Market Theocracy

Last night I sat up until dawn reading the free HTML version of Cory Doctorows’ fantastic 2008 young adult novel Little Brother. It is, like almost all of his work, available gratis from the man himself. Despite quite a difference in political outlooks, I have a great deal of respect for this guy, as well as admiration for his skill at both the craft of fiction and the rarer talent of coming up with and being able to get across a wealth of ideas both ingenious and complex. He also walks it like he talks it, his anti-copyright views not simple preaching but a practiced philosophy. Plus, he’s funny as hell and simply exudes a sort of hip, pleasant coolness that’s just charmin’ as all get out. It’s hard not to like the guy.

Plus, as Little Brother shows, our politics aren’t really that far apart. Not on the big ideas anyway. The main difference is that Doctorow still has a great deal of faith in the democratic system, America, and politics as a moral philosophy. And I have none whatsoever. Ah well.

Little Brother is the tale of a typical teenaged San Francisco geek in the extremely near future. Marcus Yarrow is a well adjusted, cheerful, very intelligent and happily anti-authoritarian kid who isn’t looking to hurt anyone and just wants to enjoy his life. He tries hard to please his parents and be a loyal friend. He has a thousand interests and hobbies. He has only one (sort of) enemy. Or so he thinks.

During a session of school skipping (in order to play a complicated online game),Marcus and his three best pals narrowly escape being killed by an explosive terrorist act. They luckily survive the explosion and the ensuing panic. They not so luckily happen to get caught by the third threat that day. Marcus just found out that he has a real enemy, and it’s one he shares with every man, woman and child on the planet: his own government.

Arrested as ‘enemy combatants’ and hied away to a mini-Gitmo, the three teens are treated to the post-911 carnival in all it’s terrifying, degrading splendor. Because of his innate rebelliousness and actual love of his country (he thinks he has ‘rights’ and is free), Marcus gets the worst of it. After several horrible days he and two of his friends are released, after being warned that they are ‘forever marked’ and that any word of their experience will bring them back into DHS’ tender clutches. The third friend, who was injured in the attack, is not released, and his fate is a frightening unknown.

The book then takes off like a rocket, as Marcus — his optimistic and cheerful worldview shattered — decides he’s not going to put up with it and basically declares a private war on Homeland Security.

And this is where the books true worth, Doctorows sly subversion, and the most welcome piece of mainstream coated rebellion in decades is revealed:

The rest of Little Brother is a breathless, entertaining, riotously energetic how-to-manual for digital revolution. Without slowing the pace or compromising the story quality, Doctorow explains — in plain language and with great enthusiasm — how your average teenager could begin and maintain an insurrection against the modern surveillance state using mostly off the shelf hardware and free software.

Seriously. I am not exaggerating. There are only two vaugely speculative elements involved, and neither are even improbable. In fact, the most important is currently being built by the Open Source community, a wonderful paen to fiction inspiring reality. Doctorow is amazingly in depth — he not only explains the how, but the why and (quite movingly) gives his young readers a historical and moral lesson on why dissent and revolt are not only excusable in a free society, but necessary. Heroic. A freakin’ DUTY.

Encryption, spoofing, cell formation, trust issues, organization, agitation, counter-espionage — even subtle hints on what to do when faced with chemical attack. All here.

Just as I said: A real anarchists handbook, that won’t get you maimed or killed. And the fact that Doctorow isn’t an anarchist means nothing. The techniques and technology of his revolution OS (heh) don’t care about ideology.

Were the problems with the book? Of course. I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed with the ending. But I understand why he wrote it the way he did. It’s almost the biggest damnation of all to a society that prides itself on freedom of speech. The meat of the book would have been useless if it had never seen the light of day. And the ending isn’t completely awful, it doesn’t shoot rays of sunshine out of its ass or anything. There are cold facts and hard truths to deal with.

I also have an admittedly silly reason to feel it shouldn’t be nominated for the Hugo it will more than likely win, one that has nothing to do with the books quality and everything to do with my science fiction snobbery: I just don’t consider the novel to be 100 percent SF. It’s more of a slimly speculative political thriller. But my definition of SF doesn’t run the world, nor do I expect it to. I’m just snobbin’.

Buy this book. And buy copies for every intelligent kid you know. Birthdays, Christmas, just-because-presents. Give them something meaningful to sink their teeth into. Spread the word and the ideal: to be an American is to be a dissident. It is to be a revolutionary, now and forever and that’s just fine.

That’s just fuckin’ fine!

Steven Brust has written a novel length Firefly story. A free download under the Creative Commons license.

