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"The germinal societies like Singapore and communist Hong Kong may give us a mutant capitalism that is both virulent and efficient. This is a significant cultural danger."
- Gregory Benford
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| SchoolBook | ||
| A standard-issue laptop computer for school use. |
Doctorow takes the ideas about inexpensive laptops for students and schools that insist on providing each student with a laptop, and combines them with the administrator's desire to control and surveil,
| I got back to class and sat down again... I unpacked the school's standard-issue machine and got back into classroom mode. The SchoolBooks were the snitchiest technology of them all, logging every keystroke, watching all the network traffic for suspicious keywords, counting every click, keeping track of every fleeting thought you put out over the net. We'd gotten them in my junior year, and it only took a couple months for the shininess to wear off. Once people figured out that these "free" laptops worked for the man -- and showed a never-ending parade of obnoxious ads to boot -- they suddenly started to feel very heavy and burdensome.
Cracking my SchoolBook had been easy. The crack was online within a month of the machine showing up, and there was nothing to it -- just download a DVD image, burn it, stick it in the SchoolBook, and boot it while holding down a bunch of different keys at the same time. The DVD did the rest, installing a whole bunch of hidden programs on the machine, programs that would stay hidden even when the Board of Ed did its daily remote integrity checks of the machines. Every now and again I had to get an update for the software to get around the Board's latest tests, but it was a small price to pay to get a little control over the box. |
| Technovelgy from Little Brother,
by Cory Doctorow. Published by Tor Teen in 2008 Additional resources -
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and Technology from Little Brother
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Tech news articles related to Little Brother
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SchoolBook-related
news articles:
- Students Surveilled By School Phone Apps
- Doctorow's SchoolBook Computers Created By Australian Govt
- School Surveillance Via Student Laptop Webcams
- Woolim DPRK Surveillance Tablet And Doctorow's 'Schoolbook'
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