categories:
- “computers”
- “life”
- “networks”
- “politics”
Greetings dear reader. Let me remind you of my gratitude for you: I’m first and foremost, one of y’all. I don’t pretend to be a writer, so your forbearance is treasured.
Now let me tell you about this new thing I got called a book. It’s paper, between two hard covers, with a binding. No batteries, wires, or pictures. But wait, there’s more...
My goal is to convey the awe I’m enjoying with this process, event, occasion. When you’re done, and you look at your personal awe-ometer think of mine as pegged. Like walking around the base of a loaded heavy-lift launcher at T-24hrs, Sagrada Familia, the VAB, Grand Canyon, or the hall just outside the gallery with the Mona Lisa (it’s walls are TILED with paintings, knees to ceiling.) Like alighting from a GT bike after enjoying 10% of its ability. Like walking around McCormick Place while the Manufacturing Technology or Plastics show is loading.
The book is Cory Doctorow’s “Attack Surface” and though I’m only just starting, it’s rolling. This is the 3rd of his Little Brother books, set in a world 20 minutes to the right, North, aft, and kersplxzides of ours, not so much “Future” as where surveillance capitalism’s costs are made transparent. It helps to have read the 1st 2 books not just for the characters but as primers for vocabulary and the concepts of how innocuous conveniences are ruining our liberties while making us think they’re enabling them.
This is the first book I’ve read in years. Despite the fact that I have ~500lbs of them, some have moved with me through 30 address-changes. Before my daughter was born, her mom and I would visit Powell’s in Hyde Park (Chicago, related to but not part of the Powell’s used-book empire in Portland, OR) or even the mall-chain bookstores every pay-period. We lived by the advice of Erasmus, buying books first then if we could, some food and clothes. Happy times. Then I got my first e-book; my memory is messing with me here, because I thought this would’ve been late-90’s but wikipedia leads me to believe it had to be the late-Oughts. That transition went fast, and I haven’t bought a book in very close to 20 years.
Don’t get me wrong, I read whenever possible. My partner has commented that I’m always in a screen at any moment; she’s quite adept at audiobooks but claims her consumption-rate is a fraction of mine. I love the St. Paul Public Library, they’re the bestest. I don’t miss bookstores, though I miss the frisson of selecting from them. The artificial scarcity of ebooks my library is forced to comply with makes selection either “oh well” (immediate availability) or “oh shit” (having multiple holds all come up at the same time.) Doctorow could do an hour out of this subject, easy.
When this new book was announced, the author also announced a novel distribution plan. In short, he corralled his fanbase into funding his toppling of the standard publisher/author model. He came within 1% of his goal that would’ve permanently altered book publishing. (Next time, for sure and 2x.) My reward for participation in this was a digitally-signed copy of the ebook, which is so cool I can hardly contain myself. I also received an invite to his virtual book-tour.* I bought a “ticket” to the 1st stop, to receive a copy of the book in exchange.
When the package arrived—my partner guessing correctly what it was, I was mystified—I opened it and …well, I kind of ran around the house a little. I had to show her, proclaiming how long it had been since I’d bought an actual book. I felt it’s weight, both less and more than I remembered, and then I opened it just to flip through. What happened next was probably foretold somewhere in a screen when I committed to paying for it, but I’d forgotten or never read it.
It was signed.
To me.
“In solidarity”
I’ve seen videos of author signings, it’s a production line. It’s absolutely amazing how systematic the process has become, the number and kinds of pens preferred, the minions who peel-flip and hand the books to the Author-themselves and whip-whisk-flurry to the other minion who folds-stacks. I’ve seen those piles and since shipping-and-receiving has been part of my work since I was 13, I’ve just had a silent prayer for the shipping-minions. And the last-mile, the delivery persons, hiking to put it in each address’s landing-spot. So I get that this is now a bit more of a mass-produced experience than Holmes getting Moriarty to sign his copy.
