Armed with the original sources and the informed discussion about whether those sources are good ones, you can use Wikipedia to get an amazing education.
Beyond Wikipedia, there are some other sites you should really have a look at if you want to learn more about the material in this book. First Codecademy (www.codecademy.com), which contains step-by-step lessons to learn how to program, starting from no knowledge. You can even get them by email, one page at a time. While you’re chewing on that, check out the Tor Project (www.torproject.org) and find out how to run your own darknet projects. If you’re looking to use an operating system that lets you control your whole computer, down to the bare metal, then you want GNU/Linux. I like the Ubuntu flavor best (www.ubuntu.com). It runs on any and every computer, and is really easy to get started with. And if you have an Android phone, get jailbreaking! The CyanogenMod project (www.cyanogenmod.com) is a free/open version of the Android operating system, with all kinds of excellent features, including several that will help you protect your privacy.
Now, all this stuff is well and good, but only if the Internet stays free and open. If your country acquires the same awful censorship and surveillance used in China and Middle Eastern dictatorships, you won’t be able to get at this stuff and learn to use it. There are lots of threats to this freedom, and every country has groups devoted to stopping them. In the United States and Canada (and worldwide!) there’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org), where I used to work. In the UK, there’s the Open Rights Group (www.openrightsgroup.org), which I helped to found. In Australia, there’s Electronic Frontiers Australia (www.efa.org.au). In New Zealand, there’s Creative Freedom (www.creativefreedom.org.nz). There are also global groups like Creative Commons (www.creativecommons.org) and groups with lots of local affiliates like The Pirate Party (www.pp-international.net).
There are lots of thinkers on this stuff whom I have a lot of respect for. If you want to know about teens, privacy, and networked communications, read danah boyd’s blog (www.zephoria.org/thoughts). For more on Anonymous, 4chan and /b/, read Gabriella Coleman’s blog and papers (http://gabriellacoleman.org/blog/). For the future of news and newspapers, read Dan Gillmor (www.dangillmor.com), especially his excellent recent book, Mediactive (www.mediactive.com). For the relationship of leaks to the news, follow Heather Brooke (www.heatherbrooke.org) and read her history of WikiLeaks, The Revolution Will Be Digitised. To understand how the net is changing the world, read Clay Shirky (www.shirky.com), and his latest book, the kick-ass Here Comes Everybody. If you want to fight for free and fair elections in America without undue influence from power and money, read Lawrence Lessig (www.twitter.com/lessig) and join Rootstrikers (www.rootstrikers.org), where activists are making it happen.
Finally, if you want to understand randomness, information theory, and the strange world at the center of mathematics, run, don’t walk, and get a copy of James Gleick’s 2011 book The Information. It’s where I got all the good stuff about Gödel and Chaitin from.
There’s plenty more—more than would ever fit between the covers of a book, so much that you need the whole net for it. I write on a daily website called Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net), where I keep up to date on the latest stuff. I hope to see you there.
ALSO BY CORY DOCTOROW
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction
(with Karl Schroeder)
Essential Blogging
(with Rael Dornfest, J. Scott Johnson, Shelley Powers, Benjamin Trott, and Mena G. Trott)
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
A Place So Foreign and Eight More
Eastern Standard Tribe
Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present
Little Brother
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
Makers
With a Little Help
Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century
The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
Pirate Cinema
About the Author
Cory Doctorow is a coeditor of Boing Boing and a columnist for multiple publications, including The Guardian, Locus, and Publishers Weekly. He was named one of the Web’s twenty-five “influencers” by Forbes magazine and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. His award-winning YA novel, Little Brother, was a New York Times bestseller. Born and raised in Canada, he currently lives in London.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HOMELAND
Copyright © 2013 by Cory Doctorow
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Yuko Shimizu
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
A Tor Teen Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3369-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781466805873 (e-book)
First Edition: February 2013
Homeland Page 37
