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3-2010 The aH cker and the Hawker: Networked Identity in the Science Fiction and Blogging of Cory Doctorow Robert P. Fletcher West Chester University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
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Recommended Citation Fletcher, R. P. (2010). The aH cker and the Hawker: Networked Identity in the Science Fiction and Blogging of Cory Doctorow. Science Fiction Studies, 37(1), 81-99. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.wcupa.edu/eng_facpub/3
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RobertP. Fletcher
The Hackerand theHawker: NetworkedIdentity in theScience Fictionand Bloggingof Cory Doctorow
Introduction.In 1842 Charles Dickens undertooksomething of a book promotiontour in Americaduring which, according to PeterAckroyd, heemphasized the democratic spirit of his writings, as if uniting himself with his audience,and then launched into a pleafor international copyright, using the spectreof a brokenand exhausted Walter Scott as anexample of a writerwho was unjustlydeprived of his rightful income. (350) Despiteinvoking the ghost of the most popular novelist to precede him, Dickens' s attemptto bringthe Americansaround to a sense of fairplay - while not appearingtoo materialistic- brought him a lot of grief.Not only were his criticismspoorly received in thepress, but his nextnovel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44),also suffereddisappointing sales on bothsides of the Atlantic. Fastforward to 2008. Anothernovelist with the initials CD. is lecturingand writingabout democracy, culture, and copyright on both sides of the Atlantic, but thistime the writer is arguingagainst the extension of copyrightowners' rights over textsthrough a revisionin the law and warningof the use of digital technologyby corporations to exercise that centralized control. For several years Canadiansf novelist Cory Doctorow spoke against the US DigitalMillennium CopyrightAct (DMCA) and DigitalRights Management (DRM) softwareas a representativeofthe Electronic Frontier Foundation; in 2007 hetaught a graduate courseabout the history of copyright at theUniversity of Southern California; and bothon a popularblog,
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 82 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 37 (2010) identity,we can takeDoctorow as a harbingerof thenovelist in a networked world.If my connection between Dickens and Doctorow seems overblown given the limited,if growing,popularity of the latteras a novelistor celebrity, Doctorow's textsmay nevertheless be analogousto Dickens's earlynovel, The PickwickPapers (1836), in howthey preview the shape of things to comein the productionand dissemination of novels. In theremainder of thisessay, I will showhow an overridingconcern with openaccess has cometo dominate his fiction. This is especiallytrue of his recent work,such as thestories that comprise the collection Overclocked (2007) andthe young-adultnovel Little Brother (2008), fictionsthat explicitly take the social controlof networked identities as theirprimary, indeed their pedagogical, subject. Justas muchof what made Dickens innovative was alreadypresent in Pickwick, however,I will arguethat the conflicts of Doctorow's mostrecent work were alreadythe focus of his less didacticfirst novel, Down and Out in theMagic Kingdom(2003). The Bloggeras Novelistand the Work as Assemblage.In a February2008 Guardiancolumn, Doctorow discussed how, in thepast few decades, the idea of copyrighthas morphedinto the notion of "intellectualproperty": Fundamentally,thestuff we call "intellectual property" isjust knowledge - ideas, words,tunes, blueprints, identifiers, secrets, databases. This stuff is similarto propertyinsome ways: it can be valuable, and sometimes you need to invest a lot ofmoney and labour into its development torealise that value.... But it is also dissimilarfrom property inequally important ways. Most of all, it is not inherently "exclusive."Ifyou trespass on my flat, I can throw you out (exclude you from my home).If you steal my car, I cantake it back (exclude you from my car). But once youknow my song, once you read my book, once you see my movie, it leaves my control.Short of a roundof electroconvulsive therapy, I can't get you to un-know thesentences you've just readhere. ("Intellectual Property'"; emphasis in original) As a memberof
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HACKERAND THE HAWKER 83 interdependencyof machineand humanin a systemon the other- bothare subjectsthat inform the conflicts of his sciencefiction. Inher various works on electronic textuality and so-called posthuman identity, N. KatherineHay les emphasizesjust such a linkbetween the material specificity oftexts and concerns about embodiment (How WeBecame, passim; My Mother 144). She analyzes,for example, how Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl (1995), a hypertextnovel that revises Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), unearthsnot onlythe supposedly discarded parts of the original story, but also "thoseaspects oftextual production that were suppressed in theeighteenth century to makethe literarywork an immaterialintellectual property," thereby valorizing the "fetishizedunique imagination" of the (male) Romanticartist (My Mother 147). Accordingto Hayles, electronic texts such as Jackson'sresurrect a concept of the "Workas Assemblage,a clusterof relatedtexts that quote, comment upon, amplify,and otherwiseintermediate one another"(105). The authorof the hyperlinkedtext is also transformedfrom bounded, unique individual into a function(à la Foucault)or a dispersed,patchworked, or versioned subject akin to Doctorow'snetwork-dependent blogger. In "How I Learnedto StopWorrying andLove thePanopticon," while considering the significance of Google's search technologyand archival practices, Doctorow again acknowledges the patchworkedsubjectivity of the blogger and winds up musingabout the nature of materialembodied existence and the traces left by writing. The bulkiness of print storagehas alwaysforced archivists to be selectiveabout what gets saved, but withthe cheap and compactstorage of "words-as-bytes,"nothing need be forgotten: Thisis a goodthing, but it's also a painin the ass. Our embarrassing excesses, drunkenrants, typos and brain farts and flames no longervanish into our sub- consciences[sic], but rather hang around like embarrassing relatives, undeniably ours,with us forever. There'san upside,of course.The enduringpresence of ourpublicly stated positionsacts as an accountabilitysystem, making us ownup to our errors and perhapsencouraging us to thinkcarefully before putting our fingers on our keyboards.("How I Learned") If,as he putsit, "in a worldof degradable storage, replicating copies is thesurest way to guaranteelongevity" ("How I Learned"),it is also a way to makesure errorspersist (perhaps even multiply,as bibliographersrue) and therebybring themselvesto our attention. The mostperfect copy is notthe same as theoriginal, and thatcan be a good thing.Multiple copies meansmultiple versions, which meansdifferent texts to read and differentperspectives on experience,which meansa less certainbut a richerunderstanding, even if we are bereftof an Ur- text. These valuabletraces of differenceare evidenceof whatGray Kochhar- Lindgren,borrowing from Antonio Negri, calls spectrality , an uncanny "force that displacescertainties" in a worldof "technologies," Kochhar-Lindgren's term for thedream of a worldidealized through technology (2). The ghostand the specter are signifiersof a "radical Unheimlich"(2), "phantomtraces like electron shadows"(3), or figuresfor an elementof the"incalculable" in an otherwise
