Ambiguotopia

kw: book reviews, science fiction, social trends

Cory Doctorow pulls no punches. He has a garden path down which he will lead you. Makers: A Novel of the Whirlwind Changes to Come compelled me to ruminate on the trends on which it is based. Will small, robot butlers one day be as disposable as the $5 keyboard? Heck, for me, computers are almost as disposable as that: my sixth computer is just a year old, and I am actually a slowpoke. Only six since 1981, when I first got a TI-Pro? My son already has three computers plus an X-Box 360.

Makers features several protagonists, all of whom are rich or get rich. But they are surrounded by those who don't. The author sees no end to "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer." There is a little bit of "rising tide lifting all boats," but not enough.

It is also a love story, or three love stories. Perry and Lester, the über-makers who get everything rolling, each get their girl, but the primary love story is the two of them, two techno-weenies who just want to make cool stuff, like if Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were frat brothers, bouncing ideas back-n-forth. Success eventually drives them apart, and the perspective of middle age brings them back together. Like many a married couple, who might say, "Can't live with him/her, but can't live without him/her."

In between, they enjoy quite a ride, and I do mean Ride. Their initial foray into world-changing is almost an accident; funded by a corporate merger become venture capitalist, they invent "New Work", in which the coolest things may be disposable, but also become indispensable. It is all based on 3D printing technology. Buy cheap "brain" chips from anyone who makes them, and print the rest, from a self-loading toaster to a collective of five cute robots that can drive your car, all the while chirping to one another to maintain coordination. The Open Software movement of today becomes the Open Hardware movement of tomorrow (the setting is the 20-teens). Tons of inventors and small teams make profits at incredible multipliers.

Then it all goes bust, but one relic remains: a ride invented by Perry and Lester, like a theme park ride but self-reconfiguring, has become the most popular experience on the planet. Because people are story-tellers (and story-thinkers), the Ride becomes a Story, with a cult following. Riders can participate in its reconfiguration, by bringing artifacts or downloading idea files. But guess what? Copyright and trademark violations creep in, then flood in, and the lawsuits begin. Most of the book's action is amid this legal (and not-so-legal) wrangling, even as clones of the Ride multiply. Disney is the big bad guy here, but there is a denouement, a twist that left me spinning.

In real life, once lawyers get involved, nobody has a good day. That which was broken cannot be fixed, and monetary settlements are poor satisfaction. A crucial element is an end-run around Disney's legal powerhouse. Unlikely, but fun to read. The book is like semi-sweet chocolate. A mostly happy ending, with a bite.

Will we really become such a disposable society that we dispose of society? That is the value of such fiction. Maybe we will, but by thinking about it beforehand, perhaps we'll find a different path, and a better one. I think Orwell's 1984 did a lot to prevent the world becoming a Stalinist dystopia. Perhaps Makers will help avert the dystopian parts of its own vision.