Michael Adair Topic Proposal

In Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother, he explores multiple themes concerned revolution. In particular, I would like to focus on the idea of comparing the revolutionary youth of the XNet generation (which is our near future) with the revolutionary youth of the 1960’s. Doctorow asks the question "Are youth today as empowered as the youth during the 1960's? Do they share common goals/techniques to protest what is happening and are they dealing with the same issues?" The author explores a particular concept of youth revolution through the slogan “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 25!” This essentially was talking about how once a person passes this age and goes into adulthood, they lose understanding of the youth of the time period and this phrase/idea is in the book Little Brother but also holds historical significance as it was a slogan of a protest group during the 1960’s, the Yippies. Another important connection between the youth of the 60’s and the XNet revolutionaries is the use of public displays of protest that are mislabeled and forcefully shut down by police. This mislabeling of the motives behind revolutionary youth can be seen in Little Brother when Marcus has his online interview and all of his words are manipulated into making him sound like a terrorist, while most of the protest groups in the 60’s had to deal with similar issues. Also, I would like to explore the issues that the youth are protesting against in “Little Brother” compared to those that the Yippies and other youth revolutionary groups protested against (i.e. environmental issues, government involvement, etc.).