Brust is a professional writer, very respected in SF/Fantasy circles.

My Own Kind Of Freedom

My review:

Overall, I’d give this (very short) novel an A-. The tone and voice of the characters are very nearly spot on, there are no major lapses in characterization from what we know and love, and the story abounds with the lovely interweaving of comedy, tragedy, action and pathos that made Firefly our favorite show.

Brust’s admitted socialist sympathies don’t really raise their idealogical head. He does what a writer should when tackling characters that have a life outside his own imagination and were created by the group effort of others: he allows them to be their own creations. It’s literally impossible to not imagine the actors in their respective roles. Brust’s style lends itself well to the Firefly ‘Verse — his clean, minimalistic prose and spare imagery complementing the atmosphere and sleek pace we are used to from the show. He intentionally (I assume) sticks to a very cinematic style, not overloading the reader with interior dialogue and thoughts. The story is told mainly in conversation that is light, bantering and entertaining.

Brust’s depiction of River is especially interesting and enjoyable. She is the only character that he truly goes into the head of — and that’s something most fans want, I think. Her prismatic, complex, damaged but brilliant perceptions and observations are a delight to read. He does not dispel the necessary aura of mystery around the character, he deepens and embroiders it with excellent detail.

But it is Mal’s story where the novel truly shines, especially the flashbacks of his time of war. They concern the transformation of the Browncoats from a decentralized, widely dispersed force of small units harassing their larger and richer foe into an attempt to mimic that foe with a centralized army and the bureaucracy that requires. This, the novel suggests, is the main reason the Independants lost.

My only real complaints with the novel is that Brust is a bit repetitious with his humor, and the action scenes are often somewhat muddled.

Some other minor nitpicks:

The Chinese slang is very much overused. In the show it was almost always possible to deduce the meaning from context. It is most of the time in the novel, but not always. Also, reading Chinese is different from hearing Chinese. What added an exotic, intriguing element to the show mostly comes across as a roadblock in prose.

Wash is shown to be a pilot for the Browncoats in the war. I’m pretty sure that the show inferred he had no role on either side.

These are minor complaints (my major minor complaint [ha!] would be a spoiler, so I refrain.) and in no way stop me from recommending My Own Kind Of Freedom to every Firefly fan, either obsessive or casual.

So, Castro has retired. He may even be dead. Hard to call with the information lockdown Cuba is justly famous for.

This is good news — or at least possibly good news — for Cuban people, both on the island and in the Diaspora. With the totemic visage of Castro gone, it’s quite likely that the Cuban government will undergo some seismic disturbances in the next few years. In truth, I think it was merely that old bastards longevity and ability to stay un-assassinated that let it hold out for this long.

Communist Nationalism never worked on a large scale, and Cuba’s relatively small population and the loyalty engendered by Us vs. The World is the only reason it lingered on there.

While it’s certainly possible that things could stay the same or get worse, I wouldn’t bet on it. I’d bet on a gradual but gaining speed erosion of both Communist ideaology, the embargo, and the tyrannical border paranoia.

Why? The simplest reason of all: the desire of politicians for wealth and power. The rulers of Cuba have pretty much exhausted the limits for both in their closed society. With Castro gone the largest stumbling block to milking the rest of the world for more has been removed.

Here’s hoping that I can post ‘Welcome back to the World, Cuba!’ very soon.

For all intents and purposes, I am back — with stories to tell.

I’ve been working on a long essay about my three month adventure on the raggedy edge, but have been having trouble wrapping the damn thing up. I wanted to re-start the blog with a bang, but I miss posting daily enough that I’ll have to be satisfied with a rousing Pop!

In the next few days I plan on posting the aforementioned essay, a prequel to Tessellation called Broke Circle, and another long essay on primitivism vs. progressionism that owes a debt of inspiration to William Gillis of the superb blog Human Iterations (linked handily on the sidebar there!) I’ll also be plugging my book Symbols Flow currently on sale.

Along with that will be my usual meandering thoughts on thisn’that, news both bad and good, book and movie reviews and all matter of other unseemly foofaral.

Glad to be back.

Hope you’re glad to see me.

-G.

Claire Wolfe is saying goodbye to blogging and active participation in online political rabblerousing:

Now it’s also time to put Wolfesblog into suspended animation — with thanks and fond farewells to my fellow blogistas, Debra, Ian, Penguinscareme, Silver, and Thunder.

But I’ve changed. After a whole lifetime of being “political,” I’m just not anymore — as I think has been apparent for quite a while.

I’ll miss her pithy, often sarcastic, always well observed posts on Wolfesblog. Many were the moments when a just-timed-right glance at that blog could cheer me up or put me in the mood to do something other than sit and be mopey.

