Imagine yourself caught up in an intrigue not of your making. You meet a stranger at a restaurant, strike up a casual conversation, then, once he's left realize he left behind him a folder connected to his work as a pharmaceutical chemist. You also know the information about a drug - Zembla 4 - in clinical trials is crucial. Being a good, considerate person you find a way to reach him, offering to drop the folder at his home. But when you get there he has a knife through his chest. He begs you to pull out the knife, which you do out of pity. On your way out you realize something chilling: your fingerprints are all over the knife, your shoe prints on the floor. But you had nothing to do with his murder. And, instinctually, took his folder with you.
This is what happened to Englishman Adam Kindred, a climatologist recently moved back to England after having lived in the United States, working as a university professor. After a brief fling with a student ends his marriage to a woman he felt reasonably sure he loved he feels he can no longer stay. So when a teaching position opens in an English university the thought of home pulls. He returns to Britain and interviews. The same day he meets Philip Wang, the chemist. It's also the same day he realizes life as he's known it is over.
With hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank he's reduced to the money he has in this wallet. He dares not use his bank card knowing any use of technology will lead the police straight to him. He must go "off the grid," hiding until the real killer is found, or he finds a way to clear his name, assuming another identity and more generic look until then. Survival depends on his wits alone.
In the meantime both the police and a former- military hired killer are hot on his trail. The hired killer is being paid very big money, and after a brief and brutal conflict with Adam early on has his own personal reason for revenge.
Maybe it's because I don't normally read in this genre - because I know this is rather formulaic - but it kept me gripped. Knowing Adam was innocent, watching him undergo near-misses, beatings and psychological trauma was excrutiating. I cared for him and the other good (or redeemable) characters. They were all fully-realized and sympathetic.
Adam was intriguing partially because he was very smart, showing the capacity for "everyman" to be cunning and healthily paranoid when necessary. Learning how to blend in with thousands of other faces in London proved he had street smarts to go along with that university education. Only the few times he reached out for help and companionship did he trip up, so hungry for human interaction he gave others the benefit of the doubt without realizing the potentially dangerous repercussions - to himself and them. When he was on his own his behavior seemed flawless. When he thought with his heart he made himself vulnerable.
I can see how others more familiar with the genre might not be as enthralled as I was. As I said earlier, it was obvious even to me the plot was well-used. I've seen it in countless films, and pulling back to enable objectivity I don't know of any way in which it actually broke that mold though the process by which drugs are made and pushed through trials into production was fascinating. Frightening, but fascinating.
Whichever side of the plot fence you're on the book is well-written. William Boyd's style flows smoothly, his characters and sense of place flawless. Not once did I feel the urge to grab a red pen and strike out over-written passages, which says a lot for me.
Would I read more William Boyd? Absolutely. It passes my test of what makes a great read - I could hardly put the book down and yearned to pick it back up again. I loved it.
It's no secret the internet has your number. But it also has everything you've ever searched for, everything you've even hovered a mouse over, what books you've read on Kindle, how long you've spent on each page, what you've highlighted... The internet likely knows your blood type, children's names and ages, what their interests are and how they're doing in school. Likely? Oh, I'm sure it does.
When I was working to earn my M.S. in Library and Information Studies I took a course on intellectual freedom. Definitely the most fascinating topic I've ever studied. That was only two years ago, before several books about the internet's intrusion into our lives were published. Already, many in the class had an idea just how much about our lives was being bought and sold by marketing companies, how much of a trail we were leaving everywhere we went. There were, shockingly enough, naysayers who argued back, but not as vehemently as those of us who didn't know all the details, but had a pretty good suspicion we were being tracked, and not always with good intent.
The naysayers all pretty much had the same naive argument: If I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care? But we're not talking about doing anything wrong! It's just everyday searching. Maybe you're looking up a malady a friend or family member was just diagnosed with, and it has nothing to do with you. The internet doesn't know that, it just knows you searched about it. Or, say, you're writing a paper, or an article, on drug addiction, internet porn addiction, or anything unrelated to you for which you need to search. Your information is going to go on some list, somewhere, and track you in perpetuity. Did you do anything "wrong"? No! But does the internet know that? Even if you were seeking help for something considered outside "normal" behavior, don't you have the right to?
This is so wrong, in so many ways, but we have no power over this. And it isn't going to stop. Why would it, when someone's making so much money from it?
