In PLP 10 we were asked to read a book over the winter break. The book that was given to our class was called Little Brother. The book is set in present day and the main character is Marcus Yallow. Marcus is a 17 year old boy who lives in San Francisco. The idea behind the book is that there is a terrorist attack on the Bay Bridge in San Francisco and the transit system and many are dead. The DHS has taken Marcus and his friends into custody on the theory that Marcus has committed this terrorist crime against his country. DHS stands for Department of Homeland Security.
Finally Marcus and a few of his friends are released by the DHS but one is still missing. Marcus learns the DHS are spying on him so he uses echnology to try and stop it and to communicate with friends. They are fighting for their rights. Marcus talks to a reporter and gets the DHS raided and his friend set free.
After the class had finished reading the book we were given a list of words housed in the book and we had to chose one word or one segment of words and research them. The word that I chose was Electronic Frontier Foundation.The word is mentioned in chaperer 6 and 17 on pages 96 and 247. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed in July, 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet civil rights. The EFF provides funds for legal defense in court. The EFF was formed when John Perry Barlow was visited by the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the FBI for short. The FBI visited John in regards to the theft and distribution of the source code for a series of Macintosh ROMs. John felt that he was being treated unfairly by the FBI and their agents so after the agents left his house he went onto a website called The WELL and posted about the experience. Along with the book and research about EFF I had to relate EFF to the driving question for the unit that we are currently in. The question is How has technology acted as a disruption with its creation throughout history? Well the EFF is basically the disruption because the whole point of the organization is to stop harassment by the government through technology. The EFF is the disruption.
Overall while reading the book Little Brother, I learned a lot about technology, the way people look at the government and privacy rights. I would recommend the book Litle Brother to someone who is interested in futuristic technology books as well as spy mystery novels.