But I’m happy that Claire is placing her attention where it truly belongs: on her good individual self. The only proper ‘Freedom Movement’, I’ve long maintained, is the movement of individuals away from the mindless masses. Away from group think and group feel. Into their own interests and wants and needs.

Claire has meant alot to me since the day we officially ‘met’ several years ago: she has been a supportive fellow writer, an example of a fellow writer who made a living from words without compromising her principles, and an unabashed champion of my own writing. She was, in fact, the first professional to ever tell me I had the stuff to make it in this madhouse of a vocation. She kindly wrote a flattering and interesting introduction to a collection of mine that will be released soon.

More importantly, she was there when I needed personal advice and plain, old fashion cheering up. She never failed to be my ‘Sister in liberty’, as she put it once.

I haven’t heard from Claire since I left TCF, but that’s not such a big thing. We were never daily chat pals or anything. But she knows where I am and how to get in touch. She also knows that if she needs anything, I’ll be there. And, soon, I hope to give her a hug and talk to her face to face.

Take care and keep in touch, Claire. Here’s a word from my favorite poet, to make the trail a little lighter:

THE ROAD AND THE END

Shall touch my hands and face.

— Carl Sandburg

I love you, sis.

[BBC NEWS STORY](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6987784.stm)

The TerraNet technology works using handsets adapted to work as peers that can route data or calls for other phones in the network.

When a TerraNet phone is switched on, it begins to look for other phones within range. If it finds them, it starts to connect and extend the radio network.

This is a pretty basic beginning to what I’ve called the Overnet in various stories and essays. Something like this could lead to large nodes of local nets being connected through convential tower/sat means to other nodes. All the while, less reliance on expensive to maintain towers and sat bandwidth means that prices fall. As prices fall the customer base increases, as the customer base increases connection and quality increases, prices fall and…

This is an example of using the free market for a win-win situation. No doubt the big telecoms and their gov nannykin will try to stop it.

Thanks to Jac for the linkage.

Mercy Please is almost 1200 years old. Today she is a long way from home.

For Nicole Faith, in the blessed hope that she may see such a world.

The connection and integration of the human species will not bring about utopia. It will not solve the problems of scarcity or violence. It will not turn human beings into angels. It will, in fact, reveal once and for all that human beings are not, never have been and never will be angels. That human beings are human: fallible, sometimes petty, often irrational, and always surprising.

And, quite often, entirely marvelous.

What connection and integration will do is to allow those marvelous qualities to manifest quicker and with greater regularity than ever before. It will allow those failures and petty actions and surprises to become apparent almost instantly and be dealt with more efficiently. It will allow us to never be separated or alone. It will allow our economy to grow and flourish.

Most importantly, it will make sure that those who demand power can never again separate us and force their will upon us in tiny groups that are easy to control. It will make lying an almost impossible art form. It will make education a simple organic process, available to all for time expended.

The tools to accomplish this exist, though they are currently bulky and rather expensive. The overall framework also exists: in a primitive and ridiculously complex form. Personal computers and the Internet are the beta versions of the integrated connection to come. Eventually we will stop sitting at our computers and communicating over bulky wires. We will no longer rely on centralized servers and third party routing. We will wear those computers and our communication will dance on the melody of invisible waves. Every user will function as their own server, and the routing will be chaotic, ever changing and on the fly.

The true net will be built from the bottom up on an encrypted basis. It will be individual-centric and a beautiful conflicting mass of standards and jury-rigged systems. The eventual protocols will not be administered from on high but will emerge from the vicious natural selection of Darwinian standards: the smallest, cheapest, sleekest and cleanest aps and tech will win.

The open source movement, the crypto-libertarian front, the shadowy fringes of file sharers and cyber bootleggers: these are the people who will build the overnet. They will be the people who first use it to disappear from the radar of the state. These will be the ghosts and phantoms of the coming digital revolution.

These will be the people who integrate human action and bootstrap the overnet. These are the people who will place a copy of the map of mankind into the hands of every soul who wishes for one.

The state is currently allowing this to happen, though they are retarding and slowing it as much as they possibly can. The reason they aren’t stopping it directly is that they suffer from the same lack of communication that bedevils the peons: they don’t communicate well enough to realize the vast danger it represents to them. By the time they possess the ability to do so, it will be too late. The peons will have it as well.

And the peons outnumber them. And can outthink them.

