Some reflections

Essay – Little Brother

The novel Little Brother is written by Cory Doctorow and is a sci-fi teen’s book. The book is some kind of parody or rewritten version of the book 1984. The tittle is even a parody in the 1984 books “Big Brother”. Big Brother sees you is used sentence in 1984 which Doctorow plays a lot with throughout this novel. Some days ago my girlfriend was on my telephone and read my text-messages, without my permission. This made me of course furious because she didn’t have any right to read my private messages. “if you don’t have anything to hide it shouldn’t be problem” she said. But, they’re private right? Where does the line between privacy and security go? A philosopher some years ago stated “You never know what freedom is before you have experienced not to have freedom” (roughly translated)

The problem in my case is that when you suddenly go reading something out of context you don’t get the whole context behind it. This is also some of the problems that are taken up for discussion and after-though in this novella.
The book takes us through the happenings in the life of Marcus, a seventeen old computer fanatic who is a rebellion in the over surveillanced society he lives in. The date is set some years in the future which is not really mentioned directly in the book. But you still can get some hints like when Marcus tells us about the newest in computer and gaming technology.

Marcus and his friends is getting arrested and interrogated after a terrorist attack. From this point the book starts to get interesting. His freedom is taken away from him and it is at this point that the book is seriously taking up the problem with surveillance and “security” in the society. Marcus goes to a school where he is watch every single second. “We do not have the right to follow the students home, but the books they use can” (not 100% correctly quoted) the school board states. They have actually put tracking devices inside the books. The first day that Marcus goes to school after the attack and interrogation the school is even more “secure”, with more cameras and even stricter rules.
Some schools in Norway practice this even today. Watching every single tap on the keyboard of students, and using cameras at the school building. The reason for this the school states is “to make the school more secure and having control over the education”. As Marcus says somewhere in the book the internet is a black whole where people can go and do whatever they want. This is something I think that people need to function as normal human beings.

Some years ago I was in Rome (or London). Here they have a system which you can track yourself and watch how many miles with the bus and train you have taken and even see the route that you have taken. It becomes a map of where and almost what you have done during a day. This is going a bit too far for my taste, but perhaps we are in a revolution. Where more and more of our life’s goes by, or even in technology. Facebook is the largest community site on the planet. Here you can add friends and update what you have been doing in spare time. All this information is saved on a server. That means that a sever can know, what you have been doing, pictures of it, your relationship status and so on. All of our life’s become more and more like numbers on the screen.

The film Surrogate takes this to a whole new level. Here people have gotten robots to live they’re life. They can choose how to look and act in a “normal” life. Is this what is coming to? To be honest I don’t think so. At least not until a good amount of years have passed. But it is in that direction we are headed. Everything we do is getting tracked and noted. Lets take normal day for a middle-aged guy with the Earl. Earl wakes up, checks the computer, LOGGED. He takes his car for work and drives through a toll plaza, LOGGED. Later he feels to take a lunch in the local Chinese store and pays with the credit card, LOGGED. He then comes home and updates his Facebook status, LOGGED. Off course, the day you get raped and abducted you would appreciate that the police could use this info to find out where you are. But should we be willing to give up our freedom for our security?

“Evolution is an imperfect and violent process

A battle between what exist, and what is yet to be born

In each of these birth pains morality loses its meaning.

The question between good and evil

Reduced to one simple choice

Survive or perish”

This is a poem which I feel suits this topic extremely well. In my opinion we are in a revolution, which now can be looked at as imperfect time where we discus freedom and security all the time. Morality loses also its meaning regarding the control of people and that America especially, looks more and more like the control that the communist’s had over the East Berlin people. Just that today, people freely, but uninformed, do it themselves.