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 84 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 37 (2010) rationalizedworld. Spectrality, according to Kochhar-Lindgren, is all aroundus; indeed,it is "themedium in which,and as which,we exist"(2). Spectersof the Novelist. In both his novels and his networked identity, Doctorow exemplifiesthe prevalence of the specter, the ghost, or the version in a networked world.As I willshow, his post-cyberpunk sfoften deals in tropesof replication and degradation,simulation, feedback, and mutation.But such unruly textual/biological/computationalprocesses also surfacein his writingand publishingpractices. As mentionedearlier, simultaneously with book publication he publisheshis fiction online under a CreativeCommons license, allowing free downloadsand redistributionof his novels and storiesfor non-commercial purposes.He also podcastsvirtually everything he writesand says in public (which,considering his former job as outreachcoordinator for the EFF, hasbeen a lot).After the print publication of two of his novelsand one ofhis shortstory collections,he broadenedthe CC licensefor his first novel, Down and Outin the Magic Kingdom,allowing people to make alterationsto the text(while still prohibitingcommercial uses), and he has publishedthree more novels and a secondstory collection in the same manner.He treatshis own texts,in other words,as whatHayles terms "assemblages" to be instantiatedover and over again indifferent configurations, whether that means an individualreader's experience ofthe story, an emailserialization, a comic book version, a BrazilianPortuguese translation,ora podcastdramatization. For Doctorow, a reader'sinteraction with his textis a valuedcompliment: I lovethe different [podcast] adaptations ofthe book - it'samazing to hear my wordsread by so manydifferent people, with so manydifferent choices about howto dramatize it.Often, the reading isn't how I heardit in my own head when I wroteit, which is cool - it'swild to hear how your own words sound to someone else.("Full-cast audio") On theother hand, in a Forbes.comarticle Doctorow is also quickto assert thatneither he norhis publishers are "patchouli-scented info-hippies who believe thatinformation wants to be free"("Giving It Away"). Indeed,he repeatedly stresseshis entrepreneurial orientation to writingin an electronicage, a timefull of distractions,textual and otherwise,when, he believes,novelists must do whateverthey can to attractan audience.Doctorow' s platformsas blogger, journalist,and cyber-activisthave come in handyhere, and he is notshy about mentioningawards or nominations and offering autographed copies of his fiction forsale at thesame time that he is givingthe texts away. He consciouslymakes use of sf s "organizedfandom," whom he sees as "intrepidpromoters" of his post-cyberpunksf, citing the "high correlation between technical employment and sciencefiction reading." But he also firmlybelieves that "you sure can't force a readerto pay for access to informationanymore," and that, therefore, as reading narrativesin non-codexforms becomes more common, novelists will "haveto figureout how to chargefor something else." His optimismabout this state of affairsis informedby a sophisticated,ifflamboyantly expressed, sense of reading, authorship,and the history of the book: "The goldenage ofhundreds of writers who lived offof nothingbut theirroyalties is bunkum.Throughout history,
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HACKERAND THE HAWKER 85 writershave reliedupon day jobs, teaching,grants, inheritances, translation, licensing,and other varied sources to makeends meet." Doctorow enthuses that "theInternet is a literaryworld of writtenwords. What a finething that is for writers,"and he insiststhat "giving away e-books sells printed books." Two yearsafter Down and Oufs appearance,The Book Standard printed an articleon thepublishing experiment to providefree e-texts, which noted that Down and Out in theMagic Kingdomhad sold "morethan 10,000 copies, as reportedby Nielsen BookScan," a figurethat compares favorably with other first sf novels,according to PatrickNielsen Hayden, Doctorow' s editorat Tor; he claimsthat "most first- time sci-fi novels sell between 2,500 and 5,000 copies - if theauthor is lucky"(Weinberg). In "GivingIt Away,"Doctorow reported that therehad been700,000 downloads of Down and Outas of December2006 and TorBooks hadissued six printings. He seems,at thevery least, not to have been hurtby his unconventional wish to provide open access to his texts on theInternet and he has continuedto use suchinnovative networked means to promotehis books,such as allowingDown and Outto be partof a "DailyLit"reading group at thesocial networkingsite Twitter.com. Most recently he has contractedwith Zipidee,an onlineretailer, to markethis Young Adultnovel LittleBrother throughdistribution ofa widget,an embeddable content sample that can be shared virally. If Doctorowis indeedlike Dickensin his notablemerging of theroles of novelistand entrepreneur, I would argue that an open-source,hacker ethic at least partlyshapes his attitudetoward his worksand theirlives online.2 That ethic is tested,however, when the textual ghosts that escape his controlare no longer merelybibliographical but become biographical.An extendeddebate on Wikipedia,"the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,"about how successful Doctorowhas been as a novelisthas made the biographicalentry on "Cory Doctorow"a conspicuousappearance of thenovelist's specter, as well as a test ofhis tolerancefor the instabilities of both e-texts and postmodern subjectivity. Because thisonline encyclopedia allows anyoneto become an editorand to changeentries, it (like the blog genre) has become virtually synonymous with the info-anarchyofthe digital realm. For those who revel in the chaos of the Internet, Wikipediaconcretizes certain non-authoritarian, open-access publishing ideals not verydifferent from those Doctorow espouses in hisjournalism and his blogging aboutcopyright and "digital rights management"; for more conservative voices, likecertain academicians and (rather ironically, given its own 2003-04 scandal) TheNew York Times, Wikipedia can represent the chicanery fostered by the often unauthorizedand unvetted process of online publishing.3 The Wikipedians believe thattheir policies of providing readers (and thereby potential editors) with access toan entry'shistory and the discussion about it ensure that eventually a "neutral" or "objective"point of view on each subjectwill develop; along the way, however,the "edit wars" on a topic can make fora contentiousversioning process.Doctorow has been involvedin at leasttwo episodes where content or linksin an entryhave been repeatedly added, removed, and reinserted by editors withdifferent perspectives, but I will focushere on theconflict over his own biography.
