Cory Doctorow (Canada)
Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. His latest book is “The Lost Cause”, a solarpunk science fiction novel of hope amidst the climate emergency. His most recent nonfiction book is “The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation”, a Big Tech disassembly manual. Last April, he published “Red Team Blues”, a technothriller about finance crime. He is the author of the international young adult “Little Brother” series. He is also the author of “Chokepoint Capitalism” (with Rebecca Giblin), about creative labour markets and monopoly; “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism”, nonfiction about conspiracies and monopolies; and of “Radicalized” and “Walkaway”, a science fiction for adults, a YA graphic novel called “In Real Life”; and other young adult novels like “Pirate Cinema”. His first picture book was “Poesy the Monster Slayer” (Aug 2020). His next novel is “The Bezzle” (February 2024). He maintains a daily blog at https://craphound.com. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate, is a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University, a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles.
In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. York University (Canada) made him an Honourary Doctor of Laws, and the Open University (UK) made him an Honourary Doctor of Computer Science.
Cory Doctorow’ will talk about “Overcoming the Enshittocene: Why Everything is Terrible and What to Do About It” on May 8, 2024, at the University of Tartu Library.
Précis:
Overcoming the Enshittocene: Why Everything is Terrible and What to Do About It
The rapid, precipitous decline of every digital service we depend on isn’t a coincidence. It’s the result of specific known, policy choices made by specific, named individuals. We can reverse those decisions (and we can determine what sized pitchfork those individuals wear).
Enshittification wasn’t inevitable: it was the foreseeable outcome of a plan to encourage digital monopoly platforms and turn them loose to extract unimaginable value from both their users and business customers, leaving behind a homoeopathic residue of utility to keep us locked in.
This talk will explain what enshittification is, how it works, why it’s happening now – and, most importantly, how we can reverse it, by seizing the means of computation and building a new, good internet suitable to serve as the digital nervous system of a connected world confronting environmental collapse, genocide and rising fascism.
