Novel: Eastern Standard Tribe

Overview
Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe imagines a near-future culture in which people organize themselves into "tribes" aligned with time zones rather than geography. Those affiliations shape daily life, social networks, business practices, and loyalties. The novel follows Art Berry, an ordinary-looking man whose membership in the Eastern Standard Tribe influences his relationships, work, and sense of belonging in a world where the architecture of the internet and the rhythms of the clock have become social architecture.
The premise foregrounds the collision of technology and intimacy: online identities, real-world habits, and corporate power intersect as tribes compete for attention, talent, and influence. Doctorow frames the narrative with a brisk, satirical eye toward contemporary Silicon Valley culture, exploring how friendship and ideology can be engineered as easily as software.

Plot
Art Berry navigates day-to-day life as a member of the Eastern Standard Tribe, working in tech-adjacent jobs and maintaining ties through shared schedules, rituals, and virtual hangouts. His comfortable routine is disrupted when he becomes entangled in a clandestine traffic management scheme engineered by corporate players with vested interests in controlling internet flows and consumer access. What begins as a seemingly technical assignment spirals into corporate espionage, betrayal, and moral ambiguity.
As the plot tightens, Art finds that loyalties are slippery: tribe ties that once seemed like community become vectors for manipulation, and colleagues may be competitors or informants. The scheme exposes vulnerabilities in both the technical infrastructure and the social fabric of the tribes, forcing Art to confront the cost of belonging and the personal stakes of an increasingly commodified social life. The narrative follows his attempts to untangle deceit, protect friends, and decide where his commitments truly lie.

Themes
The novel interrogates identity, loyalty, and the corporatization of social life. Time-zone tribes serve as an allegory for the self-selected communities of the internet era, where shared routines, vernaculars, and rituals create meaning and exclusion. Doctorow probes how these affinities can be harnessed for commercial gain or political leverage, asking whether authentic community survives when algorithms and corporate incentives drive human interaction.
Privacy and surveillance recur as motifs: the same technologies that enable tribes to coordinate also render them legible and exploitable. The book examines the ethics of technical expertise and the responsibility of those who build and maintain infrastructure, suggesting that code and policy have social consequences as profound as laws or customs. At its core, the story is about the tension between convenience and autonomy, between participation in a network and the loss of control that can follow.

Characters and Style
Art Berry is portrayed as pragmatic and relatable rather than heroic, a foil for the novel's satire of tech culture. Surrounding him are friends, rivals, and corporate figures whose loyalties and motives shift as stakes rise. Doctorow's characters are drawn with a combination of affection and critical distance, used to illuminate the contradictions of a world where social rituals are simultaneously meaningful and engineered.
The prose is energetic and conversational, reflecting the vernacular of hacker culture while remaining accessible to general readers. Doctorow blends speculative detail with recognizable social dynamics, using brisk pacing and wry humor to keep the narrative engaging even as it tackles ethical and political questions.

Conclusion
Eastern Standard Tribe offers a sharp, entertaining meditation on how new forms of belonging reshape personal responsibility and social risk. It captures the pleasures and perils of networked life: the ease of finding like-minded people, and the danger of letting those connections be mediated by entities with conflicting interests. The novel invites readers to consider how they would navigate loyalty, identity, and power in a world where culture is scheduled and community can be monetized.