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In May 2003 a basic biographywas postedon thesite; it providedfactual informationabout his birthplaceand residence,his job forthe EFF, and his publicationsto date,including his experimentwith the CC license and free downloads.4For several months, minor edits were made to correctsimple errors and updateinformation. Starting in September2004, however, a seriesof users beganto addcommentary tothe page aboutDoctorow's success, or lack thereof, as bothartist and entrepreneur.On 25 September,for example, an anonymous contributorasserts that Down and Outhas "soldapproximately 7,000 copies and seemedto demonstratethe viabilityof freemedia. However," the same user continues,"his subsequentefforts have not achieved the same criticalor commercialsuccess despite generous publicity and free downloads" (02:00, 25 Sept. 2004 200.45.71.40). On the nextday, anothercontributor deletes the (unreferenced)sales figurein favorof an even murkierone and toughensthe assessment: [Subsequentrevelations have shown that sales of the novel were far lower than expected,numbering only in the thousands inhardback and paperback combined. Criticallyand commercially, Doctorow's subsequent efforts have fallen even lowerdespite generous publicity and free downloads. (03:40, 26 Sept.2004 218.188.8.182) On 29 October,yet another anonymous user emends the last claim about later publications,asserting that they have "garnered lukewarm reviews and failed to earncommercial success despite massive publicity and free downloads" (02:51, 29 Oct. 2004 195.61.146.130).In sum, these unfriendlycritics convey in increasinglyharsh terms the impression that Doctorow is a mediocreor even failedwriter. By 10 November,one moreanonymous contributor has stakeda claimin the process,leaping to the novelist'sdefense by substitutingan entirelynew commentarythat reverses the judgmentson the success of the publishing experiment: Doctorow'sfirst novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, is evidence of the viabilityof free media because it achieved commercial success despite having beenoffered for free online. The book outsold all expectations,selling twice as wellas his publisher anticipated and outselling other first novels published by new sfwriters that year. Thesystem has worked even better for his subsequent books.... (19:56, 10 Nov. 200484.9.22.44) Curiously,four minutes later, Doctorow himself enters the fray with some minor editing,and he helpsto revisethe entry during November and December2004, inaddition to asking for "reverts" when anonymous users reinsert the material he findsto be inaccurate.Doctorow's extensive contributions eventually raise concernsamong other participants inthe process, who point to Wikipedia' s policy discouragingpeople from writing about themselves. In responseto an assertion thathe becamea Wikipediansimply to edithis own bio, Doctorow shoots back:
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Itmay be that a personis incapableof being neutral on the subject of his own bio; neverthelesswhen it comes to factual questions (e.g., how well a bookhas sold), thereshould be noquestion of bias: either the book sold or it didn't. I didn'tcreate my Wikipedia account solely to editmy entry; like many Wikipediaeditors, I created my Wikipedia account because I saw an entryI wantedto correct. There is everypossibility that I willsubsequently find other entriesto edit (I've done some minor edits to other entries already). It's incorrect to say thatmy account was createdsolely to editthis entry; it was merely initially*created to do so. (12:52,12 January 2006 [GMT]) Doctorow had pointed out the subjectivejudgment implicit in others' characterizationsofhis novel's "success," but here he glossesover the evaluative natureof his own phrase, "how well a booksold." Eventually, he takesa backseat in theediting, and othercontributors take over the job ofpolicing the bio (with one,for example, exercising a "revert"when someone else has inserted"self- promoting"before "novelist" in theentry's opening sentence), and forthe last coupleof years there has been a lotof editing and a livelydebate about how much andwhat kind of criticism is appropriateto this biographical entry. As ofAugust 2009, the versioncurrent presents the factsabout his novels' CC-licensed publicationwithout evaluations of successor failure. Whatinterests me about the episode is Doctorow's response- notso muchto thenegative descriptions of himself or his workas to theprocess itself. Though he fightsstrenuously to presenthis version of himself on thepage (or screen),he does notreact against the textualization of his identityper se or thefreedom contributorshave to edit it. Rather, he maintainshis faith in a collaborativeethic facilitatedby textualnetworks, including ventures beyond his controlsuch as Wikipedia,which, in a message-boardposting at Making Light, a blogco-edited by Patrickand TeresaNielsen Hayden (the former, as mentioned,Doctorow' s editorat Tor), he has termeda "genuineh2g2 [Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy] minusthe editors."He arguesthat Wikipedia's transparency and its "set of systemsdesigned to rewardgood people who do good things"represent the democraticpotential of electronic textuality. The currentcontroversies over how to handle"trolls," as onlinecommunities call anti-socialmembers, concern him becausehe fearsthat some "security" measures hamper the rich understanding of a subjectthat is theideal of an encyclopedia: I thinkthat the recent crackdown on pop-culturematerial and the emphasis on citationcome under the category of letting assholes rent space in your head. The peoplewho poo-pooed Wikipedia as unserious,un-encyclopedic, anddoomed to failurehave gotten under the skin of some Wikipedians, so much so thatthey are attackingthe thing that makes Wikipedia greatest - its expansiveness and its abilityto solve debates by finding common ground. It's like an allergic reaction, theimmune system attacking the body. (Doctorow, Untitled comment) In May 2007, Doctorowpublished an articlein InformationWeek that calls for carefullymeasured response when administrators are dealing with "[s]omeone in your [online]group [who] undergoesa radical personalityshift and begins pickingfights, or someone new [who] comes to the party with an agenda,"lest the
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 88 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 37 (2010) democraticnature of the online community and its "festive, rollicking, passionate discussion"be threatened("How to Keep"). Doctorow's cyber-activismand his theorizing about electronic textuality recall theutopianism of digitalpioneers such as Ted Nelson,whose Project Xanadu offeredan earlyvision of an accessible,computer-networked world, and Richard Stallman,founder of the GNU Projectand visionarybehind the open-source movement;Doctorow' s sciencefiction has also servedas a forumfor these same passions.In a talkabout the future of the genre at the2007 LA TimesFestival of Books,Doctorow voiced his sensethat speculative fiction is alwaysabout the present,no matterhow far in the future it is set,and his own "stories of the future present"are clearly parables about the intersection oftechnology and society now ("Science Fiction"). Much has been publishedin recentyears about the relationshipof sciencefiction to criticaltheory and politicalconsciousness. Criticssuch as DarkoSuvin and Carl Freedman have argued that the sf genre is itselfa formof critical theory, because sf stories involve both estrangement from andcognition of the everyday around us, routinely testing the concept of utopia andthereby sustaining what German philosopher Ernst Bloch termed "the hope principle"(Suvin 7-8; Freedman63-67). In hispost-cyberpunk sf,Doctorow has offeredan oftencomic vision of a technologically-mediatedsociety that warns againstfalse hopes while retaining an optimism about the networked world. In the lastfew years, however, like William Gibson, Ken Macleod, Charles Stross, Chris Moriarty,and others, he has beenglimpsing a darkerfuture, whether near or far. Neverfar from the center of his novels are his activist's concerns with cyber civil liberties.