See above: walking around a loaded, ready-to-go heavy lifter waiting for its launch-window. Think of how rare that experience is because of the danger involved. Danger to the person (it’s full of explosives), danger to the launcher (a blown-off baseball-cap or dropped lens-cap would halt the launch). Think about the honor conferred to you receiving that opportunity. Think about how unbelievably serious the pre-visit safety-talk would be, how detailed they’d be.
Now think about an amateur in the crusade for humans’ digital-rights and information-freedom and informed appreciator of those with skills upon seeing that handwritten note in the front of an untapped adventure in both those fields. Are you getting there? Do you get both the little-boy fan-giggle along with the experienced-eye filling with wonder each time I pass that page? And I’m making a point of passing that page every time I open the book. If glances eroded ink, this embellishment will soon be faded.
Did you notice that we haven’t really gotten to the 1st page yet?
I started reading as an escape from the 2020 election, a situation where as always happens, the worst-case forecast can never be as bad as it actually turns out. I’m writing this on E+2 days, so I’ll expect someday to revisit this and laugh at my ignorance. So I’ll go to my general instantiation: we should never plan “worst case scenarios” because they always always always reinforce our personal narratives (See: Conspiracists and Preppers). The real-world “worst case” always has an element of unexpected, and you can’t include that in your planning. Because “unexpected.” That’s why I wish I could do more/better meta-planning for bad outcomes. Map out the paths to the present, list their failure-spaces, work to contain those. Instead of fantasizing of “what” could go wrong, worry about defending against “how”. Sorry, tangentialized there, let’s wrap it with this: My plan to avoid all news until Dec 8th’s end of the federal Safe Harbor hasn’t worked well, and I’m pretty stressed.
So I opened the book with strangely low expectations and even though I’d read the other 2 books, no idea where in the author’s universe I would pop. Oh boy, did it pop. I’m pretty sure the financial services company’s network test & cert lab was almost exactly like the one the book opens in. Minus the Soviet history and guards. And hoo-boy did I sympathize with working across the whole damned site to install one new thing: we had pretty poor documenting and terrible team interoperability in that place, so every new thing amounted to researching everyone else’s fiefdoms (past/abandoned ones are like landmines) to get the latest thing up and running for the latest fad.
I’ve just realized for the 50th time that I may’ve lost the mission here: I want you to leave with some share of the awe and pleasure I’m getting from an experience. “Joy shared is increased; Pain shared is lessened,” said Spider John Robinson. And this is a time where we need to share joy, to organize around our shared joys, to take the energy earned there to lessen the shared pain of those who’s voice harm and have highlighted harm we’ve done without thinking.
All that from a book. Just a book. A wonderful, marvelous, amazing book by a person who really knows his shit and has shared it both big—in the novel—and small—in his inscription of my copy.
I hope you’ll consider reading the book, I wish you will read all of Cory Doctorow’s books. I have a friend of such opposite beliefs that I shake my head at our friendship many times. But read Doctorow’s books and learned something he has. He’s still a firm believer in late-stage capitalism’s virtues, but he probably would describe me in the bitterest buzzwords of his chosen in-group. Anyway, he’s in this paragraph because I believe he’d echo my endorsement of the book’s adventure and it’s lessons. If you don’t wish to pay, get it from your library. Check out the physical copy if you’d like your privacy. The offline-time spent reading is beneficial. And there’s no more rabid fighter for privacy and information-freedom than a librarian. They’ve been at it a long time, you’ve never noticed this side of them, but ask or trust me: I met one of the University of Hawaii’s back in the 90’s and I was gobsmacked at the level he spoke. Not merely opposing book-banning, but the profound, structural crusade that information-freedom and privacy turn out to be 2 sides of the same coin.
Go.
Read.
Learn.
Love.
*Too many parentheses, a sign of poor self-edting. This is a worse sign, midstream adoption of an alternative. Herein, note to future selves: in the time of COVID, travel and gatherings curtailed, an author’s cities-tour to read and promote her work has been harmed. Doctorow, like most authors, adopted a virtual-tour strategy, he’s chosen to partner with local book stores. The first “stop” was The Strand in NY.
