's a good reading experience.

Doctorow makes most of his books available as free downloads at his craphound site.   He practices what he preaches about the availability of “content” and freedom of information.  He really seems concerned about the tensions between personal freedoms and over-reaching government control. 

All of this is why it is especially poignant that he has an afterword in Homeland from Aaron Swartz, a tech genius (by most accounts) and innovator (helped to develop RSS feeds and co-founded reddit) who had similar concerns about issues of surveillance, privacy and technology.  Tragically, Swartz killed himself while awaiting trial for illegally downloading a large number of scholarly articles from M.I.T.   There’s more information here and elsewhere, but know that when the hard-cover edition of Homeland was published on February 5^th, 2013, Swartz had been dead for only a few weeks.  Seeing his comments in Homeland was affecting and chilling, honestly. Swartz ends his afterword by challenging his readers to “change the system” and offering, in his final words: “Let me know if I can help.”  It is ridiculously sad that his offer, which included his email address, could never be honored.

 Swartz was awaiting trial for trying to “free information,” and Doctorow writes about the myriad decisions weighed by people – including Marcus Yallow -- who have access to classified information, information that may have been obtained legally or illegally.  If any of these subjects interest you, I can recommend Little Brother and Homeland without reservation.