Radicalized

by Cory Doctorow (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2019

  $79.42

  In Cory Doctorow's new novella, corporations provide welfare: but only if you use their DRM'd devices: toasters that won't toast third-party bread, dishwashers that won't wash third-party dishes.

  It all started with Salima. Fresh out of a refugee detention centre, she's housed in the exclusive Dorchester Towers. For the first time in months, she has her own bedroom, a bathtub she can lie down in if she squinches her legs and tucks her chin.

  But it's a tower block divided into 'us' and 'them': elevators with a poor-door and a rich-person door. Even the pettiest amenity is spitefully denied to subsidy tenants like Salima - unless the landlord is forced by law to provide it.

  Then one day Salima's Boulangism toaster won't accept her overpriced Boulangism-approved bread. So she hacks into the toaster - with its USB ports and Ethernet jacks - to reprogramme and toast unauthorised bread. If she can hack a toaster, then maybe she can hack an elevator.

  Now it's a tower block that has decided to fight back...