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Loading... Eastern standard tribeby Cory Doctorow
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. PiAir | May 10, 2009 |   MightyLeaf | Apr 5, 2009 |  When I met Cory Doctorow, he was speaking at my school as part of a conference on the web (WWW@10). Hearing him speak got me interested in his background, and I discovered that he had recently published a book. So I bought it (even knowing that I could get it for free online). This book, just barely a novel in length (I think it's about 60k words), paints a not-too-distant future in which people join "tribes" that correspond to different regions. These tribes distinguish themselves by adjusting their biological clocks to their respective zones, regardless of their geographical location. This is perfectly understandable in this information-dense future, in which your grandma, who may be all the way across the globe, is only a phone call away. Art, our protagonist, works for the EST while trying to sabotage the GMT0. He gets a great idea, but finds himself in a bit of trouble trying to market it back to his home tribe. This book is hilarious satire, if you're in the mood for reading satire, or just a quick glimpse into the future, if you're feeling divine. It will most likely appeal to readers of minimalist or new weird authors, or fans of Doctorow's other works (including his contributions to the BoingBoing.net blog). (  )aethercowboy | Mar 25, 2009 | I work in an organization very much like the one where the protagonist of this book executes his agent-provocateur activities. Suddenly it all makes sense! Agents of our enemies are destroying us from within by corrupting our UI and business processes! I laughed out loud many times reading this book and found it very thought provoking. I like the fact it feels so real, has a just beyond the cutting edge view of the way technology affects us and at the same time has such human characters in it. I have recommended it to several of my colleagues who also enjoyed it. I have even found myself quoting passages in design meetings when it all gets a little too surreal. (  )anderew | Feb 22, 2009 | Eastern Standard Tribe is a book of near-future science fiction by one of the genre's most original authors, Cory Doctorow. The story is told by the protagonist Art Berry as he ponders the events that led to him being confined in a mental institution. Art takes the readers back to his days working in London as a user experience expert who consults with large corporations on how to make their presence in cyberspace more appealing. But Berry has another persona; he's a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, one of many secret societies living within each time zone trying to outclass the domains of their rival tribes. He's in London practicing sabotage when he falls in love, only to be betrayed and committed so his rivals can steal an idea for a profitable new business venture from him. Worth reading if only for visions of the future Doctorow presents. (  )bibliophool | Jan 12, 2009 | 0.024 seconds to build listing
Amazon.com (ISBN 0765307596, Hardcover)Cory Doctorow’s Eastern Standard Tribe is a soothsaying jaunt into the not-so-distant future, where 24/7 communication and chatroom alliances have evolved into tribal networks that secretly work against each other in shadowy online realms. The novel opens with its protagonist, the peevish Art Berry, on the roof of an asylum. He wonders if it's better to be smart or happy. His crucible is a pencil up the nose for a possible "homebrew lobotomy." To explain Art's predicament, Doctorow flashes backward and slowly fills in the blanks. As a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, Art is one of many in the now truly global village who have banded together out of like-minded affinity for a particular time zone and its circadian cycles. Art may have grown up in Toronto but his real homeland is an online grouping that prefers bagels and hot dogs to the fish and chips of their rivals who live on Greenwich Mean Time. As he rises through the ranks of the tribe, he is sent abroad to sabotage the traffic patterns and communication networks in the GMT tribe. Along the way, he comes across a humdinger of an idea that will solve a music piracy problem on the highways of his own beloved timezone, raise his status in the tribe and make him rich. If only he could have trusted his tightly wound girlfriend and fellow tribal saboteur, he probably wouldn't be on the booby hatch roof with that pencil up his nose.As a musing on the future, Doctorow's extrapolation seems entirely plausible. And, not only is EST a fascinating mental leap it's a witty and savvy tale that will appeal to anyone who's lived another life, however briefly, online. --Jeremy Pugh (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:04 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Like the other Cory Doctorow books, the story is staged in the not too distant future, making it feel more believable, though the idea of music sharing described in the book isn't that innovative. Unlike the suggested use of the tracking bracelets for patients. (