A Post-Cyberpunk"Heterotopia." In a 1991 essay on hypertext,Stuart Moulthropcompared the future worlds of Gibsonand Ted Nelson,concluding thatNelson's Xanadu,the open-accessknowledge network that visionaries thoughtthe Internet could be, servesas a counterto the "dark dream" that Gibson presentsof "an empoweringtechnology turned into a mechanismof co-optation and enslavement"(702). Nelson's vision is one not of utopia,concludes Moulthrop,but rather of "heterotopia, an otherplacenot zoned in theusual ways 5 forproperty and performati vity" (702). Obliquelyborrowing from Foucault, Moulthropasserts that electronic textuality opens the door to a societystructured contingently,as a networkof different spaces that can engendercritique: Cyberspaceas Gibson and others define it is a Cartesianterritory where scientists ofcontrol define boundaries and power lines. The Xanadu model lets us conceive insteada decentered space of literacy and empowerment where each subject acts as "kybernos,"steering her way across the intertextual sea. (702) Similarly,in his comparisonof theUtopian problem in the sciencefiction of Heinlein,Le Guin,and Delany, Neil Easterbrookargues that while the first two writers'speculative societies wind up reinscribingforms of centralauthority (egoisticin thefirst, collective in thesecond), Delany' s postmodernheterotopia in Triton(1976) ironizesanarchic politics, exploring the possibilities for social changeby droppingmonologic "lecture, manifesto, or allegory"in favorof a protagonist'sstruggle with "a multiplicityof ethnic,generic, and social codes"
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(63). Whetherwe areconsidering his arguments about the complex docuverse of electronictextuality or the multiple ironies of his first novel, Down and Outin the MagicKingdom, Doctorow's texts likewise exhibit a pragmaticorientation to the comingrevolution. Down and Out is indebtedto cyberpunkin its use of what LarryMcCaffery refers to as c-punk's "darklyhumorous vision" and its "parodicallynonconformist stance" (12-13), typicalof novels such as Rudy Rucker'sThe Hacker and theAnts (1994) and Neal Stephenson'sSnow Crash (1992). This allegianceis signaledin Down and Outby theappearance of "the braveHiro Protagonist"in a post-corporateMagic Kingdom's"Snow Crash SpectacularParade" (97). Finally,however, Doctorow's novel eschews the nightmarishGibsonian "consensual illusion" of cyberspace for the possibility of, in Moulthrop'swords, "genuine, negotiated consensus" (702). Thesociety of Down and Outin the Magic Kingdom is presentedas a seeming utopiaextrapolated from predictions about socioeconomic shifts facilitated by the Internetand by nanotechnology that eliminates scarcity; in its anarchism, itseems to be theantithesis of Gibson'scorporate dystopias. The novelitself, however, functionsas a heterotopiain its ironizingof the faithput in technological salvationby somefuturists, a kind of falseidealism characterized by Kocchar- Lingdrenas thefantasy of an infinite day or of a finalityofsimultaneity - information without staticthat is availablethe instant we desire it- [which]entails a complete erasure ofthe vacillation between day and night, between the moment of desire and its (non)fulfillment,andof the rhythmicity upon which both time and writing depend. (5) Thecentral conflict in Down and Outturns upon such a delusivewish to erase mediation,but the novel's "dialectical complexity" (Freedman 80) as a workof sciencefiction and itsstatus as heterotopiaresult from its combined critique of both the cooperativetechnotopia of the "BitchunSociety" and the hyper- individualisticludditism of the protagonist Julius, who turns out to be the"troll" inthe networked community, even though he is thevery person who tries to lead the resistanceagainst the fantasyof techno-idealism.In the late twenty-first century,the Bitchun Society has eliminateddeath and scarcity(thanks to that unspecifiednanotechnology, the "backing-up"of consciousnesses,and the "decanting"or downloading of consciousness into "force-grown clones") and has replacedgovernments and corporationswith a reputationeconomy (based on a currencyof network-registered, constantly-updated esteem called "Whuffie") and "ad-hocracies,"spontaneous cooperatives (such as today'speer-to-peer networks) dedicatedto pursuingthe interests of their members in benefiting others (by, for instance,running Walt Disney World for the tourists). This worldis filledwith imaginativetechnologies (such as neurallyinstalled "HUDs" or "head-up displays")that are extrapolated from current ones (suchas theHUDs in military aircraft),and thenovel thereby serves as bothvision of theshape of thingsto comeand critique of the wealthy, technology-saturated developed world. As one of mystudents, Joel Miller, commented on Doctorow'sworld of plenty:"there is no money,no death,free drugs, you can pickyour own body and appearance
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 90 SCIENCEFICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 37 (2010) and alteryour moods with free Doctor-prescribed drugs.... I supposethe lines betweengood and bad getreal blurry.I supposelife for all becomesa sortof extended,polite orgy" ("Doctorow never left"). As in a numberof literary utopias,such as WilliamMorris's News from Nowhere (1890), the main problem is boredom(Freedman 79), whichin the BitchunSociety leads charactersto upload theirconsciousnesses to mainframesand "deadhead"themselves for decadesor centuriesat a time. Theplot, which exposes the Bitchun Society as a falseutopia, revolves around the competitionthat develops in this supposedlyharmonious, cooperative environmentfor control of "the happiest place on Earth." Julius' s adhocmaintains theLiberty Square attractions as is, untilanother adhoc begins to updaterides such as the Piratesof the Caribbeanwith a "flashbake"technology, which jarringlydownloads into one's consciousnessthe experience of theride and its characterswithout the need to go throughthe narrative experience in time.The novel's flashbakingthus concretizes what Kocchar-Lindgren refers to as "the idealismof thetechnological sublime that will want to castoff the body for the sakeof the durability of pattern and information" (5). Fearingthe loss ofboth his favoriteold technologyand his vocation, Julius tries to lead hisreluctant troops indefense of the Haunted Mansion after the bleeding-edge adhoc refurbishes the Hall ofPresidents and offers to zap itsvisitors "with the essence of Lincoln: every nuanceof his speech, the painstakingly researched movement tics, his warts and beardand topcoat. It almostfelt like I was Lincoln,[Julius tells the reader] for a moment,and thenit passed"(57; emphasisin original).The fantasyhere is, of course,that of the"real illusion," a hyperrealitythat appears to do away with mediationbut that has actually made it part of the "everyday invisible" (Kocchar- Lindgren45) forpurposes of collectivemanipulation.6 Julius voices a formof liberalparanoia when he triesto enlisthis friendin his increasinglyviolent resistance: "It'sgood versus evil, Dan. You don't want to be