WAYNE'S 2025 BOOKS: BOOK 8

The Internet Con
by Cory Doctorow
( @pluralistic)

I will never not boost the work of Cory Doctorow, even if most of the time I'm not big-brained enough to follow every thread that he lays down.

This book talks about interoperability, and how it's something that most people don't realise that they need more of in their life, and how it's been criminalised in the name of keeping citizens in the thrall of Big Tech. What's interoperability? If you've ever wondered why messages don't work properly across the iPhone/Android divide, or why you can't easily leave Facebook for another social media platform, or why you're not allowed to repair your own tractor, then you know something about why interoperability is important but restricted by tech gatekeepers. It's easy to make a device that can perform any sort of computation, but they're always locked down – for whatever reason, usually profit – and this hobbling of the devices and platforms you own and engage with is an ongoing restriction on your personal data and belongings.

Doctorow shows the problem through a great series of examples – search engines, operating systems, VCRs, copyright infringement notices, deliberately-borked internet treaties, and so on – in his typical very-readable fashion. The first third of the book is a hit list of things you didn't realise made the world just a little bit more shitty... or enshittified.

The book pivots to discussing interoperability and federation, before throwing some problems up into the air that he opines can be solved with that one simple trick that the technofeudalists hate: better regulation.

I'll never not read a Cory Doctorow book, but I wish now and then that some of the solutions for which he advocates were implemented, rather than each new year bringing another set to examples for him to inevitably use in the opening chapters of his next book.

#books #bookreview #bookreview2025 #enshittification #doctorow #interoperability #federation