Once they have it, they will look upon the ’system’ with new eyes. They will wonder why they’ve trusted these foolish control freaks for so long. they’ll wonder how they could have ever considered something as nebulous and simple as ’society’ as their lord and master. How the excuse of ‘bettering’ society could ever be achieved through pain and theft and imposed misery. How those rancid objectives helped humans to communicate with each other. How those wars and divisions did anything to build the world.

When that happens, the State will be finished. It may go out with a spasm of violence, but it will indeed go out. The revolution will more than likely be fairly bloodless. What blood is spilled will be those control-freaks who simply refuse to relinquish power. When secession and non-compliance is met with violence, the revolutionaries will be forced to use violence themselves.

Thus freed, human society will become truly global and truly voluntary. The map of mankind will fill every nook and cranny of this planet. Eyes will be cast beyond, towards the other worlds around this sun and out to the stars. The connected human race, like a great choir, will need new arenas to fill with the song of human struggle. With the joy of structure. With the clean new lines of explored places, and adventures worth telling children in hushed voices.

We are the human race. We are the makers of maps. We will not be satisfied with an explored globe. It will be the vast uncharted edges that call to us in siren song. And we shall rush to them, as fools rush. We will die and fail and create legends.

Eventually, we will conquer the vacuum and spread the map of mankind across this galaxy and beyond.

This is our destiny.

It is a good destiny.

NEXT: You Are Here (III - Finale)

Mercy Please is 104, and today she receives news of a great tragedy.

But oh, how exciting as well!

NEXT: Integrating The Obvious (Human Action Goes Digital)

In the opening days of the 21st century, the scattered individuals of the human race find themselves at war.

This is not a war of guns and bombs, but of concepts old and new. Of ideas sacred and sacrilegious. Of the right to hold the keys to the kingdom.

Since the beginnings of the State and its unquestioned reign, the power of information has belonged to it and it alone. Uncounted are the tales of the State — in forms ranging from kings to popes to revolutionary councils — deciding the truth and worth of information. Religious dogma, scientific theories, the facts of the matter concerning knives in backs and hands washing each other.

In a world where knowledge can save lives or slit throats, those who control the information control everything. The key to keeping a society — a group of individuals united through communication lines — in check and under control is to control the information that they receive. It is no coincidence that the most intense era of state solidarity in history coincided with the same era that saw mass communication bottlenecked and heavily regulated by state agencies. When ‘media’ was a handful of newspapers and three national networks, building a consensus was a simple matter of releasing the proper information. With tight control of the media, governments could wage incredible wars of attempted genocide, burning cities and killing millions, all while presented their actions as a noble struggle of liberation and anti-conquest.

The ‘greatest generation’ was a generation fed lies and rose colored propaganda in newsreels and big budgeted Hollywood drama.

This facade began to crack during the Cold War, as news gathering technology allowed reporters to operate directly in the field and see things not meant for public consumption. Despite the fact that the eventual broadcast was still sanitized and controlled, the people gathering the news began to talk and tell stories. The proliferation of more and more news outlets — television, radio and newsprint — meant that those opposed to the governmental line (even if simply in preference to another governmental faction) had places to sneak their version of the truth into the mix.

From such hairline cracks do great fractures grow. Many are the tales of internal ideological struggle during the 60’s and 70’s as news outlets debated over covering the rapidly growing protest movement.

In the end, those debates mattered little. On the horizon were coming technologies that would make the elitist question of ‘what should we show the public?’ moot.

Cable and satellite increased the number of info sources vastly. Ironically, one of the boons of this was that the citizens of one language society now had access to the often conflicting reports of another language society. The geographical limitation that had caused the expansion of the social world to flounder was a facet in breaking the statist hold on information.

But those static and linear advances paled in comparison to the explosion of the modem and the Internet. When unleashed on the world, the new interactive media was nothing less than a popular revolution. In a few short years the entire world changed. The map of mankind became a truly global phenomenon.

But more than mere numbers was the simple fact that online communication was both individual and non-linear. A dozen conversations could be held at the same time, each participant being anywhere in the world. Connection was instant and ongoing. New contacts were made with chaotic, exponential speed.

No longer would individuals rely on the chosen and groomed purveyors of The Truth to tell them how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Instead, they’d go directly to the angels and query them as to the numbers of their last dance recital.

The dominance of static, official media was broken. Individuals could now range the map themselves, asking eyewitnesses to whatever event took their fancy.

The statist response to this was slow — and still ongoing. It does not like it but — due to the speed and decentralized nature of the phenomenon, and it’s own glacial pace and hidebound mindset — there was very little it could do about it.

But the original generation of online cartographers was not the true worry to Those Who Once Controlled The Truth:

Their children were.

NEXT: You Are Here (II)