Homeland - Follow on to Little Brother not the TV show

On November 28, 2012 I did a blog post recommending that people of all ages read Little Brother, from tinkerers to educators and technophobes to techsperts. Little Brother is classified as Young Adult or Juvenile fiction, but the reality is interwoven throughout the story and many people can relate to the characters in the book, the tech used, and the credible resources in the afterwords, and the bibliography. It was a quick and easy read but I love tech, tinkering, learning from others the diverse things that can be done while integrating technology, good, bad, or ugly.

From companies making ginormous amounts of $$$ from people with student loans packaged as bonds, quad copters, cold brew coffee, Burning Man, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Noisebridge, Tor, Wikipedia, Google, Maker Faire, supporting an Independent political contender, techno-paranoia from webcams, UAVs, 3D printers, People's Mic Checks, leaked documents...there is something for all readers.

I looked forward to Homeland being released, wanted to participate in one of many stops on Cory Doctorow's book tour for Homeland. Then life happens. Maybe on his next book tour?

If you read Little Brother, then you need to read Homeland. Then we wait on Cory to publish the follow on book or for someone to turn it into a movie. There were times when I was reading this book, I said,  "Hey I am connected to this issue, that tech, him, her through social media and news feeds".

Probably the section that was like someone talking from the grave is the Afterword by Aaron Swartz. Cory Doctorow's boingboing.net post, RIP Aaron Swartz began before Homeland was officially released. The response from Aaron to Cory is used in the book, so if you read the blog post before reading Homeland you could reflect on the story and depending on your memory recall say, "Hey I remember this from somewhere" or just chalk it up to a deja vu moment.

Jacob Appelbaum closes his afterword with, "It's up to you now-go create something beautiful and help others to do the same. Happy hacking,"

And as with Little Brother, the bibliography is full of credible resources. From the secrets to using Wikipedia (sources and talk) to sites like Code Academy, Tor Project, CyanogenMod, Electronic Frontier Foundations (US & Canada), Open Rights Group (UK), Creative Freedom (New Zealand), Creative Commons, Pirate Party, and more. Of course, as Cory states, "There's plenty more-more than would ever fit between the covers of a book" so a visit to boingboing.net keeps you up to date with Cory's every day writings.

Cory...we look forward to the follow on projects to Little Brother and Homeland.