L1ttl3 Br0th3r

L1ttl3 Br0th3r

Inspired by the gaming culture of the book, the novel has been rewritten in basic l33t speak by a Bash agent, replacing A by 4, E by 3, I by 1, O by 0.

L33t was invented by hackers in the 80's to prevent their websites from simple keyword searches. It was widely spread by online gamers afterwards.
Phrases such as ‘I am elite’ became common place, and somewhere down the line l33t speak crept in, reforming the phrase into ’1 4m 3l1t3′ in order to demonstrate that the speaker was a hacker and someone to be feared. L33t speak became so succesfull that the use of it now is cliché.

The Bash agent seems to confirm the cliché: it only takes a oneliner of less than 50 characters to turn an entire novel into the perfectly legible retro-language, and this, in less than a second.
As a reader it raises a question to ex-users of L33t: could the experience of reading the novel in the different degrees of l33t-complexity be compared to reading it in Old English, in Shakespeare's Early Modern English or in Chaucer's Middle English?

The oneliner:
cat Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.txt | sed 's/[aA]/4/g ; s/[eE]/3/g ; s/[Ii]/1/g ; s/[oO]/0/g' > novel.txt

Read more on l33t speak: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=l33t&defid=1522273el.txt~