Scroogled Pdf Summary
US Department of Homeland Security has contracted Google for help in screening international arrivals at airports. Since they cannot legally obtain access to all details of data fed by a user to Google, they get it indirectly from Google – by asking it to provide all contextual ads it has shown to a certain individual!
Greg Lupinski is an ex-Google employee returning from vacation, & the new system has made him interesting to immigration security:
“I see a heavy spike in ads for rocketry supplies showing up alongside your search results and Google mail.”
“But the ads don’t mean anything… I get ads for Ann Coulter ring tones whenever I get e-mail from my friend in Coulter, Iowa!”
“I understand, sir… Why do you suppose model rocket ads show up so frequently?”
“Search for ‘coffee fanatics.'” He’d been very active in the group, helping them build out the site for their coffee-of-the-month subscription service. The blend they were going to launch with was called Jet Fuel. “Jet Fuel” and “Launch”—that would probably make Google barf up some model rocket ads.
Anyway, it takes him a lot of time getting out of airport. Later, he talks to Maya, a Google colleague, & gets some dark insights. We also learn that Google security cameras at public places are used by security agencies to track suspects. Including suspects tagged on flimsy criteria like above airport dialog.
But Maya can help. She has built a kind of underground program (Googlecleaner) within Google. It normalizes the profile of an individual in various Google databases – basically tinkers data Google has been collecting about you over the years from your searches, visits to sites that show Google Ads, Orkut activity, & other Google properties. When done, you look like an angel of virtue!
Some days later, a very worried Maya visits Greg. She is leaving the country & wants Greg to come. Looks like someone has found her underground program, has cleaned profiles of some elected officials in Washington, & she is now a marked woman. Greg wishes her luck; he himself will stay.
Some days later, he gets visitors late at night – threatening him. Turns out they are not cops, but from Google’s lobby firm. He has options – either go to jail for 10 years for tinkering with Google’s data! Or cooperate & again become & employee of Google, & help turn Googlecleaner into something security people will be using more often!
READ
- On David Malouf Pdf Summary Reviews By Nam Le
- Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice Pdf Summary By Nam Le
- Fitting Ends Pdf Summary Reviews By Dan Chaon
- Among the Missing Pdf Summary Reviews By Dan Chaon
Scroogled Review
Carlo Cattivelli
3.0 out of 5 stars Scroogled
Reviewed in Italy on December 11, 2014
We are all a bit aware of the fact that our traces on the Internet remain clearly visible and feed who knows which databases: in this story, Doctorow goes one step further and imagines that Google has made itself available to investigative agencies to search the lives of individuals and highlight possible dangerous trends. This is how he is ‘screwed (euphemism) by Google’ as the title suggests – which is a phrase of ‘screw’ with the name of the search engine – a former Mountain View collaborator returning from a sabbatical period: the infuriating stop at the airport, seasoned with interrogations based on crazy extrapolations by algorithms, pushes him to try to erase computer tracks with collaboration of a colleague. However, the new Big Brother proves to be stronger and darker (obviously) and the small rebellion is dampened and/or nipped in the bud in an ending full of bitterness. The author takes inspiration from certain circumstances that are already current, such as the computer espionage to which the giants of the sector have bent to penetrate China, and extrapolates them by transferring them on a worldwide scale — which, as is often the case with American authors, consists essentially in their country. How can we see a very vast subject that, however, is condensed into a short story that can be read in less than half an hour and ends up leaving a bit with a bad taste in the mouth: the expectation created in the first pages ends up deflating over time because the situations are brought to an end too quickly and the characters are necessarily only sketched. The story is much more interesting for the underlying theme than for the course, and the reader is left with the hope that it is a sort of ‘zero number’ that will serve as a basic structure for a future and more articulated narrative.
Tridello Cris
5.0 out of 5 stars Google controls you
Reviewed in Italy on June 9, 2015
After reading the beautiful Little Brother, I looked for other Italian-language publications by Cory Doctorow and came across Feltrinelli’s ZoomFiltri series.
The short story Scroogled can be read in a quarter of an hour but makes us reflect on the conscious use of technology and on the fact that every convenience comes at a price to pay (in the case of Google, the price is your privacy).
More than a story, a starting point that should be developed but, given the zero price, I’m not complaining. Congratulations on the series, I will follow it with interest.
About Cory Doctorow Author Of Scroogled pdf Book
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger — the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of the YA graphic novel In Real Life, the nonfiction business book Information Doesn’t Want To Be Free, and young adult novels like Homeland, Pirate Cinema, and Little Brother and novels for adults like Rapture Of The Nerds and Makers. He is a Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles
Scroogled pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information
- ASIN : B00P0AFNHA
- Publisher : Feltrinelli Editore (October 29, 2014)
- Publication date : October 29, 2014
- Language : Italian
- File size : 202 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 22 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #98,422 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #119 in Fantasy, Horror & Science Fiction in Italian
- #282 in 45-Minute Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Reads
- #504 in Italian Language Fiction
- Customer Reviews: 3.5 out of 5 stars 26 ratings
Get A Copy Of Scroogled pdf Or Paperback By Cory Doctorow
You Can get A Copy Of Scroogled pdf Or Paperback By Cory Doctorow from these online store links below.
