Here's my review of Larry Lessig's new book Remix and Cory Doctorow's cyber-thriller Little Brother. An extract:
Doctorow's America is essentially the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld regime, after the Next Big Attack. Their panoptical paranoia provides him with many opportunities to show the ingenuity of the digital hipster who says "yes we can" to any subversive opportunity computers, software and networks can bring. For Doctorow, "little brother" means sousveillance versus surveillance – the eternal vigilance of the netizen in defence of the principles of their Republic. For Lessig, the "little brothers" are Amazon and Google, recording our online activity. He seems to trust them to use that information for purely commercial purposes, and not surrender it to a watchful state.
I am more comfortable with Lessig's belief that policy, whether digital or otherwise, can ultimately be conducted with reason and responsibilty. But I fear that Doctorow's explosive scenario will be the real test of Obama's attitude to the networked empowerment that has, to some degree, brought him to office. What will his ten million do if, one day at the terminal, "Yes We Can" becomes "No, You Can't"?
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