by Lucy Hawking
Social media sites allow people to talk to each other using this vast computer network, often over great distances—and much of the content posted to social media platforms is kept, potentially forever! Other messaging applications are deliberately designed to allow for information to be around for only a short while, but of course if you receive a message from somebody electronically you can always find a way to copy it—so things can always find their way onto the Internet.
Search engines such as Google use software scripts called robots or spiders to trawl every page of the Internet (or certainly as many as they can find) by bouncing continuously from links on one page to another. Their aim is to catalogue everything that is on the Web so that we can easily and quickly find what we’re looking for.
Search engines and other such sites are therefore constantly copying and listing much of the content we post or read online. In this way something we publish in one place might quickly appear or be recorded somewhere else. As a result, an item published on one site and then removed might already exist on another website—to be found by another Internet user at some point in the future.
This is why we should all think really carefully about what to put on the Internet about ourselves—because sometimes there is effectively no delete button.
Telling your friends on social media that you’re away on a fantastic vacation with your parents may seem like a really cool thing to do, but the last thing anyone wants is to alert criminals to the fact that their house is empty.
There are other reasons why we might not want people finding information we posted online a long time ago. In the past, as part of job interviews, employers would ask a previous place of work about someone. Nowadays, when you apply for a job, it is common for employers to look you up on social media to find out what they can about you, your friends, and what you spend your time doing. This means that what your friends post online—what appears on your timeline, for example—can also have a real impact on what others think about you!
The Internet as a whole, and social media especially, has revolutionized our ability to communicate, to have fun, and to engage with others. Some people say social media makes us more antisocial in the real world and some use it so much that maybe it does. Like most things, though, if it doesn’t take over our lives and we understand the risks of using it, there are many benefits to be had. There are no hard and fast rules, of course, but I created the rules below as a set of things to think about when it comes to sharing your life online.
Seven Golden Rules
1. THINK BEFORE YOU POST
Before you post something online, don’t just think of the person you’re intending to see it. Think about whether you’re happy for other people—those who know you, and many who don’t—to see its content, now or in the future. If in any doubt, don’t post!
2. THINK BEFORE YOU CLICK
There are lots of reasons why people send “spam” emails to huge lists of people who didn’t want or request them. Sometimes they’re simply designed to sell products, but other times they contain links designed to take you to a website you shouldn’t be visiting. The worst type of spam email attempts to install software on your machine in order to steal data or take control of it. There’s a simple rule here—if you’re not absolutely sure who an email is from, or if it looks in any way fishy, don’t click on any links.
3. THINK BEFORE YOU SHARE
Many people post pictures to social media without thinking about it, but often the people in those photographs may not be so excited about them being publicly available. Before posting a snap of your brother, sister, parents, or friends, why not ask their permission? After all, it’s data about them you’re putting out for the world to see. Ask for the same respect from those who take photos—or videos—of you, and never be shy to ask someone not to post. For instance, if you have a party at your house, you might ask all your friends to agree in advance not to post any photos. It could be you who appears on the Internet just as you drop a slice of messy pizza all down your chin!
4. ONLY BEFRIEND FRIENDS
People can pretend to be somebody else over the Internet—sometimes by using false names, photographs, and ages. These people often rely on the fact that we all want to be popular—and many people will click “accept” just to add another friend to their count. If you’ve set up your privacy settings properly, friends can probably see a lot more than those who aren’t linked to you, so if you don’t know who the person is, don’t let them into your circle of trust.
5. BE AWARE OF PRIVACY SETTINGS
Social media sites make money by selling advertisement space to companies and brands who want to sell their products. They can make these ads really powerful and effective by presenting them to people they know are interested in a particular area. Because of how much we tell them about us they can promise their advertisers that the football computer game ad will only be shown to people who talk about football and about games consoles. The downside (for us) is that it’s in the interests of these companies for us to put lots of information about ourselves online. All these sites have privacy settings, but they tend to change quite frequently, and most people don’t read the details before accepting. The best bet is either to stay on top of this or to assume that anything you post might later be visible to others.
6. BE AWARE OF LOCATION SETTINGS
Watch out too for location settings, which are certainly helpful when we look on a search engine for a local cinema or skate park. They’re less ideal if, when we post thoughts or photos to social media, we don’t want other people to know where we are. Did you know that the settings on many apps now default to sharing your location with the app provider? You should always figure out whether this will actually make the app more useful to you (if you are using it for directions, for instance, the answer would be yes), whether you trust those who provide the app you are using, and whether that data could fall into the wrong hands. If in doubt, switch it off.
