Books & Audiobooks
I first learned of Cory Doctorow’s Enshittification from a podcast, and admittedly I had to listen to the episodes twice because a lot of the material was too technical for my aging brain. But the one thing that did stick was how ruthlessly, relentlessly and fearlessly the giants of the tech industry have made the lives of everyone who has any role in the technology revolution—be it as a user or as a provider of a service—insanely worse. I decided that I needed to get into the weeds and that meant reading the book.
I was struck with how hard Doctorow works to ‘dumb down’ the technical language, and while some of the content remained hard for me to understand, the ongoing and brutal malfeasance demonstrated by companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Uber, to name just a few, and the accompanying incompetence and/or ill-will of public officials was horrifying. Doctorow gives numerous examples of how these corporations have exploited and preyed upon their employees, the users and suppliers of goods on their platforms. The tech workers, who once believed that they were participating in the dawning of a new and better world, became pawns for the taking in the fight for huge shareholder payouts. There is no one winner of the ‘evil’ competition…. They are all proud of the “enshittifacation” they have reined upon the world.
What I have taken from reading this book is: first, how grateful I am that there are people in the world that are starting to stand up and say enough is enough; second, that I, in my own little way, have a chance to not contribute to the bottom line of these tech giants. For instance, I will never purchase another thing from Amazon. Even if the item I want is more expensive, I will buy directly from the supplier. And my final takeaway from this book is that there are governments around the world that are looking at reining in the powers of these monopolies and, while they face an uphill battle, especially in the current political climate, they continue to fight.
This is not an easy book to read but I believe it is important for all of us to understand how much the insatiable greed of these corporations is hurting us in everyday ways. I promise that you will not be able to come out of this reading experience without feeling very angry!