Prison tablets are such an exploitative use of technology. It’s a clear example of using technological development to oppress ratger than liberate. I highly recommend Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle for its (fictional) riffs on prison tech.

Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle continues to play out in real life.

Despite meaning to reread this ever since I first read it, this is my first reread. While it’s very clearly related to Red Team Blues, it’s remarkable how different this book is. Rather than a tight thriller, this feels more like a meandering story that has a clear throughline but skips from event to event as more than a decade goes by. There’s a fun framing device that makes this work, though.

Leandro Palacios from the Beyond the Walls ministry out of the Toronto Community of Christ congregation gave me a heads up yesterday that they would be using a clip from the most recent sermon I gave for them as part of today’s service. I forgot about this until well after the service, but I visited the recording later in the afternoon to see what clip they’d used and to see what else I could catch from the service.

Walkaway, by Cory Doctorow, because it’s a story of radical hope in the face of bleak reality The Bezzle, by Cory Doctorow, because I’m going to need to keep up my frustration with self-enriching amoral tech bros The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States, by Jeffrey Lewis, because it compellingly portrays the danger of entrusting nuclear weapons in the hands of any president but especially one who is particularly petty and impulsive The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth, because it so compellingly describes the soft edges and semi-plausible deniability that American fascism would inevitably be draped in Superman Smashes the Klan, by Gene Luen Yang, because it’s unapologetically pro-immigrant and anti-racism (and implicitly argues that churches should be, too) Practical Anarchism: A Guide for Daily Life, by Scott Branson, because it advocates for solving problems of care and support on our own when it’s clear that the government won’t do it for us The Kingdom of God is Within You, by Leo Tolstoy, because it argues for loyalty to all of humanity over loyalty to any country the March trilogy, by John Lewis, because reading it the first time made me realize that I might well have been a “surely it’s not that bad” bystander during the Civil Rights movement, and I refuse to be that guy over the next four years There are, of course, a number of books that I want to read for the first time in response to last night, and I probably need to prioritize those for a number of reasons.

Prisoners got punished for taking advantage of a hilarious exploit in an app for transferring money from their commissary accounts to a private company’s media store, but no one at that private company is being held accountable for unironically describing prisons as a “growth industry.” This sounds like something Doctorow would have made up for The Bezzle, and it’s kind of amazing that I’m reading it in the news instead.

The state and a private company are splitting millions of dollars that they earn from charging a literally captive audience to use tablets. This is straight out of Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle, and I hate it so, so much.

Earlier today, I had the pleasure of providing the sermon for the Toronto Community of Christ congregation’s Beyond the Walls online ministry. Like when I preached last summer, the congregation is working its way through the parables associated with a particular gospel (Luke last year, Matthew this year), and I preached on the parable of the Sheep and the Goats. The parable’s reference to visiting prisoners—combined with having recently read Cory Doctorow’s The Bezzle—made me think about a decade(ish)-old memory that I hadn’t thought of for a long time.

I feel like I say this whenever I talk about Doctorow, but I love that his fiction reads like an op-ed. While waiting for this book to come out, I’ve been slowly reading his co-authored book Chokepoint Capitalism, and I feel like The Bezzle is all his (and Rebecca’s) critiques about large and greedy companies wrapped up in a fun, action-driven narrative. Here’s the thing about me: I’m an academic, and I respect facts, reason, and citations.

Okay, my new favorite fun fact about myself for ice breaking activities is that Wil Wheaton has read my name aloud as part of his recording of a Cory Doctorow audiobook.