a post-person.You want to stay human.The rides are human. We each mediate them through our own experience. We'rephysically inside of them, and they talk to us throughour senses. What Debra'speople are building - it's hive-mind shit. Directly implanting thoughts! Jesus!It's not an experience, it's brainwashing! You gotta know that." {Down and Out63-64) At thispoint, one almostexpects the Borg Queen to strollinto the Kingdom, becauseJulius brings up the standard sf trope of the hive-mind collective, a figure forthe false utopia of collectivityas conformityand loss of agency,a recent exampleof whichis figuredin the "nants"of Rucker'sPostsingular (2007), voraciousnanomachines programmed to consumethe material world in orderto mapand thus create its virtual twin. Ironically,Julius' s fightagainst the delusive flashbaking technology is carried out in behalfof an older,less high-techversion of the "facsimile-machine" (Kochhar-Lindgren5), theDisney theme-park ride. If forintellectuals such as Baudrillardand Eco, the Disney Corporationand its technologicaldreams representcorporate America's ability to impose the simulacrum or the hyperreal
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEHACKER AND THE HAWKER 91 on a willingpopulace, for Julius the Haunted Mansion and itsolder technology, withseams showing, stands in fora systemthat is beautifuldespite its material traces,for a workof art thatachieves its illusionby engagingrather than overridingthe audience member's consciousness: Thefirst couple rides through, I was just glad of the aggressive air conditioning andthe delicious sensation of sweat drying on my skin. But on the third pass, I startedto notice just how goddamn cool the thing was. There wasn't a singlebit oftech more advanced than a film-loopprojector inthe whole place, but it was all socunningly contrived that the illusion of a hauntedhouse was perfect: the ghosts thatwhirled through the ballroom were ghosts, three-dimensional andethereal and phantasmic...She [Julius's girlfriend Lil] grinned slyly at me as I debarkedinto thefried-food-and-disinfectant perfumeof the Park, hands in pockets, thoroughly pleasedwith myself for having so completelyexperienced a really fine hunk of art.(97-98; emphases in original) The amusementpark ride-as-artthus becomes in the novel a figurefor the necessaryelement of noise in thesystem, a versionof those uncanny ghosts that Kocchar-Lindgrenvalues as a forceof uncertainty and dissent in a technological world. It could be said thatJulius himself serves this function for the complacent BitchunSociety, which, Doctorow has noted, can comedown hard on dissenters: "Thebig worry about reputation economics is thatthey punish minority opinions, insteadof protectingthem.... Also, theyare rich-get-richersystems: the more whuffie you have, the more whuffie you may accumulate" (email communication).But in his righteousanger, Julius impatiently resorts to underhandedtactics in hisbattle for the ride. They backfire, leaving him "down and out," both excommunicatedfrom the neuralnetwork and bankruptof Whuffie.He turnsout to be rightabout the rival hi-tech adhoc's involvementin hismurder, but, since death is no longerreally the end, his determination to find hiskiller becomes, perversely, self-centered: Sure, I'd been murdered,but what had it cost me? A few days of "unconsciousness"while they decanted my backup into my new body, a merciful gapin memoryfrom my departure atthe backup terminal up untilmy death. I wasn'tone of those nuts who took death seriously. It wasn'tlike they'd done somethingpermanent. (49-50; emphasis in original) Since murderhas been trivializedthrough the backingup and restorationof selves,it becomesone moreissue of minormorals, like cuttinginto someone else's lane on thehighway. The absurdityhere speaks to how violenceand its consequencescan be distanced,made part of the"everyday invisible," through technology.In retrospect,however, Julius realizes that of greater consequence to thestory he is tellingare the implication of his friend Dan inthe murder plot and thedamaging obsession and competitiveness that take hold of him in his quest to stopDebra's newtechnology. As Doctorowhas said in an onlineinterview, his protagonisthas "failedto learn a bunchof life' s lessons.About trust and betrayal, forstarters" (Interview at Secondlife.com).
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Moreto blamethan a power-hungryDebra forJulius's loss of Whuffieand girlfriendby novel's end is hisown entrepreneurial individualism - which leads himin his sparetime to studyqueuing styles in an effortto perfecta systemof "beatingthe crowd" (95). He beginsto adopttactics such as thosehe abhorsin Debra in an instanceof "we have metthe enemy and theyare us."7The novel balancesJulius's noble mania for resisting the dream imposed by Debra's new technologyagainst the tendencyhe notesin himselfto get fed up withthe "faceless,passive-aggressive mass" and "the starchyworld of consensus- building"(101). Readers are positionedbetween two problematic,equally authoritarian,paths to utopia:the Bitchun Society's, collectively organized but also homogenizedthrough seamless informationtechnology, and Julius's, egoistic,violent, and in theservice of a fetishizedinstitution. The conflictoffers no easychoices and, just whenreaders may rue Julius's entrepreneurialism and thego-it-alone attitude it entails, they find that Debra has indeedplotted to have himkilled to clearan obstacleto herbuilding plans. She thencreated the perfect alibifor herself by reverting to a backupmade right before she conceived of the plot,thus ensuring that she was genuinelyconscious of her own "innocence." A flawthat the various interest groups in thenovel - theBitchuns, Debra and her cohort,even Julius and his friends- shareis a wishto stifledissent and control thereality by manipulatingthe technology. At one point,Julius decides he will combatDebra by makingthe animatronicsof the HauntedMansion more participatory- through inviting the virtual or ghostly selves of fans to inhabit the ghostsof the ride - buthe is quicklysoured on thistactic when he findsthat the inviteeshave their own ideas aboutwhat they can do withthe ride and he loses control.Both the BitchunSociety in its flawedcollectivity and Juliusin his messianicindividualism try to suppressdissent that requires negotiation in order toachieve their visions. It is, however, in an anecdoteabout Julius' s firstmarriage thatthe novel most poignantly criticizes the Utopian erasure of differences. In a flashback,Julius tells the story of his marriageto Zed, a free-spirited "transhuman"(114) who loses her sanitywhen she followsJulius to Earth, leavingbehind her "climate-controlled,soft-edged life in space" (113) and replacingher "bewildering array of third-party enhancements: a vestigial tail, eyes thatsaw throughmost of theRF spectrum,her arms, her fur, dogleg reversible knee-jointsand a completelymechanical spine" (114) witha conventionalhuman appearanceand existence.When Zed, drivenmad by terrestrialconformity, reclaimsher identity by reverting to a savedpre- Julius version of herself rather thanby undergoingcounseling, Doctorow provokes questions about embodied experience,memory, and identitysimilar to thoseraised in themovie Eternal Sunshineof a SpotlessMind (2004), in whichheartbroken or angrylovers visit Lacuna,Inc. to have an unhappyaffair obliterated from their consciousnesses. In bothnovel and film, technology enables willful forgetting, but what is registered in thetext through the point of view of the rejected lover is a senseof pathos for thebits of personality and understanding that are potentially lost to erasure. Thiscomplex ironized view of the costs and benefits involved in technological changecharacterizes both Down and Out and Doctorow's workas a whole. Doctorowhas claimedthat with the adoption of new technology we getnot less