"In the view of the "behavior market" vendors, every "click signal" you create is a commodity, and every move of your mouse can be auctioned off within microseconds to the highest commercial bidder."
I've blogged countless times on the internet and how it's a blessing and a curse, and I'm not talking solely about the invasion issue. I'm also very, very concerned about the influx of information on the human brain, and how it has and will change the synapses in our brain. I already see it in myself, and I didn't grow up with the internet. My attention is splintered. I often have ten or more windows open simultaneously, from going on tangents while reading - or skimming, rather - on article, leading me to another, then another, and I still haven't finished reading the page that lead me on the wild goose chase in the first place. And did I need to know all this information? Was it something I sought out, looking it up on my own? Often not. But the internet is seductive. Hyperlinks beg me to follow, and very often I do. Is this my fault or the internet's? Ultimately, it's mine. However, as with any addiction the internet can feel as though it's in control of me, rather than the truth, which is vice versa. Or, at least, I think that's the truth.
Eli Pariser opened my eyes to some of the sneaky - because it is, let's not pretend otherwise - ways marketing on the web is customized to each one of us. And I was already suspicious about how we were all being manipulated. Little did I realize how much.
I'd already noticed after I've looked something up online a related ad will pop up next to my email box. I'll even get email from a company offering to sell me something similar to what I've researched. For example: I have a bum knee, one I had surgery on last year to repair a torn meniscus tendon. Last evening I was looking through my Yahoo email and what did I see in the right sidebar? Yep, an ad for knee replacement surgery. Coincidence? Erm, NOT.
Pariser states:
"According to one Wall Street Journal study, the top fifty Internet sites, from CNN to Yahoo to MSN, install an average of 64 data-laden cookies and personal tracking beacons each. Search for a word like "depression" on Dictionary.com, and the site installs up to 223 tracking cookies and beacons on your computer so that other Web sites can target you with antidepressants."
But what, exactly, is the definition of the "filter bubble"?:
"The new generation of Internet filters looks at the things you seem to like - the actual things you've done, or the things people like you like - and tries to extrapolate. They are prediction engines, constantly creating and refining a theory of who you are and what you'll do and want next. Together, these engines create a unique universe of information for each of us - what I've come to call a filter bubble ..."
There's another problem with all this, one I also argued for in my Master's class. When the internet thinks it knows you, it presents you with like information. So, how much energy and effort does it take to break free from that and explore totally unrelated things? What happens to serendipity?
Personally, I don't worry as much about this for myself. I read rabidly and widely, becoming interested in something new all the time, pursuing much of the information I'm interested in via books and web sites. Frankly, I think the internet would have a fair amount of challenge profiling me, when I'm looking up Victorian novelists one week, and the history of Russia the next. Then again, they'll see history as a common theme. So maybe I'm not as immune as I think.
"It's become a bit in vogue to pick on the human brain." Pariser states. "We're "predictably irrational," ... we're terrible at figuring out what makes us happy. Like audience members at a magic show, we're easily conned, manipulated, and misdirected."
Alright. So, being in the Information Studies profession I'm already pretty wary of what is and is not "true" information. I'm a skeptic by nature, untrusting and suspicious. So am I immune from all this manipulation? Not at all. I'm less likely to fall for things, but not at all immune.
But the general public, the average American, let us say, is probably much less skeptical. This would be why sites like Snopes.com exist, sites that pull the plug on untruths. Ever gotten an email warning you about alligators or snakes invading sewer lines, stories about how one person was bitten and how YOU COULD BE NEXT! What about email saying you've won a laptop computer, and all you need to do is CLICK HERE to claim it? A Nigerian you've never met wants to give you money, you say, and all you have to do is give your bank account number? Goofy as this stuff sounds, someone, somewhere is falling for it. If that wasn't so, "they" wouldn't keep doing it.
In his concluding chapters, Pariser outlines what rights we should have regarding the use of our information, from the 1973 Department of Housing, Education and Welfare:
- We should know who has our personal data, what data they have, and how it's used.
- We should be able to prevent information collected about us for one purpose from being used by others.
- We should be able to correct inaccurate information about us.
- Our data should be secure.
Should, yes. But is there any way this will ever happen now? Can ever happen? As Pariser quoted earlier in the book, the genie can never be put back inside the bottle.
