The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation

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Tech giants started out with high-minded ideals about "connection," but Doctorow shows us how "connection" was a sticky trap that locked up everyone you love and everything you care about, turning "users" into "hostages." So far, all the proposed solutions amount to self-policing: telling platforms "you're so big you cause problems, so you have to get bigger so you can solve them." The Internet Con presents a solution that actually works. It reveals the thing that platforms fear the most: interoperability. Interoperability is the technical, policy and social tool that will decompose tech platforms into services that anyone can mix, match, plug into - or render obsolete. Interoperability is how we *seize the means of computation*, putting control over tech into tech users' hands. Enshrining new protections for reverse-engineers, tinkerers, co-ops, nonprofits and startups will fundamentally alter the politics and economics of tech monopolies, weakening them and hastening the day that regulators break them up so they no longer present a threat to society. The Internet Con charts where Big Tech monopolies came from - and makes play how we'll abolish them for good.

Reviews

This book fills me with hope that a radical yet plausible alternative to computational tyranny can be developed and deployed. Indeed, demanding interoperability from today's tech monopolitists-or imposing it by force when they refuse-is the most actionable strategy I've yet encountered for turning our devices from tools of repression to ones of emancipation -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Fittest
Thoughtfully written and patiently presented, The Internet Con explains how the promise of a free and open internet was lost to predatory business practices and the rush to commodify every aspect of our lives. An essential read for anyone that wants to understand how we lost control of our digital spaces and infrastructure to Silicon Valley's tech giants, and how we can start fighting to get it back. -- Tim Maughan, author of INFINITE DETAIL
Nobody gets the internet-both the nuts and bolts that make it hum and the laws that shaped it into the mess it is-quite like Cory, and no one's better qualified to deliver us a user manual for fixing it. That's The Internet Con: a rousing, imaginative, and accessible treatise for correcting our curdled online world. If you care about the internet, get ready to dedicate yourself to making interoperability a reality.' -- Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine
This book is the instruction manual Big Tech doesn't want you to read. It deconstructs their crummy products, undemocratic business models, rigged legal regimes, and lies. Crack this book and help build something better. -- Astra Taylor, author of Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When Its Gone
A brilliant barn burner of a book. Cory is one of the sharpest tech critics, and he shows with fierce clarity how our computational future could be otherwise -- Kate Crawford, author of The Atlas of AI
One of the Internet's most interesting writers -- Edward Snowden
One of our most important science fiction writers -- Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Ministry for the Future
Doctorow has been thinking longer and smarter than anyone else I know about how we create and exchange value in a digital age. -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Present Shock

Author Bio

Cory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist and journalist. He is the author of many books, most recently RADICALIZED and WALKAWAY, science fiction for adults; HOW TO DESTROY SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, nonfiction about monopoly and conspiracy; IN REAL LIFE, a graphic novel; and the picture book POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER. His latest book is ATTACK SURFACE, a standalone adult sequel to LITTLE BROTHER. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is a 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.