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE HACKERAND THE HAWKER 93 humanbut different kinds of human (email communication). In a worldwhere "thelines have long been drawnthat have preparedthe network that puts us onlinewhether we want to be or not" (Kocchar-Lindgren30), the Utopian possibilitieslie in how open and democraticthat network is. DespiteJulius's reactionto "flash-baking,"it is thesocial dynamicsfostered by the strange new technologythat the novel depicts with suspicion rather than the technology itself. Onlywhen Julius is downand outdoes he gainperspective on boththe Bitchun Society'sblithe disregard for the value of differingversions of historyand his ownfoolish obsession with (even fetishization of) itsartifacts. Bottomed out in Whuffieand offline thanks to misfired cloak-and-dagger efforts at sabotaging the flashbakingapparatus, Julius finds himself taking advice from, of all people,the "innocent"Debra: "Youtotter around pissing and moaning about your little murder, your little health problems- yes, I've heard- yourlittle fixation on keeping things the way they are.You need some perspective, Julius. You needto get away from here: Disney Worldisn't good for you and you're sure as hellnot any good for Disney World." It wouldhave hurt less if I hadn'tcome to thesame conclusion myself, somewherealong the way. (184) Heedingthe wisdomof the advice, Juliuschecks out of the cyber-society, refusingto erase his own folly and misadventures through immediate restoration frombackup, instead heading off for space and comingto termswith his past throughthe technology of writing: The universegets older. So do I. So does mybackup, sitting in redundant distributedstorage dirtside, ready for the day that space or age or stupidity kills me.It recedes with the years, and I writeout my life long-hand, a letter to the me thatI'll be whenit's restored into a clonesomewhere, somewhen. It's important thatwhoever I am then knows about this year, and it's going to take a lotof tries forme to get it right. (206) Once Julius'sdictatorial impulses peak, he reawakensto whatKochhar- Lindgrenterms "the rhythmicity upon which time and writingdepend" (5), and tothe alternative value of being "down and out," of living through time as a low- techcreature, his memory,with embarrassing mistakes intact, preserved in the multipledrafts of thestory he has inscribed.In Nelson's visionof Xanadu,all versionsof a document- includingthose replete with errors - shouldbe available ina grandunified data pool. A heterotopiais constitutedthrough that sense of the valueof alterity.By theend of Down and Out,Julius has foundin draftingand revisinghis storyanother way of valuing the passage through time that has been representedfor him throughoutthe storyby the experienceof the Haunted Mansionride - a trial-and-error,contingency-filled sort of existence, where with each ridethe new details he noticesreinforce "just how goddamn cool thething was" (97). He has cometo terms with degradation, one might say, and, though he willstill accept the Bitchun Society's version of digital immortality, hehas also realizedthe value of being analog.8 The Utopianimpulses of Doctorow's science fictionsimilarly lie inhis faith in the processes of vision and revision common to a networkedworld of writersand readers.
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Doctorow'sprotagonists routinely fall on one side orthe other in analogous battlesover networked discourse and democracy - in his secondnovel, Eastern StandardTribe (2004), ArtBerry fights a girlfriendand an associatefor control overa peer-to-peerfile sharing technology, and in a subplotof his third novel, the contemporaryfantasy Someone Comes to Town,Someone Leaves Town(2005), theprotagonist (who goes by manymale names beginning with "A" duringthe courseof the book) and his friendpursue a grass-rootsscheme to blanketa Torontoneighborhood with free Wi-Fi. As we havealready seen, Julius in Down and Outwrestles with his crowd-beatingimpulses and tries to enlisthis Disney Worldcommunity when trying to best Debra. Whether in science fiction, fantasy, onlinecommunities, or real life, Doctorow's concern is forhow the principle of freespeech is beingshaped by developments in informationtechnology, and his ideals hearkenback to Ted Nelson's pushfor hypertextual literacy, where the users' controlover the networkis the sine qua non thatpromotes multiple versionsof texts,multiple perspectives on any givensubject, and thereforea richerand more complex understanding ofthe world. Coda. The IraqWar began about a monthafter the publication oí Downand Out in theMagic Kingdom,and in the yearssince, though his subjectshave not changedmuch, the tone of Doctorow's writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has becomemarkedly darker and moreurgent. In his journalism,he has recently editorializedagainst Internet filtering, warning that "there' s aninverse correlation betweenthe regulation of speechand the freedom of a society,"and that "in the newglobal world of censorware, we all liveon Syria'sinternet, China's internet, filteredby companies whose first priority is to ensurethat Beijing is happywith itswork" ("See No Evil"). He hascriticized the growing reliance on surveillance technologiesto providean illusionof securityin the cityof the future- a "neighborlyPanopticon" that threatensour "social contracts,"which he neverthelesshopes are "stronger than our technology" ("Snitchtown"). In fiction, Doctorowhas embodied these concerns about the technologically-enabled police statein boththe sf storiescollected in Overclockedand in LittleBrother, his young-adultnovel about the so-called "war on terror"and "homelandsecurity." In theformer, "I, Robot"weaves together the worlds of Asimov and Orwell in the storyof a cynical,robot-wary detective who discovers that state propaganda and militaryrobots have suppressed knowledge of the other side' s superiortechnology and civil liberties.The short-short"Printcrime" and thelong story"After the Siege" also takeon thedamage done by stateor corporatemonopolization of informationtechnology, while "Anda' s Game"and "I, Row-Boat"focus on issues ofidentity and otherness, as mediatedby the network.9 Like thesestories, Little Brother foregrounds both its intertextual allusions and itsinterest in teachingreaders about the dangers to civilliberties posed by stateor corporate control of information technology. Marcus, the protagonist of LittleBrother, narrates his own story, as does Juliusin Down and Out;Marcus's voice(like Julius's) resembles Doctorow's own online persona in its exuberance and ingenuousness.Marcus echoes Doctorow the cyber-activist and theolder, wiserJulius when he explainsto his readers the value of never deleting anything,
