Various Digital Retailers have
Ensh*ttification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (eBook)
by Cory Doctorow on sale for
$3.99.
Thanks to Deal Hunter
phoinix for posting this deal.
Note, must purchase from the available digital retailers listed
Available from:
About this book:
- Author: Cory Doctorow
- Print Length: 353 pages
- Winner of the 2026 Locus Award for Nonfiction
- Ensh*ttification: It's not just you - the internet sucks now. It's been ensh*ttified. That was no accident, and it's not gonna fix itself. Here's how we'll disensh*ttify it so we can have a new, good internet.
- We are all living through the Ensh*ttocene - the Great Ensh*ttening - a time in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are being turned into giant piles of sh*t. It's frustrating. Demoralizing. Even terrifying
- The once-glorious internet has degenerated into 'platforms' that rose to dominance because they delivered convenient and delightful services efficiently and reliably. But once we were locked in to those services, the tech bosses turned on us, relying on our dependency to keep us using the services even as they got worse and worse. The platform bosses did the same to the companies that had flocked to their services to sell stuff to us. Once we were all locked in - businesses and users - the tech companies stripped out all utility, save the bare minimum needed to stave off total collapse
- In Ensh*ttification, Cory Doctorow shows us where it comes from: not the iron laws of economics, or the great forces of history, but specific policy choices made by powerful people who ignored every warning about the consequences of those choices. These are choices that can be undone. Ensh*ttification is a Big Tech disassembly manual, a road map for the seizure of the means of computation. It is a diagnosis, and it is a cure
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The concept is relatively simple. But it's easy to both overstate and understate it. It's not just "greed made things worse," it's: ad-based profit creates free products that cater to users, then businesses, then have a captured audience of both businesses and users thanks to technical lock-in, and begin to squeeze profit out of every area they can because they are not beholden to a customer as long as there is no ability for real competition, which is what most regulation of tech actually does—limit new entrants into the field by raising the bar for what it costs to allow user-generated content, for example.
These problems all have solutions. They work together and in parts. What's most worth reading are Cory's actual solutions to these problems, which include, but are much much larger than "using a different service."
Just like the path to socialism isn't "buy less," the path to undoing what's happened to internet platforms over two decades isn't "don't pay for crap." Neither is it "if it's free, you're the product, so don't be the product."
Unfortunately, these companies are more like power and water utilities (and are beginning to literally become those), and also sewage treatment plants. You're not the product--you're the plumbing and the wiring. And in this extended metaphor, the solution to the crap that's flowing through most of us, which used to be water and power, is everything from requiring pipes and wiring that fits any system, universally, by law, or making it easy for someone to build those universal connectors, and build them better, so we can redirect both where our water and power comes from, and where it goes.
Adversarial interoperability, improved labor power, anti-competitive action, tearing down walled gardens, undoing regulation that burdens new entrants. Things of that nature.
And yes, it is hilarious that this is on sale at Amazon in this way. Cory always releases his work without DRM. He kickstarts the cost for his audio books, for example, so that he can offer them the way he wants outside of the usual systems. He's the real deal. But by all means, $4 is a good price and he's probably gotten enough out of the book by now.
Ooh, it must have been about seven, eight years ago. Me and the little lady was out on this boat, you see, all alone at night, when all of the sudden this huge government agency from the Hippy Era, comes out of the water. It stood above us looking down with these big red eyes and I yelled, I said, "What do you want from us, EPA?" And the EPA bent down, and said, "I need about tree-fiddy." That's right. I said, "I ain't givin' you no tree-fiddy, you goddamn Government Agency! Get your own goddamn money!"
I'm all for supporting authors, but the difference between a $27 ebook and the same ebook at $4 is significant.
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The music industry is the example, it was always greedy and corrupt, but the music used to be better.
Your video there implies that people are poor solely because they are stupid/"defective," and some are rich because they are "superior."
Oh, sure, because "Ted Kennedy" was around when child labor was still a "legal" norm.
Your video there implies that people are poor solely because they are stupid/"defective," and some are rich because they are "superior."
So what's left, don't think about it, its an indictment of the book and its followers.
So what's left, don't think about it, its an indictment of the book and its followers.
Obviously, you have an unique definition of "proven."
Morality and general ethics were stronger and more consistently applied in the past, and it was shameful for all but the worst to put out "product" that was total crap at a high price. Those morals & ethics, and that shame has diminished dramatically in my lifetime.
When they come on, I mute the TV and spend two minutes doing anything but watching whatever crap they wanted me to see.
Obviously, you have an unique definition of "proven."
Morality and general ethics were stronger and more consistently applied in the past, and it was shameful for all but the worst to put out "product" that was total crap at a high price. Those morals & ethics, and that shame has diminished dramatically in my lifetime.
The music got worse, much worse, and the greed used to be horrific when it was good, they were literally bribing people at radio stations to play certain songs, and yet, the product was good.
While morals and ethics have diminished in our life times, Cory and his blinders can't see the answers.
As I stated before, the last free range childhood generation was born in the 80s, Cory doesn't have answers for that.
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