Now that you're thoroughly depressed and anxious, I wish I could leave you with some sort of reassuring information. Unfortunately, Pariser's book, the result of deep, thorough research, can't guarantee positive change. We should be vigilant, yes, things shouldn't be this way. But what will make that so?
Figure that out and you'll be a Nobel Prize winner. Best of luck. Meanwhile, give The Filter Bubble a read. It may not change the world, but it has the potential to light a fire under all of us. And that's the first step toward pushing for radical change. Forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes, and this book goes a long way toward revealing useful information in a readable, non-scientific way. It's for the average reader, those of us without degrees in economics, marketing, etc. Fascinating stuff, even when it's horrifying. Learn these things. You have the right.
Trilby Kent's second novel, Stones for My Father, is set in South Africa during the Second Boer War. "Boer," in Dutch and Afrikaans, means "farmer," a term used for the Dutch-speaking inhabitants in the eastern Cape frontier.
The Boers settled this new frontier area out of increasing dissatisfaction with British Rule, as well as wars between Britain and some native tribes making life in their original home dangerous and unsettled. The Boers were poor, scratching a living out of the arid land, most assisted by African natives, who became unpaid laborers - though many traded goods with Boer families for which they were "employed." Judging by the examples in this novel, their relationship was a friendly, mutually beneficial one.
When Stones for My Father opens, the father of the main character, a young girl named Corlie Roux, has been dead two years. Corlie lived with her mother - who treated the girl as if she hated her, despite her obvious affection for her sons - as well as her little brothers Gert and Hansie. Corlie's only friend is an African boy named Sipho, "given" to her at her birth as a companion and somewhat of a servant. Corlie also gets along well with her older brother, Gert, though Hansie is a toddler and doesn't figure much into the plot.
"My mother grabbed me by the arm and shook me roughly. "More lies!" she shouted. "Heathen lies! We'll see how fit you are to spin tales once I've beaten the devil out of you -
I wrenched myself out of her grasp, twisting my arm so hard that I felt my shoulder pop, and ran as fast as I could toward the koppie where my father laid buried.
You can think twice about coming back, my girl!" Ma shouted after me, her voice cracking through the dusty air."
At first safe from the expanding Boer War, eventually those living in the area around Corlie's family have to pick up stakes and move, as the British march closer, burning down houses, stealing cattle and food, and reportedly killing entire families. The Roux family carries all they can, putting on as many layers of clothing as they can, despite the intense heat and lack of a ready supply of water.
They trudge through the desert in search of the safety of their soldiers, eventually running into a group of them, some of whom are long-lost relations. They rejoice at finding each other, but their troubles are far from over, as the fighting seems to intensify, and more and more women and children wind up in detention camps.
Kent's style is somewhat low-key, without flowery style, as befits the melancholy tone of the story. It also suits the bleakness of the land, the poverty of the Boers and the rough life they lead. Seldom does it turn lyrical, and even then it is subdued:
"Only then did I notice the girl lying against the far side of the tent. Less a girl than a shadow, really: there was so little of her that you would have been forgiven for thinking there was nothing beneath the blankets. She was asleep, and with each breath a tired, wheezing sound escaped through the corners of her mouth. It was hard to say whether or not she was pretty. Her skin was so fine it was almost translucent, the tiny blue veins that traveled to her temples illuminated like the branches caught in a flash of lightning."
The plot of the book moves quickly; the short book rushes by, it's so tightly-paced. In a very short stretch of time Trilby creates characters we truly care about. When terrible things happen to them it's heart-breaking, and when they're wronged the reader feels anger. The bleakness that transcends the book, however, is not unrelenting. By the end there is a certain redemption. Perhaps not what we thought, but, rather, an ending more suited to the reality of the situation.
I recommend this book very highly. It's lovely, a fast read, and leaves you thinking about the characters after you've closed the cover. The writing is very evocative, putting you in the story, grabbing hold and never letting go. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read it.
Will Corlie’s resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had….
TRILBY KENT was born in Toronto, Ontario, but grew up in cities on both sides of the Atlantic. After completing degrees at Oxford University and the London School of Economics, she worked for a time in the rare books department at Bonhams before turning to journalism and writing novels for children and adults. Her first book, Medina Hill, is also available from Tundra Books. Trilby Kent lives in London, England.
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