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"especiallythe stupid stuff (Little Brother 56), and he repeatsJulius's mistake ofgoing it alone and getting "a littleaggro" when he runsinto resistance from his friends(130). Evenmore than the recent stories, however, Little Brother diverges fromDown and Out in its emphasison instruction.This latestnovel features digressionsof several pages in length on the history and methods of cryptography, a nod to theopen-source movement in a tutorialon theGIMP (an open-source graphicsediting program), and an extensivebibliography to allowkids to try the hackermethods at home. In reactionto the eventsof the last severalyears, Doctorowhas incorporatedinto his fictionsmore of the activist's"lecture, manifesto,or allegory"(Easterbrook 63) and perhapsrelinquished some of the heterotopicironies. Thoughthese texts have been quite successful- especiallyLittle Brother, whichappeared on a numberof best-of-2008 lists, including the New YorkTimes Best Children'sBooks of the Year- I wantto end thisdiscussion of whatI perceiveas a shiftin Doctorow's recentsf by examiningthe less direct(or less pedagogical)novella "There's a GreatBig BeautifulTomorrow/Now is the Best Timeof Your Life" (TGBBT/NBTYL), one more fiction involving Disney audio- animatronics,technologically-enabled immortality, networked emotional controls, and the"future present."10 The lengthytitle is an allusionto thesongs that play throughoutWalt Disney's "Carousel of Progress"- an attractionfirst exhibited in theGeneral Electric Pavilion at the 1964 New York World'sFair and then housedat Disneyland(1967-73) and Disney World(1975 -present). Whereas Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom optimisticallycelebrated the "Imagineering"of a Disney freedfrom its corporategreed and depictsthe problemsof a futurepost-humanity as other than those of the military-industrial complex,TGBBT/NBTYL gives the reader a worldthat has beendecimated by Mecha(large, militarized, mechanized bodies/vehicles common in sfand manga plots).Like Doctorow's otherprotagonists, Jimmy, who narrates his own story, has a sense of humor(important considering that for much of thetale he is a genetically-engineered30-year-old stuck in an eleven-year-oldbody, like an invertedTithonus), and he describeswith gusto his effortsto huntWumpuses, voracious,tentacled robots that recycle anything that is intheir path other than the flora.11In thisnarrative, the world has failedto evolvebeyond scarcity and war; rather,technology has enabled an all-out conflict between urbanités who value the pastand wouldsalvage technology, including Jimmy and his dad (thelatter has rescuedthe Carousel of Progress and installed it in theirhome at CometicaPark in Detroit),and the "Treehuggers,"a communitywhose memberscarry mandatoryhive-mind implants that dampen their affective lives to a calmingand enervatingequilibrium and whoare dedicatedto destroyingthe remnants of the old civilizationwith the Wumpuses. The inclusionof a networkedcommunity that controls the disruptive and/or dissentingpassions of its individual members, like the Disney elements, signals thatTGBBT/NBTYL is an intertext,even something of a revision,of Doctorow' s firstnovel. As in thatbook, the protagonist here is betrayedby his girlfriend, whosenature-loving community in this case is willingto kill Jimmy and salvage his uploadedconsciousness in orderto normalizethe maverick.Where the
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BitchunSociety of Down and Outpresented a comicversion of thefuture, the post-apocalypticworld of thisnovella features mutilated cyborgs (including a memorable"pack" of dog brains downloaded into mechanized bodies) and savage violence (Jimmyfirst kills when he is actuallyten years old). Indeed, TGBBT/NBTYLis somethingof a "revert"to thetechno-dystopias of William Gibsonand othercyberpunks, although, characteristically for Doctorow, the willingnessof individualsto abdicateresponsibility to the groupfor their interactionswith technology still takes more of theblame than sinister state or corporatecontrol. At the2007 LA TimesBook Festivalpanel on thefuture of sciencefiction, Doctorowanswered a questionabout the historical context of contemporarysf ("Science Fiction").The audiencemember noted that during the Vietnam era therewas an "outcry,especially from the science fiction writing community," withmuch of "whatwas goingon in thefake worlds mirroring the real world." He questionedwhere that kind of politicalconsciousness is todayin sf.In his answer,Doctorow cited his own forthcomingbook (LittleBrother) about "Departmentof Homeland Security paranoia," Ken MacLeod's "Orwellianstory" TheExecution Channel (2007), which "scared the hell out of [him]," and William Gibson's latestnovel Spook Country (2007), "about NS A illegalwiretapping"; he therebydemonstrated his mindfulness of the political context of his own work. In a post-Iraqworld of so-called "necessary" wars to fight the terrorists, Doctorow' s fictionhas shiftedits perspective,mirroring his ramped-upfight against technologicaltools for managingcitizens and findingmuch more serious consequencesto the social practice of conforming tothe perceived consensus and passivelyaccepting the need for controls - consequencesthat can include trusting to an officialprogram of violence to pacifyunruly outsiders. Though Doctorow maystill believe in a greatbig beautiful tomorrow, his recent fiction implies that thepathways to evena modestversion of it may be labyrinthine. NOTES 1. Doctorowhas collectedseveral of his previouslypublished articles and talkson DRM andother issues involved with electronic textuality in Content:Selected Essays on Technology,Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future (2008). I referenceseveral in thisessay, citing their first publication. 2. See Murphyfor another analysis of the hackerethic that informs Doctorow' s writing.Murphy uses Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (1984) todefine this ethic, and he specificallyfocuses on howit shapes Doctorow' s secondnovel, EasternStandard Tribe (2004). While Murphysees thatnovel's protagonist(and by extensionDoctorow himself) as exemplifyinga hacker ethic, I findperhaps more tension in thewriter's discourse between the hacker's ethic and the hawker's entrepreneurialism. Murphyand I also sharethe sense that Doctorow' s textsfit Hayles's notion of the "work- as-assemblage." 3. Forthe principles of Wikipedia'soriginators, see its"Five Pillars." For a reporton itscontroversial nature among critics, see Cohen. 4. For thecurrent and all archivedversions of theentry, including all theancillary pages discussed in the followingparagraphs, visit