7. PASSWORDS AND SECURITY
Software scripts are used by criminals to try many thousands of word combinations in an attempt to “guess” passwords and get access to people’s data. This is why it’s so important to use complex passwords (which use more than simple word forms). Thankfully, in years to come, biometric data (like your fingerprint or eyeball scan) will increasingly replace passwords, but for now it’s important to come up with a series of passwords that are impossible to guess and complicated for a computer to work out. Never use “password,” “123456,” or similarly easy-to-guess patterns. And it’s a good idea to avoid something obvious like the name of your pet or your favorite football team, since this information is easy to find out.
Finally, I like to think of the Internet as being just like the real world. There are loads of great things going on out there, and so many friendly people. In certain places in the real world, though, we have to learn to be careful where we walk, to whom we speak, and what we do. All this works when we’re taking a stroll online too.
Acknowledgments
After ten years of the adventures of Annie and George, it’s finally the last escapade for our two heroes. From black holes to mystery planets, they have taken us on a wild ride through many different areas of science, and so it’s with great sadness that I realize it’s time to leave them in the future and turn a new page myself.
Before I do, I want to say a very grateful thank-you to all the wonderful readers out there who have made the George series such a joy to create. I’ve met so many of you over the past decade and it’s been such a pleasure to answer your many questions. Special thank-you’s this time to my three young advisers, Chloe Carney, Peter Ross, and Benedict Morgan, for their very helpful reviews of the draft version.
A huge thank-you as ever to everyone at Penguin Random House and their sister publishers around the world—but in particular to Annie Eaton for believing in Annie and George right from the start and to Shannon Cullen, Ruth Knowles, Emma Jones, and Sue Cook for taking us
all around the universe and bringing us home. Garry Parsons has brought George and his friends to life over the past ten years and done a wonderful job of illustrating them in every possible scenario—whether walking on a new planet or facing down an angry tiger! Also thank you to Rebecca Carter, Kirsty Gordon, and all at Janklow and Nesbit for keeping the mission running smoothly.
I would also like to thank all the fabulous scientists who have contributed in so many ways to this series. If I could get you all in one room for a thank-you party, it would be a roll call of honor of the world’s greatest.
Finally, one scientist deserves the biggest thanks of all—my father, Stephen. Thank you for letting me retell your work as a series of children’s stories, and for lending your unique and irreplaceable voice to what turned out to be far more than just one book. Without you, we would know and understand so much less than we do about the extraordinary universe in which we live. I’m going to borrow a line from you to close the series:
“Don’t forget to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.”
About the Author and Illustrator
LUCY HAWKING is a journalist and novelist. With her late father, Stephen Hawking, she coauthored George’s Secret Key to the Universe, George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, George and the Big Bang, George and the Unbreakable Code, and George and the Blue Moon, as well as the author of the adult novels Jaded and Run for Your Life. She lives in Cambridge with her son.
GARRY PARSONS is the award-winning illustrator of many books, including George’s Secret Key to the Universe, George’s Cosmic Treasure Hunt, George and the Big Bang, George and the Unbreakable Code, and George and the Blue Moon by Lucy and Stephen Hawking. He lives in London. Visit him at GarryParsons.co.uk.
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GEORGE’S SECRET KEY TO THE UNIVERSE
GEORGE’S COSMIC TREASURE HUNT
GEORGE AND THE BIG BANG
GEORGE AND THE UNBREAKABLE CODE
GEORGE AND THE BLUE MOON
SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Lucy Hawking
Jacket illustrations by Garry Parsons
copyright © 2018 by Random House Children’s Publishers
Interior illustrations/diagrams copyright © 2018 by Random House Children’s Publishers
Originally published in Great Britain in 2018 by Random House Children’s Publishers UK, a division of the Random House Group Ltd.
First US edition 2019
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The illustrations for this book were rendered in pencil that was digitally edited.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hawking, Lucy, author. | Parsons, Garry, illustrator.
Title: George and the ship of time / Lucy Hawking ; illustrated by Garry Parsons.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2019. | Originally published in Great Britain by Penguin Random House Children’s in 2018. | Summary: After escaping the runaway spaceship, George finds himself on a barren Earth where society is under corporate control, access to technology is restricted, and the uneducated population is swamped with fake news.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018020088 | ISBN 9781534437302 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534437326 (eBook)
Subjects: | CYAC: Robots—Fiction. | Technology—Fiction. | Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.H3134 Gcf 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020088