The Global Sociology Blog

Cory Doctorow’s Makers has a lot in common with the previous books I have read from him and the themes developed throughout the stories are also familiar to many regular Doctorow readers. As in previous novels, Doctorow locates his story in a futuristic United States / Western hemisphere where capitalism as we know it has collapsed in one way or another.

Makers is no exception as the story unfolds in a world of affluence that still has wreaked havoc on the social structure. Indeed, the story starts with the merging and dismantling of big blue-collar companies Kodak and Duracell by entrepreneur Landon Kettlewell to be replaced by a completely precarized workforce working on small-scale projects with profit potential subsidized by grant-type money that the corporation provides.

This is the ultimate result of a fully precarized society / risk society where everybody is a permanent temporary worker: love it or become a slum dweller as many of the characters do in Makers. This is a geek economy for  young skillful and creative engineers who have very little need for regular salaries and benefits, as are main character Perry Gibbons and Lester Banks.

The pair of geek pals is also a recurring theme in Doctorow’s books, with the ulterior addition of a woman (or women) into the mix as the story develops. Such core pairs are present in Little Brother, Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom as well as Eastern Standard Tribe, with one über geek and one more business / rationality oriented, with other characters, including villains that belong to the State or the Corporation as major Surveillance and fun-killing entities.

And in all these novels, the main characters have a hard time growing up and resist it as much as they can, hence the fascination in both Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom and Makers, with Disneyworld. Indeed, in Makers, the Perry / Lester dynamic duo’s main goal in life is to manufacture cool geeky stuff for people to by but making money is not much of a concern of theirs. Throughout the book, “adults” will do that for them. It is actually when they are faced with adult responsibilities that things fall apart. So, it is not surprising that the happy ending has them back shoulder to shoulder in a makeshift lab, many years later, back to doing geeky stuff, under the loving gaze of the journalist (and later wife of one of them) who has followed their careers, noting with a little sadness, that her “little boys” have grown… actually, they have not. They are just older. Throughout the book, they both get angry, sulk, stop talking to each other, act on impulse, etc. In other words, they behave like teenagers, as most main characters in Doctorow’s novels do and all complain when the world does not bend to their adolescent geeky dreams.

As always, when reading futuristic / scifi books, I am interested in the social context that constitutes the background for the story. As mentioned above, Makers’ society is a society that is fully precarized, the educated and skilled in computer creativity are the one who survive or even thrive in the precarized environment. Big corporations are seen as evil forces, enforcing their rule through IP lawsuits. In Makers, there is no government to speak of, and certainly not one that provides a safety net for those who have the misfortune of not being creative AND educated / skilled / enjoying the “freedom” of being precarized. And so, Lester and Perry jump from one creative idea to the next, chafing against corporate pressure, grudgingly agreeing to a business side to their ventures, all for open source and sharing. Whatever they do is inconsequential as there are always a millionaire, a business manager and a journalist to clean up the messes they (inadvertently) create in such anomic environments.

In Makers, the good guys create an open source economy where everyone can share the benefits, contribute ideas and all together generate cool projects for this post-utilitarian society where entertainment seems to be a major goal (again, a theme highly reminiscent of Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom). The introduction of 3D printers manufacturing objects allows for the mass production of fads that are short-lived and easily replaced. In this society, people have to make their own job. It is ultimate precarization and individualization mixed with the loose communautarism of the network society. There is no doubt that such a loose social structure would leave a lot of people behind not just in the US but around the world but the novel celebrates the joining together of individual creative forces combined with high-flying technological skills.

It was for me a source of frustration with the book: the celebration of the cool and geeky precarized labor structure based on making tchotkes for those who can afford them, with the pretense that corporate structures are an impediment to creativity and networked solidarity. Unsurprisingly, as shown in the novel, this is a loose social structure that is attractive to the young and unattached who can connect / disconnect / reconnect in this truly liquid society. At the same time, as much as corporations are loathed, the whole open source society is still backed by financial investors and millionaires (or the Mafia in the small part of the story that takes place in Russia).

But what of those left behind? There is a certain romanticization in the novel as the slum dwellers of Miami also have their condition unleash their creative forces and they create their own social structure and it does not feel that it is a slum at all. Again, who needs state services and support when there is always a high-tech, environmentally-friendly solution to be designed.

Now, I do not fault Doctorow for glaring omission in his depiction of this futuristic society, but as I mentioned, there are major sources of frustration for the sociologist in me because this type of complete societal dismantlement and every man for himself is presented as apolitical. Sure, kids on the Internet fight the big bad corporation that is trying to kill their cool “ride”. But apparently, the general precarization has been embraced by everybody and has not generated any resistance (except for a brief mention of the Kodak and Duracell unionized workforce at the very beginning) or any significant social movement against the inevitable destruction of the livelihood of what must be significant proportion of the population.

Bottom line is as much as I enjoyed the book, it reminded me too much of the endless presentations I have had to endure as to how to deal with the Millenials. It seems this book is written for them and maybe by one of them (even if he is not the right biological age). Perry and Lester, the main characters of Makers, are the ultimate Millenials (as they have been stereotyped in the media and the educational consulting business).  In this fictional society, there is not much room for the elderly, the non-creative or anyone who wishes for stability (and who knows what happens to the societies of the periphery as only Russia and Brazil are mentioned). At the same time, the apolitical outlook erases some of the bitter conflicts that would be bound to happen (extreme nationalism and religious fundamentalism). It seems that everybody has embraced some sort of networked cosmopolitanism revolving around white American geeks.

Again, I enjoyed the book. It is a page-turner and the multiplicity of characters creates a diversity of storylines that keeps one interested, in spite of sociologically frustrating aspects mentioned above. The subtitle of the book is “A Whirlwind of Changes to Come” that seem to add up to a dystopia where only a few can make it and too bad for the global rest.