This content downloaded from 144.26.117.20 on Fri, 24 Oct 2014 10:31:13 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THEHACKER AND THE HAWKER 97 accompanythe biography, and it has been mentioned in an articleabout Wikipedia poison- pen vandalismin TheRegister (Orlowski). 5. Moulthrop'smention of "heterotopia"owes an unacknowledgeddebt to themore familiarcoinage by MichelFoucault, for whom heterotopia designates "real places ... whichare somethinglike counter-sites" to therest of a society("Of OtherSpaces"). Moulthropemphasizes the term as an alternativeto the binary of utopia/dystopia, as it has cometo be employedin speculativefictions and theircriticism. See also Easterbrook. 6. Fora fascinatinganalysis of the novel from the perspective of "the double logic of remediation,"see Mason. Remediationis Bolterand Grusin'sterm for the troping or refashioningof old mediaby new media,a processthey see as crucialto thelatter' s acceptance.Like Mason, I am interestedin Doctorow's sense of the inescapable "textualityof technology,"and his analysisusefully extends that textuality even to the "flashbaking"experience, which, he argues,remediates older textual forms such as letters and diaries,while providing the illusion of direct,unmediated access. 7. Accordingto Hirsch,Kett, and Trefil's The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, "This is a twiston OliverHazard Perry's words after a naval battle:'We have metthe enemy,and theyare ours.' The updatedversion was firstused in thecomic strip Togo,' by Walt Kelly,in the 1960s and referredto theturmoil caused by theVietnam War" (Hirsch,Kett, and Trefil). According to Keyes's TheQuote Verifier, however, Kelly first used a slightlydifferent version of his expressionas a commenton McCarthyismin The Pogo Papers,published in 1953,with the pithier version appearing on an EarthDay poster in 1970 (57). 8. 1 borrowhere a metaphoricalopposition between digital and analog that structures EllenUllman's novel about the dysfunctional life of a programmer,The Bug (2003). The protagonist,Ethan Levin, cannotfunction socially in part because of the discrete compartmentalizationofhis intellectual and affective lives fostered by the cognitive habits ofhis occupation, which stand in contrast to the more holistic or continuous understanding of thenarrator, a test engineer named Roberta, who has cometo programmingfrom the humanities. 9. "Anda's Game,"first published at Salon.com,offers an effectivecritique of the currentworld's very real problem of cyber-sweatshops.Interestingly, David Moles has publisheda shortstory entitled "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" that offers its own riffon a virtualworld where uploaded posthumans struggle against corporate (AI- administered)exploitation. 10. As of thiswriting, this text is availableonly in beta release,so to speak,as a novella-in-progressavailable through Doctorow's podcast. All of Doctorow's CC-licensed fictionsand essays are available at his website(
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Doctorow,Cory. Content: Selected Essays on Technology,Creativity, Copyright, and the Futureof the Future. San Francisco:Tachyon, 2008. . Down and Outin theMagic Kingdom.New York:Tor, 2003. . EasternStandard Tribe. New York:Tor, 2004. . Emailto theauthor. 27 Sept.2004. . "Full-castaudio adaptationof Down and Out in theMagic Kingdom."Cory Doctorow's Craphound.Com20 Oct. 2006. Online.17 Aug. 2009. . "GivingIt Away."Forbes.com 1 Dec. 2006. Online.17 Aug. 2009. . "How I Learnedto StopWorrying and Love thePanopticon." O'Reilly Network 8 Mar. 2002. Online.17 Aug. 2009. . "How to Keep Hostile Jerksfrom Taking Over yourOnline Community." InformationWeek 14 May 2007. Online.17 Aug. 2009. . "'Intellectualproperty' is a silly euphemism."The Guardian21 Feb. 2008. Online.17 Aug. 2009. . Interviewat Secondlife.com.23 Sept. 2003. Online.17 Aug. 2009. Transcript availableat
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Keyes,Ralph. The Quote Verifier:Who Said What,Where, and When.New York: St. Martin's,2006. Kleffel,Rick. Review of Down and Out in theMagic Kingdomby CoryDoctorow. The AgonyColumn Book Reviews and Commentary.12 Feb. 2003. Online.17 Aug.2009. Kochhar-Lindgren,Gray. Technologies: Ghosts, the Incalculable, and theSuspension of Animation.Albany, NY: SUNY P, 2005. Levy, Stephen.Hackers: Heroes of the ComputerRevolution. Garden City, NJ: Doubledav,1984. MacLeod,Ken. TheExecution Channel. New York:Tor, 2007. Mason,Eric. "Remediating the Magic Kingdom: Notes Toward a Poeticsof Technology." Currentsin ElectronicLiteracy 8 (Fall 2004). Online.21 Feb. 2007. McCaffery,Larry. "Introduction: The Desertof theReal." Stormingthe Reality Studio: A Casebookof Cyberpunk and Postmodern Science Fiction. Ed. McCaffery.Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1991. 1-16. Miller,Joel. "Doctorow never left Disneyland." Electronic discussion board posting 16 Oct. 2003 7:10 pm. Moles,David. "Downand Out in the Magic Kingdom." Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy.Ed. JonathanStrahan. San Francisco:Night Shade, 2008. 125-53. Moulthrop,Stuart. "You Say You Wanta Revolution?Hypertext and the Laws ofMedia." 1991. The New Media Reader. Ed. Nick Montfortand Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Cambridge,MA: MIT, 2003. 692-709. Murphy,Graham J. "SomaticNetworks and MolecularHacking in EasternStandard TriberExtrapolation 48.1 (Spring2007): 120-36. Orlowski,Andrew. "Who Owns Your Wikipedia Bio?" TheRegister 6 Dec. 2005. Online. 17 Aug. 2009. Rucker,Rudy. The Hacker and theAnts. New York:Avon, 1994 . Postsingular.New York:Tor, 2007. "ScienceFiction: The Road fromHere to There."Conference panel withKage Baker, CoryDoctorow, John Scalzi, and HarryTurtledove. LA TimesFestival of Books 29 Apr.2007. Online(audio). 17 August2009. Stephenson,Neal. SnowCrash. New York:Bantam, 1992. Suvin,Darko. Metamorphosesof Science Fiction: On the Poetics and Historyof a LiteraryGenre. New Haven:Yale UP, 1979. Ullman,Ellen. TheBug. New York:Doubleday, 2003. Weinberg,Anna. "Buying the Cow, Thoughthe Milk is Free:Why Some Publishersare DigitizingThemselves." The Book Standard 24 June2005. Online.25 June2007. ABSTRACT Thisessay examines the science fiction and blogging of Canadian writer Cory Doctorow to arguethat both his worksand advocacyof his publishingmethods are indicativeof currentbattles over the culturalimplications of electronictextuality and serve as harbingersof the novelist's place in a networkedworld. On theone hand,Doctorow acts as entrepreneur,promoting his own worktirelessly via theInternet and, on theother, he advocatesCreative Commons licensing and open access to creativeworks. These dual interests,seemingly in conflict,demonstrate a sophisticatedunderstanding of the networkednature of identity and power, an understandingalso evidentin theconflicts in Doctorow's fiction,which increasingly warns about the dangers to civil libertiesin a technologically-mediatedsociety while nevertheless retaining some optimism about the future.
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