I've read the novel before, and noticed something on the second reading. Vanessa/Van is mentioned in close proximity to Van Ness Ave (Van Ness A), and I wondered if four kids at the beginning had names inspired by pieces of San Fran. Darryl Place, Marcus Garvey Square and San Jose Ave perhaps? I wasn't sure if that was just a happy coincidence or not. If it is deliberate, I was wondering what the significance of the names were.

Also, I noticed a typo in the intro of Chapter 11: "Duane Wilkins. Duance's a real science fiction fan..." Duance should be Duane I imagine. :)

Thanks a lot for the novel. It's been a pleasure reading it a second time.

Thank you.

Thanks!
Sebastian

Here's the thing: techie privacy-activists (in San Francisco they're mostly white or assimilated Asian, and mostly male) are smart, articulate, and know a lot about the things they know about, but to me (a formerly homeless, politically aware Black woman who happens to have the fortune and the mis-fortune to live in the ever-more-heavily gentrified Mission district, SF), they really seem to be afflicted with blinders when it comes to how their personal privilege and the attitudes that result from it exacerbate the very problems they are up in arms against. For instance: the narrator of the book ( the hero of the story who ostensibly represents the techno-geek ideal) makes quite a few references to homeless people not as people, but as hygenic problems similar to garbage (they "smell like toilets"); he dehumanizes poor people with stereotyping (walking down 24th street and mission past all the "weirdos", ie, "intense" Mexican men, drug users, etc); he sums up all the kids his age who may not have tech as a hobby but are still oppressed by the judicial system as the "real crinimals" (as opposed to himself) that he has to be around in the Mission district juvenile group home. And the only people of color in the story that get lots of play are the two girls who want him (how male-white-fantasy-month-oh-wait-that's-every-month stereotypical is this ---the hot Asian alterno-chick and the sexually uninhibited Mexican girl----?????).

I kept hoping that somewhere in the story there would come a revelation for the narrator that the dehumanizing that he habitually handed out to people in "his" city who are not like him is the same kind of crap that DHS uses to justify torturing him and his friends to the public he is trying to reach, and that the so - called "bad element" who live in places like the TL are the ones who are at the razor's edge of oppressive city, state, and federal gov't ALWAYS, and that it is people like HIM who ignore what happens to them who give the oppressors tacit permission to continue their bullshit until *surprise!* the shit trickles up enough for the middle class to start to feel it (fingerprinted to be able to have access to shelters? Why not? Everyone knows homeless people are criminals, they should be controlled! Wait… what do you mean I have to take a pee test every month at work and I’m on the no-fly list if I object to being anally probed at the airport search???). Sadly for me and the rest of your readers, especially the young ones, this epiphany never occurs.

There are exactly two scenes that gave me a little hope that maybe you were writing Marcus as a typical privilege-geek with regard to social conscience: first was the one where Jose-Luis tells Marcus that he’s not going to help him because people-of-color are not protected by white-skin privilege. I was praying that maybe you would use that as a jumping off point for the narrator to reflect a little on how his own privilege and that of his parents and friends paid into the system that was oppressing him now, but… no. Then the next scene was toward the end when the narrator notes that almost everyone held had been black or brown: I was thinking, “Ahhh, here it comes, he’s going to elaborate on the responsibility of people with more privilege to fight for and with those who are targeted more because of their race, or class, or background…” but no. Jose-Luis telling Marcus he could not continue was exciting for me because at that point in the book, I was starved for any reference to any truth that would reflect MY experience with these issues, but later on I started feeling like it was a cop-out on your part. After all, Jolu’s character, had he stayed involved, could have been a bridge for Marcus to get viewpoints on liberation struggle that maybe could widen his white, middle class, SF-suburban viewpoints. Jolu, like many people of color who are talented at assimilating, maintains life and friends that are separate from his white friends. I was hoping this would be a way for the Marcus character to build alliances with people who were also into liberation movement but who were not like him, not techie or with-money or kind-of ignorant of liberation cultures before 1968.

But no.

All-in-all, despite the really cool and informative tech stuff, I was disappointed with the book, but it was a pretty familiar disappointment (I read a lot of white-male spec/sci/fi dudes). After all, why should you (another white-male spec/sci/fi dude), who are not a person of color or seem to be very economically marginalized, care about the issues I’ve just raised enough to work them out in your book? Why should you even be more than cursorily aware of them?
Which is my point. I wish you techie-privacy-activist-digital-frontier bastards and your sicon valley millionaire foundation backers could just try a LITTLE harder to inject some grassroots social justice into your causes. And I don’t mean one-sided Digital-Divide stuff, either (“wow, if we could just get all those housing-project-dwellers ONLINE, they could join OUR communities and we could all be on each others’ Fbook pages!”). Ah, hell, maybe I’m not being fair to you, Doctorow. I’m only going on this one book.

You get what I’m saying, though.

Cory you're the best!

The book is simply a contemporary exposé of the dangers of having a powerful Department of Homeland Security (CIA, FBI, ϟϟ, MI5, KGB) by whatever name, superficially written for young adults, which for some strange reason actually means teens. And, it is about how an individual can indeed change a status quo. All that is required are courage, intelligence and education. Its message to teens (and all of us) is, "you can make a difference"; you can stand up to the powers that be and win.

"We recognize, however dimly, that greater efficiency, ease, and security may come at a substantial price in freedom, that law and order can be a doublethink version of oppression, that individual liberties surrendered, for whatever good reason, are freedoms lost." - Walter Cronkite, preface to the 1984 edition of George Orwell's '1984'."

I have a good idea of how useless this "safer security" is. I am myself a senior in high school, and I've had to deal with the crap since seventh grade. Our school has metal detectors installed at every possible enterance, video cameras in every classroom, and security guards who would frisk you as soon as look at you.

The one piece of security that irks the most students is easily the school's network server. This server has every type of snoopware you've ever heard of, and then some; it's not unheard of for a computer to lock down because some freshman let their mouse hover on the Minesweeper shortcut for too long. The internet filtering is a joke; last year, they blocked Wikipedia.

After reading Little Brother, I had a very stronge urge to pay them back for all of the headaches I've experienced. I went into a hacking frenzy, kept anonymous by my new favorite program, TOR. Early last week, I set my creation loose through the network. In the next few days, the network was crashing left and right; I don't think the tech guys slept all week.

I couldn't help but smirk when the news was announced last Friday. My little program had damaged the network so severely that they had to scrap the whole thing. It'll take them at least a year to get anything new in its place.

Thank you, Cory, for inspiring me to spread a little more freedom in this world that needs so much more of it.