Re: The Long Run

["Jeremiah Johnson" <jeremiah.johnson () gmail com>]

Thanks Dave, I'll take a look.  I recommend Feed by M.T. Anderson, its
a very quick read but gives a possible answer to the question of 'what
would happen if we had the internet hardwired to our brain?'.  Hackers
are involved in the story, but hacking is not the main point, and
hacking is used for a different purpose since its no longer about
0wning some corp server, but peoples brains.

http://www.amazon.com/Feed-M-T-Anderson/dp/0763622591/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-6138693-5850068

Amazon.com
This brilliantly ironic satire is set in a future world where
television and computers are connected directly into people's brains
when they are babies. The result is a chillingly recognizable consumer
society where empty-headed kids are driven by fashion and shopping and
the avid pursuit of silly entertainment--even on trips to Mars and the
moon--and by constant customized murmurs in their brains of
encouragement to buy, buy, buy.

Anderson gives us this world through the voice of a boy who, like
everyone around him, is almost completely inarticulate, whose
vocabulary, in a dead-on parody of the worst teenspeak, depends
heavily on three words: "like," "thing," and the second most common
English obscenity. He's even made this vapid kid a bit sympathetic, as
a product of his society who dimly knows something is missing in his
head. The details are bitterly funny--the idiotic but wildly popular
sitcom called "Oh? Wow! Thing!", the girls who have to retire to the
ladies room a couple of times an evening because hairstyles have
changed, the hideous lesions on everyone that are not only accepted,
but turned into a fashion statement. And the ultimate awfulness is
that when we finally meet the boy's parents, they are just as
inarticulate and empty-headed as he is, and their solution to their
son's problem is to buy him an expensive car.

Although there is a danger that at first teens may see the idea of
brain-computers as cool, ultimately they will recognize this as a
fascinating novel that says something important about their world.
(Ages 14 and older) --Patty Campbell --This text refers to the
Hardcover edition.

-miah


On 8/29/07, Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com> wrote:
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> Now available: http://www.immunityinc.com/downloads/TheLongRun.pdf
>
> http://www.immunityinc.com/resources-dkm.shtml has been updated with
> "The Long Run". It's a rather old book, by internet standards. I read
> it when I was sixteen, but it's been out of print for a long time. It
> has the earliest known reference to internet addiction, among other
> things. It also answers the question of why "CANVAS" is named "CANVAS".
>
> In any case, it's one of the classics of hacking fiction, the others
> being Neuromancer and Snow Crash. So if you haven't read it, you
> really really should.
>
> - -dave
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