⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I’ve been following Cory Doctorow online for quite some time and read a lot of his fiction, so I was very excited and grateful to receive an ARC from Farrar, Straus and Giroux via NetGalley!
This is a very important topic to me. I also yearn for the days of “the old, good internet”, not to mention constantly watching aghast as social media companies and other platform owners squeeze every last penny and second of attention out of their end users, employees, business customers and advertisers. I’ve seen a few other ARC reviews mention the snarky tone of the writing – I think actually it’s exactly the right tone for this subject and we should all be at least as mad about it as Doctorow is.
The history and explanations of each topic are really helpful, and most people who are comfortable using technology as a consumer will understand the implications and analogies. I like the mix of very cautionary tales and the potential for hopefulness. As a UK reader, it was great to have US policies and laws explained, and still have plenty of content about Europe and the UK included (plenty of big tech companies are headquartered in the US, but this is a global issue, after all).
As an avid blog/Mastodon follower, I’ve encountered portions of this book in blog posts before, but the familiar material is brilliantly tied together, cross-referenced, and expanded upon.
Do yourself a favour and read this book and follow Cory’s blog. Get mad about enshittification. Take your privacy and security seriously. Start using decentralised services and pushing back on big tech while we wait for watchdogs and legislators to do their work.
Comments