Summary Of Cory Doctorow's When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth

It’s quite logical: who would survive a biological terrorist attack? Those in places that are airtight, climate controlled, battery packed, and otherwise hermetically sealed centers. In Cory Doctorow’s When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth, Felix and his sysadmin coworkers do what they do best in a post-apocalyptic world after a bioweapon puts an end to their society. They are quarantined in their data center with dwindling supplies and the looming realization that everyone they know is dead. Doctorow constructs a worldview of system administrators and the role of the internet, their logical thinking process, and the “Law of Universal Perversity” in a post-apocalyptic world Felix, nor his fellow Sysadmins represent the role of the classic cyberpunk …show more content…
This is supported with context and descriptive techniques through Doctorow’s and Felix’s point of view. Before the Prime Minister of Cyberspace election, Felix mentions that “he fell asleep thinking about the logistics of shutting down the internet,” and while a miniscule event in the plot of the story, it sheds light on the minds of the Sysadmins. To dream about management of the details of an operation alludes to how their brain works in comparison to a person who may not be an engineer or worry about organization of a complex operation. This is a recurring theme throughout and as an example, he explains how non-Sysadmins were running against him. “A US Senator...had generator power and a satellite phone”, ”Anarchist hackers..holed up in Turin”. Felix also mentions that “Work to date” consisted of a “cascade of disasters, attacks, and opportunism” among the laundry-list of other examples. The descriptive techniques that Doctorow uses allude to the immediate causes of events that take place, rather than asking the question of “why” or a plan of what to do next, because “there was no plan” and “no future” according to …show more content…
This is mentioned while Felix is speaking with his wife before leaving for the data center because “nothing could ever be fixed without driving to the cage”. It is a recurrent theme throughout because Felix is a Sysadmin. The Law of Universal Perversity(termed “Finagle’s Law or “Resistentialism”) is the belief that “inanimate objects are out to get us” which is a term favored among hackers. However, it fits perfectly to the theme because they are constantly taking apart and putting back together systems which are inanimate objects. Felix and the sysadmins focus is on the Internet and the organization of the network, which happen to be the “tools” that the attackers use. As Sysadmins, Felix and the group struggle to come to terms of the implications of the inanimate objects, such as the internet and network, which are ultimately the deciding factor of the attackers fate. Felix’s mention of this law is a small but underlying message to the theme of the story. The focus is on the Sysadmin’s interactions with their computer systems and explanation of how certain systems work with one another are inanimate objects in which they engineer for a living and continue in their post-apocalyptic