I read this after seeing the theatrical adaptation in Chicago this past summer. Doctorow's vision of techno-rebellion in the face of increased surveillance/"security" certainly resonates (just last week we had yet another attempted bomber on a plane) but... there's part of me that vividly remembers what happened on Sept. 11 and is not convinced that we have gone too far in our methods. Sure, some are stupid and some are just ill-planned (really? a color-coded alert system??) but we do have an enemy with whom there is no middle ground for bargaining.

His love of technology led to several passages I just had to tune out (how one sends a tunnel in or through DNS, for example) but the rest of the story sounds relatively plausible, particularly the bits about the rest of the country not caring about SF and the gradually creeping increased measures. One would like to think that we couldn't get to that point here, but it's a definite possibility. When he went off on a tirade, as with the conversion of a "real" neighborhood to create City Center, again: tune out time.