Hey, St Louis readers! Looking forward to meeting you tonight at the first stop of my Pirate Cinema tour, at the St Louis County Library at 7PM! Next up, stops in northern and southern California, Lansing, Chicagoland, NYC, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto and Boston.
Running away to London, Trent falls in with a group of young, high-tech squatters and anarchists who begin a David vs. Goliath war against the establishment, hoping to free the Net for creative use by the common people. Doctorow, a noted free Internet advocate (and PW columnist), handles his topic with great passion, creating engaging and believably geeky characters who share his fervor for both the Web and the new forms of art and communication it has made possible.
Perhaps the most original theme, however, relates to the definition of creativity. Such a rethinking of this central and eternal trait of our species lies at the heart of this book, which strives to find a place in the over-regulated world for maximal expression of individual human spirit. When, midway through the book, Trent generously defines creativity in its baseline form as “doing something that isn’t obvious,” the book explodes into new philosophical realms. The outcome is less strident and melodramatic than Little Brother, more balanced and accepting of an imperfect world — while still holding aloft an idealistic torch.
It’s generally accepted that fussing with computers is a narrative buzzkill, yet Doctorow’s unrivaled verisimilitude makes every click as exciting as a band of underdog warriors storming a castle. It’s not exactly Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book (1971), but with its delirious insights into everything from street art to urban exploring to dumpster diving to experimental cinema, it feels damn close.
Rich characters, well-rounded — a success as a story. For computer-savvy kids who like to think.
I’m touring Pirate Cinema in the US and Canada through the month of October. Macmillan’s posted the full schedule, and there are stops coming in St Louis, the Bay Area, the LA area, Lansing, Chicagoland, NYC, DC, Edmonton, Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Toronto, and Boston. I hope to see you there!
Hey, St Louis, MO! I’m headed your way, for the kick-off of the tour for my latest YA novel, Pirate Cinema. I’ll be at the St. Louis County Library on Tuesday, October 2 at 7PM for an event hosted by Left Bank Books. There are 18 (!) cities on this tour, so be sure and check out the whole schedule. Next on the itinerary: Menlo Park, San Francisco, Berkeley, Pasadena, Redondo Beach — then back across the country to Lansing, MI, and then Chicagoland, New York, DC-area, Edmonton, Vancouver, Seattle, Toronto, and, finally, Boston. I hope to see you (and tell your friends!).
My latest Guardian column, “Automated calls, fraud and the banks: a mismatch made in hell,” reacts to the news that UK banks are using robo-call machines to check in with customers on possibly fraudulent transactions, and going about it in the worst way possible:
The banks, bless them, are only trying to prevent fraud, but this is a pretty silly way of going about it. For starters, there’s the business of calling up people and asking them to give you all the information necessary to prove that they are indeed a bank customer – all the information that a fraudster needs to impersonate that person at the bank, in other words. The banks have spent decades systematically conditioning us to give our personal information to fraudsters, which is a strange way to prevent fraud.
But at least this silliness had one saving grace: a fraudster can only make so many calls per day, and so the scope of losses from such a programme of bad security education is limited by the human frailties of con-artists.
Enter the robo-caller. The banks are now outsourcing their fraud prevention to computers that can make dozens of calls all at once, around the clock, fishing (or phishing) for someone who just happened to have made an unusual purchase and is thus willing to spill all his details down the phone to get it approved. Note that most of the categories of purchase that trigger false positives from fraud detection systems are also the sort of thing that customers are anxious to see go off without a hitch. The unusual and the urgent often travel together.
Automated calls, fraud and the banks: a mismatch made in hell
