Oryx and Crake

The certain cultural standings that existed in the world prior to the unnamed apocalyptic event were really intriguing to me. I can already see these parallels in the world today.

Having basic human feelings, emotions, and pleasures become corporate products is ever apparent in todays society. This novel struck me because it was incredibly realistic in the idea that these things will go unchecked.

The parallels of child pornography in this novel to what we have today is so similar. He searches the underbelly of the web to find asian child pornography. This is very similar to what we have today; child pornography is ever present on the hidden net with the aid of TOR browsing. TOR specific .onion sites are hidden from normal indexed parts of the internet and search engines.

Hidden trading sites and sensitive corporate information are shared (see the Silk Road).

I think this is just going to become a bigger problem with internet censorship becoming more and more pressed in our government. SOPA (stop online privacy act) and PIPA (protect IP act) are prime examples of this.

If these things become current and the internet becomes regulated, underbelly operations without any sort of social policing will evolve and we might find ourselves in a similar situation of what was above. A good comparison is the war on drugs; making it illegal just seems to egg on that sort of activity. Control of the internet will have harsh consequences; much like the ones we see in Oryx and the Crake.