{"id":8215,"date":"2019-10-22T07:14:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T11:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8215"},"modified":"2019-10-22T07:16:19","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T11:16:19","slug":"this-is-gomorrah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8215","title":{"rendered":"This is Gomorrah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"night<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By Tom Chatfield \u2013 <\/strong>The potentially nefarious capabilities\nof the Internet have seeped from science fiction to technothrillers to\nnon-fiction to the morning news. Now comes a debut novel on the topic by\nsomeone who is not only a technology expert but an entertaining storyteller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azi Bellow is a 34-year-old hacker holed\nup in a garden shed in South London with a load of computer equipment,\nexploring the dark web. In Azi\u2019s world, it\u2019s hard to know whom to trust, but he\ndoes trust his online friend Sigma. She feels the same, and when she finds\nherself in trouble asks for Azi\u2019s help. She\u2019s assembled extensive evidence that\n50 confirmed Islamic martyrs are not actually dead but have acquired new\nidentities. Naturally, no security service is looking for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sigma believes these terrorists\nobtained fake IDs from Gomorrah, the darkest corner of the dark web, but now she\u2019s\non the run. Almost immediately Azi\u2019s inner sanctum is invaded by a woman named\nAnna who makes it clear that he must help Sigma or Anna will reveal his\nquasi-legal and illegal activities to the authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus is a thrilling cat-and-mouse\ngame launched, with the urgency of Sigma\u2019s situation prying Azi out of the shed\ninto the real world. They flee England, and later he seeks refuge in Athens\nand, finally, Silicon Valley. It\u2019s hard to stay ahead of Gomorrah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chatfield\u2019s writing is full of sly\ncommentary on technology and human (mis)behavior that will leave you laughing,\ncrying, or both. While Anna and her team aren\u2019t very likeable, Azi is, along\nwith his venal childhood friend Ad and the desperate Sigma. All are experts at\nmanipulation and establishing \u201c…a context within which someone\u2019s only choice\nis to do what you want, even if (especially if) they believe the decision is up\nto them.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom Chatfield is the author of several nonfiction books (and TED talks) exploring digital culture. He\u2019s been a visiting associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and advises numerous organizations about technology and media. He was a launch columnist for BBC\u2019s worldwide technology site, BBC Future. In the acknowledgements he says, \u201cUnlike reality, fiction has an obligation to make sense.\u201d And for most of This is Gomorrah<\/em>, Chatfield\u2019s constructed reality does make sense. By the time it becomes too crazy, you will have already decided to trust him and just go with it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo: woodleywonderworks, creative commons license.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tom Chatfield \u2013 The potentially nefarious capabilities of the Internet have seeped from science fiction to technothrillers to non-fiction to the morning news. Now comes a debut novel on the topic by someone who is not only a technology … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"This is Gomorrah - Can one intrepid nerd save himself from the perils of the Dark Web's darkest place, Gomorrah?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,193,40,126,186],"tags":[1662,1661],"class_list":["post-8215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-espionage","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-technology","tag-this-is-gomorrah","tag-tom-chatfield"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/2712986388_30e3c433f2_z.jpg?fit=640%2C480&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-28v","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8215"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8217,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215\/revisions\/8217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}